Guarani people in the context of Tupi people

Aleixo Garcia, also known in Spanish as Alejo García, (died 1525) was a Portuguese explorer and conquistador in service to Spain. He was a castaway who lived in Brazil and explored Paraguay and Bolivia. On a raiding expedition with a Guaraní army, Garcia and a few colleagues were the first Europeans known to have come into contact with the Inca Empire.

Rio Grande do Sul (UK: /ˌriːuː ˌɡrændi duː ˈsʊl/, US: /- ˌɡrɑːndi duː ˈsuːl/; Portuguese: [ˈʁi.u ˈɡɾɐ̃dʒ(i) du ˈsuw] ; lit. "Great River of the South") is a state in the southern region of Brazil. It is the fifth-most populous state and the ninth-largest by area and it is divided into 497 municipalities. Located in the southernmost part of the country, Rio Grande do Sul is bordered clockwise by Santa Catarina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Uruguayan departments of Rocha, Treinta y Tres, Cerro Largo, Rivera, and Artigas to the south and southwest, and the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and Misiones to the west and northwest. The capital and largest city is Porto Alegre. The state has the highest life expectancy in Brazil, and the crime rate is relatively low compared to the Brazilian national average. The state has 5.4% of the Brazilian population and it is responsible for 6.6% of the Brazilian GDP.

The state shares a gaucho culture with its neighbors Argentina and Uruguay. Before the arrival of Portuguese and Spanish settlers, it was inhabited mostly by the Guarani and Kaingang peoples (with smaller populations of Charrúa and Minuane). The first Europeans there were Jesuits, followed by settlers from the Azores. In the 19th century it was the scene of conflicts including the Ragamuffin War and the Paraguayan War. Large waves of German and Italian migration have shaped the state as well.

Mameluco is a Portuguese word that denotes the first generation child of a European and an Amerindian. It corresponds to the Spanish word mestizo.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, mameluco was also used to refer to organized bands of explorers from Colonial Brazil known as bandeirantes, who roamed the interior of South America departing from São Paulo near the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of Brazil and Paraguay, invading Guarani settlements in search of slaves and gold.

Guaycuru or Guaykuru is a generic term for several ethnic groups indigenous to the Gran Chaco region of South America, who speak related Guaicuruan languages. At the time of first contact with Spanish explorers and colonists in the 16th century, the Guaycuru people lived in the present-day countries of Argentina (north of Santa Fe Province), Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil (south of Corumbá).

The name is written guaycurú or guaicurú in Spanish (plural guaycurúes or guaicurúes), and guaicuru in Portuguese (plural guaicurus). It was originally an offensive epithet given to the Mbayá people of Paraguay by the Guarani, meaning "savage" or "barbarian", which was later extended to the whole group. It has also been used in the past to include other peoples of the Chaco region, but its usage is now restricted to those speaking a Guaicuruan language.

Native Argentines (Spanish: Argentinos nativos), also known as Indigenous Argentines (Spanish: Argentinos indígenas), are Argentines who have predominant or total ancestry from one of the 39 groups of Indigenous peoples officially recognized by the national government. As of the 2022 census [INDEC], some 1,306,730 Argentines (2.83% of the country's population) self-identify as Indigenous or first-generation descendants of Indigenous peoples.

The most populous Indigenous groups were the Aonikenk, Kolla, Qom, Wichí, Diaguita, Mocoví, Huarpes, Mapuche and Guarani. Many Argentines also identify as having at least one Indigenous ancestor; a genetic study conducted by the University of Buenos Aires in 2011 showed that more than 56% of the 320 Argentines sampled were shown to have at least one Indigenous ancestor in one parental lineage and around 11% had Indigenous ancestors in both parental lineages.

The Ava Guaraní are an Indigenous people formerly known as Chiriguanos or Chiriguano Indians who speak the Ava Guarani and Eastern Bolivian Guaraní languages. Noted for their warlike character, the Chiriguanos retained their lands in the Andes foothills of southeastern Bolivia from the 16th to the 19th centuries by fending off, first, the Inca Empire, later, the Spanish Empire, and, still later, independent Bolivia. The Chiriguanos were finally subjugated in 1892.

The Chiriguanos of history nearly disappeared from public consciousness after their 1892 defeat—but were reborn beginning in the 1970s. In the 21st century the descendants of the Chiriguanos call themselves Guaranis which links them with millions of speakers of Guarani dialects and languages in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil.