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The Guardian | Friday 24 April 2015

Human rights

29

International

Indigenous Brazilians struggle to keep land

Villagers fear a new law

will allow industry to seize
already restricted plots

600

Claire Rigby Tekoa Pyau

From downtown So Paulo, in Brazil,
the Pico do Jaragu the crest of mountain ridge on the citys north-west horizon looks like a broken tooth, crowned
by a towering TV antenna. Just beyond
the rocky peak and down a steep, deeply
rutted, unmade road, lies the nascent
village of Tekoa Itakupe, one of the newest fronts in the indigenous peoples
struggle for land to call their own.
Once part of a coffee plantation, the
idyllic 72-hectare (177-acre) plot is now
occupied by three families from the
Guarani community who moved on to
the land last year after it was recognised
as traditional Guarani territory by Funai,
the federal agency for Indian affairs.
The group had hoped that would be
a first step on the road to its eventual
official demarcation as indigenous
territory, but they now face eviction
after a judge granted a court order to
the landowner, Antnio Tito Costa, a
lawyer and former local politician.
Ari Karai, the 74-year-old chief or
cacique of Tekoa Ytu, one of two established Indian villages at the base of the
peak, says the group intends to resist.
How can they evict us when this is
recognised Indian land? he says.
The dispute comes at a crucial time
for Brazils indigenous groups. This
month more than 1,000 indigenous
leaders met in Braslia to protest and
organise against PEC 215, a proposed
constitutional amendment that would
shift the power to demarcate indigenous
land from the executive to the legislature that is, from Funai, the justice
y
ministry and the president, by
decree, to Congress.
The Indians opposition
to placing demarcation in
the hands of Congress is easy
to understand: about 250 members
mbers
of Congress are linked to the powerful ruralist congressional caucus,
aucus,
representing interests such as agrong and
business and the timber, mining
energy industries. By contrastt there has
been only one indigenous member
mber of
Congress in the entire history of Brazil:
Mrio Juruna, a Xavante cacique,
que, who
served from 1983-87.
ector at
Fiona Watson, research director
Survival International, the Londonndonbased charity that campaigns for indigroved
enous people, said that if approved
PEC 215 would put the fox in
charge of the hen house.
C
Many Indians consider PEC
215 a move to legalise the theft
ft
and invasion of their lands by agribusiness. It will cause further delays,
wrangling and obstacles to recognicogni-

Number of Guarani
people living at
Tekoa Ytu reserve,
a four-acre site
with contaminated
natural water

tion of their land rights. The demarcation of Brazils indigenous territories,

specified in the 1988 constitution, was
supposed to have been completed by
1993. Twenty-seven years on, most of
the territory has been demarcated, with
517,000 Indians living on registered land
mainly in the Amazon region, but more
than 200 applications still in limbo.
Under Dilma Rousseff, Brazils president, fewer demarcations have been
decreed than during any government
since 1988, despite the announcement
last weekend of three demarcations in
the states of Amazonas and Par.
At Tekoa Ytu, Brazils smallest
demarcated indigenous reserve, about
600 Guarani Indians are living on four
acres (1.7ha) in squalid, insalubrious,
conditions. The natural pool where the
children used to swim lies silent owing
to contamination from a stream running
through a favela on the hillside above,
polluting with raw sewage the waterfall,
pool and river where the community
once washed, fished and drew water.
Tekoa Pyau, the larger of Jaragus
two established Indian communities,
is similarly impoverished. Children run
barefoot over packed earth studded with
litter and bits of broken brick. The community is making uncertain progress
through the demarcation process.
The strain shows on the face of
Tekoa Pyaus young cacique, Victor
F S Guaran, a 30-year-old who says
that without demarcation the community has no future. Its so complicated,
he says, grimacing.
Its all they have, but the village is
hardly the kind of the place they would
live had they a choice, says Guaran. Its
extremely poor. Many families get the
bolsa famlia, a federal benefit payment
for those with low incomes, but other
than that the community gets minimal
assistance from the state, Guaran says.
a
For Brazils indigenous communities,
lack of representation in or by governla
ment
is just the institutional face of the
m
discrimination they encounter daily.
d
Some of the people who live around
here say, theyre not real Indians,
h
theyre favelados, says Guaran, using
th
Franco da Rocha

10 miles

Pico do Jaragu
Guarulhos
Barueri

Suzano

So Paulo
Mau
Itapecerica
da Serra

Brazil
Cubatao

Praia Grande

the pejorative term for slum dwellers.

The politician Costa, in his petition to a
local court calling for an eviction, writes
about the Guaran at Itakupe with scorn,
calling them unemployed and unproductive, and describing their traditional
outfits as ridiculous fancy dress.
Confined to cramped villages and
often dismissed as backward, the communities poverty, inward-looking culture and long-standing lack of political
and social agency, make them invisible
to many of their fellow Brazilians, even
when theyre standing in plain sight.
When I go into the city centre, says
Guaran, people ask if Im Bolivian.
During the first of a series of anti-PEC
215 protests in So Paulo last year, he
says, bystanders asked why Indians
had come all the way from the Amazon to protest, unaware of the Jaragu
reservation just nine miles north of the
city centre, or of the Guaran living at
Parelheiros, 24 miles to the south.
By the end of those protests, there
were whites marching with us, says
Guaran. When I saw them painting
their faces and chanting alongside us it
was very emotional.
At Tekoa Itakupe, wearing a feathered
headdress and a buriti-fibre skirt that
he put on to receive guests, the cacique
Karai was showing visitors the village
crops: corn, manioc, sweet potato and
mango. By contrast to the difficult conditions in the villages below, Itakupe has
got fresh water from dozens of springs,
expanses of secondary growth Atlantic
forest, a waterfall, and 10-metre tall
mossy ruins deep in the valley, thought
to be from the time of the bandeirantes,
Brazils colonising pioneers. On the
other side of the valley is a long swath of
eucalyptus, a plantation kept by Costa.
Costa, who is 92, says the land has not
been permanently inhabited by Indians
as the constitution states it must be
to be eligible for indigenous culture
protection. Indians have never lived on
the land in question, he told Brazils R7
news last week. Or if there was ever an
Indian village at Jaragu, as they claim,
those were other times. Its over.
Karai is worried the children in the
villages below are losing their connection to nature. We dont want anything
from this land other than to live on it
and take care of it. His face crumples
suddenly as he speaks. There is no joy
for us in any of this. But were going to
resist, whatever happens. What choice
do we have? We have to guarantee the
survival of our people and our culture.
Similar resistance is taking place all
over Brazil, often in the face of extreme
adversity and even violence. The resistance is rapidly coalescing, he says.
At street protests and online, alliances, strategies and a sense of empowerment are being forged among Brazils
300-plus indigenous groups and with
the quilombola communities whose
members are descendants of escaped

Tekoa Itakupe
chief Ari Karai,
who has vowed to
fight for survival.
Below a member
of the community
Photograph:
Victor Moriyama
for the Guardian

slaves, and whose right to a homeland is

also threatened by PEC 215.
If the PEC 215 is passed this year, as
seems it will, the amendment will also
allow for reviews of past demarcations,
and bring in exceptions to exclusive use
of protected land, including leasing to
non-Indians and infrastructure building,
in the public interest. Guaran says:
Once its explained, everyone becomes
concerned, even the children.

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