Brazil's Indians Reclaim Land, Citing Promises, Using Force
It was once the cattle farm of a former congressman, but now his stately house in the western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul is a burned-out shell. Thatch huts are being built in the shade of flowering palm trees. Once the purview of one farmer's family, it now is occupied by dozens of indigenous ones.
Indian activists say this is just the beginning.
This bucolic spot — called the Buriti farm — is now the unlikely epicenter of tensions erupting the length and breadth of rural Brazil. The indigenous tribes of this vast country are seeking the land rights they say they've historically been denied.
Alberto, a 46-year-old teacher, is a member of the Terena Indian tribe, which lays claim to around 17,000 hectares here. The tribe's reservation now is only 2,000 hectares, too small, Alberto says, for the community.
It's a fight that in this farm alone has already cost one tribesman his life this month — shot by police who were trying to evict them. Other indigenous groups have moved to block large infrastructure projects like the Belo Monte Dam.
Alberto says there's more coordination and unity among the many disparate tribes over securing access to and protecting infringement on their historic lands.
"I'm in favor of progress, but not at the cost of our cultural history, our survival as a people," he says. "The name of our tribe is the Terena because the Earth is our mother."
Whose Land?
Since the Portuguese conquest centuries ago, Brazil's indigenous population has been subjected to slavery, genocide, murder, land theft and discrimination.
Brazil's most recent Constitution, written in 1988, was meant to redress some of those ills, returning historic lands to the tribes. It gave a deadline: Within five years, all Indian lands should be demarcated and registered. It's now 20 years past that deadline, and the process is still incomplete.
While the government has dithered, many native Brazilians have taken matters into their own hands, taking over land that is owned by large-scale farmers.
It's a warm afternoon and a group of men in cowboy hats and pressed jeans is handing out fliers by the roadside in the rural town of Sidrolandia, just near the former congressman's occupied farm.
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