|
 The Brazilian Pataxó Indian Hã-Hã-Hãe Aurino Pereira dos Santos, 40, married and without children, was shot and killed on May 19, 2007 in the region of Taquari, municipality of Pau Brasil, state of Bahia. His body was found near the Letícia farm, owned by Durval Santana, inside an indigenous area claimed by the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe as theirs.
Aurino dos Santos was an active participant in the struggle of the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe people for recovering their territory. In the region where he was killed, he was one of the leaders of one of the most recent reoccupation actions, which was carried out in the region of Braço da Dúvida and Taquari.
The Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe community attended the vigil and burial of Aurino, on May 22, in the Caramuru village in Pau Brasil.
During the ceremonies, chief Ilza Rodrigues said that indigenous leaders would hold a meeting to evaluate the situation and make decisions and proposals in relation to the case. She stressed how concerned she is with the lack of measures on the part of authorities in relation to this additional crime. She also said that she doesn't want this murder to be another unsolved crime case, without the guilty ones being punished, as so often happens.
The tensions between indigenous people and farmers as a result of land disputes are marked by reoccupations of land areas by indigenous people to recover and defend their territory from the degradation caused by farmers' activities in them. But they are also marked by judicial and administrative actions.
The most emblematic judicial action in this conflict is an ordinary civil lawsuit to nullify title deeds which was referred to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) 24 years ago and no decision has been made so far about it. The lawsuit, which was proposed and filed by the National Foundation for Indigenous People (Funai), is aimed at nullifying title deeds to land granted by the Government of the state of Bahia to farmers in the 1960s.
The long time it is taking to judge this case contributes to increase the violence. In the 1990s, as a result of the pressure applied by indigenous people through land reoccupation actions, FUNAI implemented administrative actions to indemnify farmers for improvements made in land areas they were evicted from, which was an instrumental action for enabling the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe to live in about 18,000 hectares of their lands today, which is still much less than the 54,100 hectares they claim as theirs. This advance frightened some farmers, mainly the large ones, who don't even want indigenous people in their region at all.
Supreme
On June 4, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) will judge writs of mandamus against the official confirmation of the bounds of the Jacaré de São Domingos (state of Paraíba) and Raposa Serra do Sol (state of Roraima) indigenous lands, as well as other lawsuits of interest to indigenous people.
The decision to schedule these judgments was made by the chief justice of the STF, Ellen Gracie.
The importance of judging these writs of mandamus lies in the fact that the Supreme Federal Court is expected to adopt the same position in relation to the Jacaré de São Domingos, Raposa Serra do Sol and Ñande Ru Marangatu indigenous lands of the Guarani-Kaiowá people in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and in relation to future cases involving actions to challenge official confirmations of indigenous land bounds.
In these three writs of mandamus, the main thesis being discussed is that, according to the petitioners, the President of the Republic cannot confirm the demarcation of indigenous lands whose administrative procedure is being judicially considered in an ordinary lawsuit, as is the case of the Potiguara and also of the Ñande Ru Marangatu and Raposa Serra do Sol lands.
Cimi
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
24 YEARS...in your Supreme Federal Court of Crooks, Cheaters, Corrupted and Liars, and no decision made...of course !!!!
Who bet that the criminal who killed the Indian will never ever go to jail and even less be found guilty of crime ?
In Brazil, you easily get a Licence to Kill if you pay for the rights ! With such a card, you just present it to the judge or the investigator and you are automatically.......INNOCENT ! GUARANTEED !!!!