|
Earlier this month, on January 3, Brazilian Justice Ellen Gracie of the Supreme Federal Court suspended Administrative Ruling n. 820 issued by the Ministry of Justice, which had, in 1998, established the demarcation of the Raposa/Serra do Sol indigenous land as a continuous strip in Roraima.
As a result of this new court decision, obstacles preventing the ratification of the indigenous land as a continuous strip have returned.
The decision of the Justice must be reviewed in a plenary session of the Supreme Federal Court, which will reconvene in February. Until that time, the process of ratifying the bounds of the indigenous land will remain suspended.
Thus, just like during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government in 2003 and at the start of 2004, the Federal Government was negligent, and allowed the opportunity to ratify the Raposa/Serra do Sol land as a continuous strip to pass it by.
This had been possible between December 15, when justice Carlos Ayres Britto suspended the court orders against Administrative Ruling n. 820, and January 3, 2005.
With the 2005 budget negotiations and the maintenance of the wide base which sustains the government, which includes regional oligarchies, large landowners and other interested parties, once again recognition of the rights of the indigenous people of Raposa Serra do Sol has been delayed.
Every time this decision is postponed, the offensive of the anti-indigenous sectors against the constitutional rights acquired by Brazilian peoples gains intensity.
Information has reached us from Roraima according to which rice farmers are already planning to invade more indigenous lands with their plantations. The scenario of threats of violence against the indigenous people continues likely in the region.
Ratification of indigenous lands creates, in the majority of cases, tension in the political game with the country’s oligarchic sectors.
Not even the appeals of Brazilian civil society, CNBB (Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil - National Conference of Brazilian Bishops) or international bodies such as the OAS, which asked the Brazilian government to adopt precautionary measures to safeguard indigenous rights, seem to have been enough for the government.
According to a newspaper in Roraima, in a meeting held at the Presidential Office with the State Governor, Ottomar Pinto, Minister of Political Coordination, Aldo Rebelo, senators Mozarildo Cavalcanti and Augusto Botelho, and federal deputies from Roraima, the President stated that the final decision on demarcation would be close to a consensus and nobody would be taken by surprise.
The rights of indigenous people, which have already been recognized by the Brazilian state in the Federal Constitution and confirmed by the Minister of Justice, have been brought back into the political arena to be discussed again, with a predetermined result going against the indigenous, due to the dispute between unequal forces.
A process of rights negotiation, when the law of the strongest always dominates, has therefore begun.
The first question asked of the indigenous people concerns how great a part of their rights they would be willing to give up.
To force through an agreement, the weaker party is subjected to all types of pressure.
At local level, this strategy reveals its cruelest side with indigenous people getting injured or even shot dead, the destruction of communal houses, and the kidnapping of religious people in the Diocese of Roraima, who are known for their position in favor of the indigenous cause together with the negligence of the authorities.
There is no doubt about the historic presence of indigenous people in the Raposa/Serra do Sol land, but there is a strong economic interest in the indigenous land.
Cimi – Indianist Missionary Council
www.cimi.org.br
 |
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.