Brazilian Congress creates commission to follow the Guarani Kaiowá land conflict

In the last months news have reach overseas that a Brazilian Indigenous tribe – the Guarani Kaiowá – would commit suicide. The reason: the Brazilian Justice released a decision to expel the whole tribe of a huge piece of land they claimed to be their sacred land, where they develop their culture and bury their ancestors.

The home broadcast did not cover the facts and tried to suffocate the indigenous “uprising”. But the internet and the independent media took the indigenous struggle worldwide. And now the Brazilian Congress has created a special commission to follow this conflict. This commission has been created right after an Appealing Court has delivered the verdict against the once determined expelling. It´s not definitive as it is a preliminary injunction.

The Congressman Ricardo Trípoli has urged the necessity of establishing the indigenous areas, otherwise there will be an indigenous genocide. The agriculture has advanced way too far and the tribes have always lost their land. They way the government has dealt with the problem does not bring an end to the conflict which can be only reached by delimiting the indigenous property and giving land title registrations to farmers in areas where they are allowed and supposed to be.

AN OLD PROBLEM

The dispute takes place in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul – originally an indigenous land. Specifically concerning this conflict a land owner has filed a lawsuit requiring the expelling of 200 indigenous men of his farm. The farm is 173 hectare long, while the area occupied by the indigenous tribe reaches only 2 hectare.

The preliminary injunction has canceled the immediate expelling and allowed the indigenous to remain only in a 1 hectare area. The objective is to avoid an unnecessary bloodbath – the indigenous had delivered a letter to the local judge requiring her to order their collective death as they wouldn´t leave the area – and to gain more time until the Federal Agencies determine the extensions of the indigenous sacred land.

Elizeu Lopes Guarani-Kaiowá, one of the indigenous leaders, affirmed the indigenous people have been waiting for more than 30 years for the Brazilian Federal Government to deliver the legal limits of their sacred land. Since then, the tribes have lived along the highway shoulders without any quality of life while the agribusiness doubles every year.

A POSSIBLE FUTURE

Recently an almost 20 year-long judicial process has come to an end when the Brazilian Supreme Court delivered its final decision to restored the property of lands occupied by farmers and originally owned by a Xavante Indigenous Tribe. The expropriation happened during the 60s and many have been the land proprietors along the decades. The Justice declared that the farmers´ title registrations are not valid as the land belongs to the indigenous and decided that all non-indigenous shall leave the area.

The Supreme Court has delived a famous verdict upon indigenous land delimitation in 2009 when declared that farmers should leave a vast area in the state of Roraima in the Amazon Forest - along the Brazilian border with Venezuela. It has unified the once scattered Raposa Serra do Sol Reserve. The main business developed in the area was rice farms. According to the Federal Government all the farmers have received compensations of the lands expropriated.

They used to be more than 5 million but now are not more than 500.000. Another Congress Comission - The Human Rights and Minorities - has sent its concerns President Dilma Rousseff and the United Nations. There is a indigenous genocide already taking place along the last centuries and it has been intensified by the economy growth and ambicious energy and dam plans to support all the business and new settlements.