Brazil is home to about 850,000 indigenous people representing roughly 300 tribes. Their vast reservations, accounting for about 13 percent of Brazil’s territory, have long been a source of conflict with outsiders looking to tap their natural riches.
Incited by Bolsonaro’s vow to open more native territory to commercial development, the men, armed with machetes, chainsaws and firearms, entered protected indigenous land in a remote corner of the Amazon to stake their claims.
A tense stand-off ensued with members of the Uru-eu-wau-wau tribe, who captured the January confrontation on a cellphone video viewed by Reuters. The trespassers threatened to set fire to their villages to drive them out.
The confrontation is part of a surge of threats and illegal incursions that tribes and indigenous rights groups say have accompanied Bolsonaro’s rise to power. One of Bolsonaro’s first acts as president was to strip FUNAI of its role in setting reservation boundaries, passing that authority to the Agriculture Ministry, which is dominated by rural interests. The official now in charge of land issues is Nabhan Garcia, a right-wing farming organizer who has fought reservations for decades.
“The amount of reservation land is monstrous and it’s in the hands of very few Indians today,” Garcia said in an interview with Reuters.
Land invasions have increased 150 percent since he was elected in late October, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Brazilian advocacy group.On the night of Bolsonaro’s victory, a health post and a school were firebombed on Pankararu lands in northeastern Pernambuco state, CIMI reported. In midwestern Mato Grosso do Sul, the group said, convoys of farmers fired shots at the Guaraní Kaiowá community to intimidate the tribe.
Bolsonaro has railed against what he sees as excessive federal protections for these minorities. He compared natives on reservations to animals living in zoos, suggesting they would be better off assimilating and enjoying a cut of profits that could come from opening their holdings to farming, logging and mining. He has dismissed reservations as an impediment to agribusiness, one of his top supporters. “If I become president, there won’t be one square centimetre of land designated for indigenous reservations,” he said at a 2017 campaign stop in the farm state of Mato Grosso.
“His campaign speeches ... became a license to invade indigenous lands,” said Ivaneide Bandeira, head of the ethno-environmental defence NGO Kanindé.
Incited by Bolsonaro’s vow to open more native territory to commercial development, the men, armed with machetes, chainsaws and firearms, entered protected indigenous land in a remote corner of the Amazon to stake their claims.
A tense stand-off ensued with members of the Uru-eu-wau-wau tribe, who captured the January confrontation on a cellphone video viewed by Reuters. The trespassers threatened to set fire to their villages to drive them out.
The confrontation is part of a surge of threats and illegal incursions that tribes and indigenous rights groups say have accompanied Bolsonaro’s rise to power. One of Bolsonaro’s first acts as president was to strip FUNAI of its role in setting reservation boundaries, passing that authority to the Agriculture Ministry, which is dominated by rural interests. The official now in charge of land issues is Nabhan Garcia, a right-wing farming organizer who has fought reservations for decades.
“The amount of reservation land is monstrous and it’s in the hands of very few Indians today,” Garcia said in an interview with Reuters.
Land invasions have increased 150 percent since he was elected in late October, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Brazilian advocacy group.On the night of Bolsonaro’s victory, a health post and a school were firebombed on Pankararu lands in northeastern Pernambuco state, CIMI reported. In midwestern Mato Grosso do Sul, the group said, convoys of farmers fired shots at the Guaraní Kaiowá community to intimidate the tribe.
Bolsonaro has railed against what he sees as excessive federal protections for these minorities. He compared natives on reservations to animals living in zoos, suggesting they would be better off assimilating and enjoying a cut of profits that could come from opening their holdings to farming, logging and mining. He has dismissed reservations as an impediment to agribusiness, one of his top supporters. “If I become president, there won’t be one square centimetre of land designated for indigenous reservations,” he said at a 2017 campaign stop in the farm state of Mato Grosso.
“His campaign speeches ... became a license to invade indigenous lands,” said Ivaneide Bandeira, head of the ethno-environmental defence NGO Kanindé.
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