Brazil: Indigenous Blockades, Protests and Occupations Met with Extreme Violence

by Skyler Simmons / Earth First Newswire

On April 25 thousands of indigenous people whose land is occupied by the government of Brazil descended on the nation’s Congress to demand the government uphold indigenous peoples’ rights to their traditional lands and put an end to the escalating violence against tribes by ranchers and loggers. The crowd, representing a variety of tribes, attempted to deliver hundreds of black coffins to Congress to illustrate the violence they face while trying protect their ancestral lands. “The coffins represent all the indigenous people from 305 ethic groups who have died over the years,” said Marize de Oliveira, 58 a historian of the Guarani people. The agricultural and evangelical lobby want to destroy our rights and turn Brazil into the world’s breadbasket, ending biodiversity.”

Police responded to the protest with a violent crackdown, launching tear gas indiscriminately into the crowd. Some protestors sought to defend themselves from the police attack and returned fire with arrows and spears.

On the books, Brazil has some of the strongest protections for indigenous tribes in the world. Unfortunately as the power of agribusiness and the logging industry grow, the government is increasingly refusing to enforce these laws. Under the current president, Michel Temer, the government has effectively halted the process for deeding indigenous tribes the right to their traditional territories. Now the Brazilian Congress, which is dominated by big business interests, is considering further weakening of the protection of indigenous rights by transferring the authority to demarcate indigenous lands from the executive to the legislative branch.

A few days after the protest in Brasilia, a violent assault by ranchers on an indigenous tribe tragically illustrated why thousands of indigenous people descended the capital with coffins. Timed to coincide with the massive indigenous protest at Congress, a group of several dozen Gamela Indians set up an encampment in the northeast state of Maranhão in an effort to reclaim their traditional lands which are currently owned by the powerful Sarney family. A few days later on April 30, armed ranchers and vigilantes descended on the Gamela encampment with guns and machetes attacking the Indians with extreme brutality, going so far as lopping off the hands of two tribesmen, and sending a dozen others to the hospital with serious injuries. Locals say that there is ample evidence that police and government officials knew the attack was going to happen, and did nothing to stop it.

Meanwhile on April 28, over 100 Munduruku Indians set up a blockade on the TransAmazonian highway, east of the new port of Miritituba, an important transportation routes for the soy industry, where multinationals agribusinesses like Bunge and ADM, have large export terminals. The blockade came at the height of soy harvest resulting in traffic backing up for 25 miles.

According to a Mongabay correspondent who witnessed the blockade, Antonio Munduruku, a young Indian, told him two reasons why the blockade was imposed: “We want the FUNAI employees who were working with us to be reinstated. We need them. They are our greatest tool in getting our lands marked out. And we won’t leave with empty hands. The FUNAI president told us on Friday that he’d sorted it out. But we don’t believe in words any more. We want their reinstatement published in the official gazette, The second reason is to get the Sawré Muybu indigenous territory properly marked out. It’s our land but nothing is happening. Loggers are carrying on extracting timber.” FUNAI is the government agency responsible for designating tribal lands. The agency has had its funding and staff drastically cut under the current administration.

In a surprising development at the blockade, tribal members met with truckers who were stuck in the blockade and were able to secure support from many of the drivers, recognizing that they had a mutual interest in fighting the right wing policies of the Temer government.

It is hard to say where the protests, or the governments reaction will go from here. According to the group America’s Watch, Brazil is the most dangerous country in the world to be an environmental protector. If the Temer government continues to trample the rights of indigenous tribes, protests and uprisings will surely escalate, and so too will the paramilitary violence the state depends on to maintain the status quo.

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