Indigenous protest bill over their land rights
BRASILIA, Brazil — Hundreds of Indigenous people gathered outside Brazil’s Congress on Wednesday to push for rejection of a bill that could loosen protections for their lands — a proposal that has already prompted clashes with police.
Indigenous groups have been staging protests for days in the capital. Dressed in traditional clothes and carrying bows, they marched to Congress, where they sang and danced. A group of women gave roses to police officers standing guard. The prior day, police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, who shot arrows; one pierced an officer’s leg.
The bill before the lower house’s Constitution and Justice Committee would require Indigenous people seeking full protection of their territories to have been occupying the land in 1988, the year Brazil’s constitution was signed after the nation’s return to democracy. If approved in committee, it will go to the floor for a vote.
Indigenous rights activists say the cutoff date ignores the fact many had been forcibly expelled from their ancestral lands, particularly during the military dictatorship, or may not have formal means to prove possession.
There are currently 237 such requests for full protection of territories, most small and located outside the Amazon rain forest in Brazil’s north region, according to Juliana Batista, a lawyer at the nonprofit Socioenvironmental Institute.
“It is a big conflict because they’re in areas within contexts of real estate speculation, cities, and very much pressured by economic interests,” Batista said. “If they can’t prove they were in possession, they could lose their lands.”
The bill’s backers argue it would provide legal certainty to agricultural producers, a key constituency of Brazil’s farright President Jair Bolsonaro. He has said Indigenous people control far too much territory relative to their population — their territories cover 14% of Brazil, most in the Amazon — and he has been outspoken about his desire to promote development.
“Brazil has enormous potential within that 14%, that enormous area of our Indigenous brothers,” he said in a broadcast on social media in April.
The bill also would allow the government to appropriate socalled Indigenous reserves demarcated prior to 1988 if the groups’ cultural features have changed. That could potentially apply to more than 60 areas totaling roughly about 1,500 square miles.