|
 After a 34-year-old struggle by a group of Brazilian Indians and four days of deliberation, the Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal - STF) upheld, on March 19, the legal recognition of the indigenous lands of Raposa Serra do Sol in Roraima, which was questioned by the state senators of Roraima and the rice farmers who occupy the land.
The removal of illegal occupants will be the responsibility of the judiciary, under the authority of the judge-reporter of the case, Carlos Ayres Britto.
By ten votes to one, the judges upheld the administrative procedure that, in 2005, resulted in the recognition of 1.7 million hectares as indigenous land, where approximately 18,000 people from the Ingarikó, Makuxi, Taurepang, Patamona and Wapichana peoples live.
The only dissenting vote was from judge Marco Aurélio de Mello. On December 10, 2008, in the second court session, after eight judges had already voted for maintaining the recognition, Mello delayed a decision through legal maneuvering.
On March 18, when the STF returned to session, Mello read his earlier vote for about seven hours, full of long quotations from news articles. Shortly after, Celso de Mello voted for maintaining the recognition. On March 19, judge Gilmar Mendes also voted in favor of the recognition of the lands.
After the verdict was announced, approximately 30 Indians who were following the court proceedings celebrated the victory in the Plaza of the Three Branches of Government (Praça doe Três Poderes). "We lost many family members who were killed during these years of struggle, but today, they are here celebrating with us," declared an emotional Júlio Makuxi.
The result from March 19 annulled a court order that suspended the operation of the Federal Police to remove the non-Indian occupants from the land in April, 2008. Meanwhile, the responsibility for extricating the invaders will no longer be left to the executive branch but with the judicial branch. It will be under the coordination of TRF 1 and Judge Ayres Britto.
The judge Richard Lewandoski pointed out that the STF repeatedly called for the immediate removal of the occupants and the decision of the court cannot be set aside.
Beyond having decided on the demarcation of the Raposa Serra do Sol land, the STF judges established 19 conditions for the defining and fixing of boundaries of any indigenous lands in the country.
In the evaluation of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI - Conselho Indigenista Missionário), the ruling established by the STF, "must be understood in the context of the restrictions of the rights of indigenous peoples, traditional populations, rural populations and others, in favor of the interests of private capital.
In the face of this, CIMI warns of the dangers that restricting the rights of others can cause, as in the inciting of conflict because the indigenous peoples and communities have a legitimate right to defend the land they own."
The conditions were proposed in the vote of judge Menezes Direito on December 10, 2008. On March 18, Celso de Mello added another condition. The judge-reporter Ayres Britto accepted the conditions, except for the one which prohibits the review of boundaries of indigenous lands.
Judges Eros Grau and Carmem Lúcia agreed with Britto. The majority of judges approved all of the conditions, except for judge Joaquim Barbosa who agreed with none of them. According to Barbosa, the content of the conditions was not sufficiently discussed.
Adital
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.
1) Now what are we going to do with that old man who was born in that part of RR and lived there all through his life ?
2) What happens to the Rice farmer who migrated from the South about one fourth of a century ago and married a "Native Indian". I presume she can live there and he has to relocate to some other place. Since their children are neither "white" nor "Indians", automatically they become stateless. I guess, Ch.c can arrange asylum for them in Switzerland!