Latin Analysis: Has President Lula Failed Brazil’s Indigenous Communities?
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211 indigenous people were murdered in Brazil last year according to human rights NGO Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi), a slightly higher number than the 208 recorded deaths in 2023. As well as this,“1,241 cases of violence against Indigenous Peoples’ territories” were counted last year. This data was collected by the human rights group during visits to the indigenous territories of Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul, and what they found was described as a situation “of total devastation and widespread violence” against the native Avá-Guarani and Guarani Kaiowá people. These casualties have mostly been the result of farmers opening fire on the tribes, to take the land for their own aims.
Many are surprised however, that such levels of violence against indigenous groups are happening under the current government. President Lula da Silva was thought to signify a new era for Brazil, once he had clawed the presidency back from his controversial, right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro’s administration was characterized by land grabs, the stripping back of indigenous rights and transfer of powers away from the bodies that represent Indigenous groups.
In comparison, Lula was accompanied by a selection of leaders representing all the different corners of Brazil’s diverse society at his third inauguration in January 2023, in what many hoped would be a time of restoration and protection for 1.7 million indigenous people. President Lula then went on to set up Brazil’s first Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and undo the damage done to organizations supporting these groups under the previous government.
However, it appears that life has not really improved as a result. On the contrary, more Indigenous people are being murdered on their own land than under Bolsonaro, despite Lula’s vow to protect them. According to Eliesio Marubo, a well-known and respected Indigenous leader and legal advisor, “little has changed since Lula took office”, with Indigenous populations remaining powerless to the extreme violence they are subjected to.
This begs the question; what is truly feeding these increases in violence against Indigenous groups? Some may argue that these people are victims of location. For example, the Javari Valley lies along “important drug trafficking routes from Peru and Colombia into Brazil”, with some experts accepting this as the reason for this spike in murder rate. Undeniably, such exchanges destabilize regions and will make Indigenous people more vulnerable to attack if they find themselves at a drug exchange hotspot.
However, the oppression and subjugation of Indigenous groups is tragically not a new phenomenon in Brazil, meaning that these trends potentially cannot be explained away by recent developments. These populations are the native people of Brazil, who lived in the country long before the European settlers arrived. Their ownership of their land has been disputed in the five centuries that have passed since, with Indigenous groups continually forced to fight for what is rightfully theirs. The Avá-Guarani “underwent a series of forced displacements with the arrival of colonizers and agricultural expansion in the 20th century”. The construction of the Itaipu dam in the 1970s further worsened their position, with the flooding that followed causing irreversible damage to the Guarani ancestral lands. Although the were in Brazil long before the colonizers arrived, the Avá-Guarani are now very likely to find themselves living in precarious conditions, because of everything they – and their home- has survived.
And this is just one Indigenous group in a country which is home to over three hundred, each with their own history and story to tell. However, one thing unites them all; Brazil is considered “one of the most dangerous countries for land rights defenders, especially Indigenous and Quilombola defenders”, with attacks against these communities considered a frequent occurrence. Hundreds of their people are killed a year, with many committing suicide, while thousands of their children under the age of four dying from preventable causes, and hundreds of thousands live in food insecurity.
Much of this is the catastrophic result of a lack of land demarcation, which is the process of guaranteeing ownership of the land and its resources for the tribes that inhabit it. Recognition of Indigenous claims to the land has historically been slow, with demarcation in some areas rumbling on for decades. However, demarcation completely stopped under Bolsonaro after being in effect since the 1988 Constitution was brought in, which had huge consequences for Indigenous groups. This led to clashes between Indigenous groups and local farmers, who were galvanized by Bolsonaro’s vehement anti indigenous sentiments to “kill tribesmen across the Amazon Rainforest” and disregard the historic claims to the land and rights of the tribes. For example, just recently, a Pataxó man was killed while another was injured in an Indigenous reserve in Bahia. According to reports, “[t]he crime occurred while the leaders of their community were in Brasilia working on advancing the demarcation of their land.”
A time frame proposal, or a time limit trick as it became known, tabled by conservative figures which would have “stripped Indigenous rights and opened up traditional territories to mining and agribusiness”, was set to make the situation even worse. This idea outlined that land could only actually belong to Indigenous people if they could prove that they lived on it when Brazil’s Federal Constitution was brought in on October 5, 1988. Indigenous groups blasted this proposal as unfair, given their typically nomadic lifestyles and the fact that many tribes had to escape their homelands because of colonial violence. To the relief of these groups, the Supreme Court rejected this proposal in September 2023, ruling it unconstitutional. However, there have been instances since where this idea has been used in land disputes, which has sometimes resulted in the government compensating ranchers who invaded Indigenous land that had already been demarcated to the respective tribe, and then were told to leave. This undermines the idea that this land does not belong to the farmers and reinforces their belief that they have a legitimate claim to Indigenous land. It is potentially no wonder then that violent clashes between farmers and tribes continue, which often has heartbreaking consequences for Indigenous communities.
The fear felt within these communities is palpable. According to Celia Perreira, a 27-year-old Kaiowa woman: “[w]e live in fear. White people shoot at us with rifles almost every day”. These communities wish to be left to continue living their lives as they and their ancestors have done for centuries, without fear that invaders will come and shoot them dead. The old regime of Jair Bolsonaro, with his disregard for international law and human rights, has a lot to answer for. However, President Lula da Silva does not enjoy a perfect record either. Homicide rates within Indigenous groups are rising under his presidency, and more must be done to tackle the root of this violence. Some of them are historic stains on the country’s conscience, while others, such as improving demarcation processes, could be improved with enough political incentive to do so. Something must be done soon, to protect these groups which have contributed so much to Brazilian society and history, before it is too late.
