Brazil: The Legal Battle Over Indigenous Rights
Schwartzman, Stephan & Araújo, Ana Valéria & Pankararú, Paulo
At the height of Brazil's "economic miracle" in the late 1960s, a road project designed by the military government cut through the forest of the Panari indigenous people in the heart of...
...This January, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso revised the rules for indigenous-land demarcation, ostensibly to protect due process of law for nonindigenous claimants...
...The new Constitution further stipulated that the Federal Attorney General's Office defend the interests of indigenous peoples in court, and that the indigenous groups could take legal action themselves...
...The military planners' mandate was to rationally order the development of the interior...
...The isolated Cano6 and Mequens peoples in Corumbiara in the Amazonian state of Rond6nia are a case in point...
...In 1994, the government, in response to a lawsuit brought by the community, began the process of legal recognition (or "demarcation") of the Panard's 1,210,790-acre territory in northern Mato Grosso and southern Pard states...
...The outcome will depend on a number of factors: FUNAI's ability to respond to legal challenges by private claimants of indigenous lands...
...The attack on indigenous rights was ultimately unsuccessful in curtailing indigenous land rights...
...In any event, it will be difficult for the Brazilian government to sustain before national and international public opinion that the country's indigenous people must bear the cost of government negligence...
...The Guarani, accompanied by federal police and former FUNAI president Claudio Romero, removed the ranch employees and the hired gunmen...
...In the past, the Guarani occupied an immense territory in what is now Brazil's industrialized eastern coastal and southern regions...
...Ana Val/ria Araujo and Paulo Pankararu are attorneys at the Instituto Socioambiental in Brasilia...
...Many unregistered areas could become mired in complex and expensive legal proceedings for financial compensation, sparking a veritable "indemnification industry...
...This, in the aggregate, is the dilemma of Brazil's indigenous peoples: they are 0.2% of the national population, living in 546 areas, speaking 170 languages, and with legal rights to about 11% of the national territory, much of which is rich in natural resources.' Nearly 99% of indigenous land in Brazil is in the Amazon, occupying more than 18% of the region, but little more than half of the indigenous population lives there...
...amazoncoal@igc.apc.org The Amazon Coalition, created in 1994, unites over 80 organizations in support of indigenous peoples and other traditional peoples' organiza- tions in the Amazon Basin...
...Indigenous land rights are being hotly contested in Brazil today...
...Complex legal battles raged until March, 1994, when the Supreme Court upheld the Guarani's right to occupy the area...
...Today, they live in miniscule, crowded reserves...
...The right-ranchers, agribusiness, mining interests, and their political allies-is likewise far from admitting that demarcation has advanced, and that the total area of indigenous land in Brazil is a known quantity with a marginal area of uncertainty...
...Two days later, however, Marcelo dos Santos, a government agent for the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), contacted 11 survivors of two Cano6 and Mequens villages...
...Likewise, gold mining soared, with increasing shares coming from indigenous land...
...Hence, they saw a need both to remove indigenous groups from the path of progress, and to contain them in specified territories so that they not impede development...
...They argue that since the innovative 1988 Constitution nullifies private titles on indigenous lands, large landholders and ranchers have attacked and struck down government demarcation procedures in order to protect their illegal properties...
...Anti-indigenous interests have historically done well lobbying privately and out of the light of public scrutiny...
...Brazil: The Legal Battle over Indigenous Land Rights 1. Centro Ecumenico de Documenta(ao e Informayao and Projeto Estudo sobre Terras Indigenas no Brasil - Museu Nacional/UFRJ, Terras Indigenas no Brasil (Sao Paulo: CEDI, 1990...
...If the indigenous groups were not yet assimilated, they soon would be according to the principle of the natural and ineluctable "acculturation" or disappearance of indigenous people...
...Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 41 Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 41REPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS that "considerable expanses of already legalized indigenous land would be reviewed...
...Sattin Agropecudria e Im6veis suspended its case for the annullment of the Sete Cerros area...
...Regional elites expect Decree 1775 to reduce indigenous land...
...environmental groups that targeted the multilateral development banks as key leverage points in the development process quickly put indigenous rights high on their agenda in the 1980s...
...The 79 demoralized survivors were transferred to the Xingu Indigenous Park, 120 miles away...
...President Cardoso, while broadly defending indigenous land rights, has said little on the issue, usually deferring to Jobim...
...The FUNAI headquarters in Brasilia became the scene of repeated, often public conflicts over indigenous lands in all parts of the country...
...For the large majority of indigenous peoples in Brazil, however, the situation is different...
...212-925-7743 (fax) The Amanaka'a Amazon Network, founded in 1990, supports indigenous and forest peoples' organizations in Brazil through international cam- paigns such as Amazon Week...
...More than half of the indigenous land in Brazil-including demarcated areas ratified by the president but not yet registered-may be subject to reduction...
...The mining process has destroyed rive no demarcated indige- barren desert...
...If the Supreme Court were to find Decree 22 unconstitutional in the Sete Cerros case, then all the areas demarcated under it could be challenged, undoing the legal recognition they had attained...
...Lawyers for landed interests will argue that the indigenous areas were created under rules that the use of mercury in the gold- rs and turned rainforest into government has admitted were unconstitutional...
...In the high-profile Yanomami area, successive police removal operations have reduced the number of miners in the area from perhaps 45,000 in 1987 to a few thousand today...
...Box 4484 Rollingbay, Washington 98061-0484 or call 800-400-2233 2. See John Hemming, Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (Southhampton: The Camelot Press, 1978...
...From that point on, the national media took an increasingly anti-indigenous bent...
...There are a further 261 areas that have some level of legal recognition, covering an additional 114 million acres...
...5 Thus, private property owners, as a group, had an interest in demarcation although as individuals they often did not...
...Legal demarcation, however, is only a first step...
...Instituto Socioambiental, Situacao Juridico - Administrativo da Terras Indigenas no Brasil, Banco de Dados do Instituto Socioambiental, Sao Paulo, November 12, 1995...
...There are 80 areas in which the Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 39 Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 39REPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS demarcation process has not yet started...
...During the 1970s and 1980s, local conflicts over indigenous lands shifted to the national and international arenas...
...Indigenous lands in Brazil, 30 years ago little more than a void on the map, are now a known quantity...
...Indigenous lands will only be reduced if it can be proven that they are not "lands traditionally occupied by Indians" as defined in the Constitution of 1988...
...But on the whole, legal advances have translated unevenly into concrete protection...
...The court ruled that the demarcation of the area was illegal, since it violated the rights of the holders of registered land titles...
...2 The new diseases brought by the Portuguese were devastating, and warfare and enslavement took an enormous toll...
...On January 8, 1996, the government published Decree 1775, its revision of Decree 22...
...In late 1995, Cardoso did, however, appoint former Congressman MArcio Santilli as president of FUNAI...
...the encirclement of indigenous land with national forests to smooth the way for logging and mining concessions...
...Brazil's indigenous movement was also increasingly able to mobilize international support among human rights and environmental organizations...
...Private land titles on indigenous lands are therefore nullified in the text...
...He announced that he intended to give private landholders, states and counties a fixed period of 90 days after the identification of an area to submit documentation of their claims...
...Before, small indigenous communities in isolated regions stood little chance in on-the-ground conflicts with local elites...
...The real battle, on the legal level, may well be over the meaning of this phrase...
...Expropriation of indigenous land, dislocation of indigenous populations and, in some cases, genocide continue today...
...Indigenous organizations have called for an international campaign for the revocation of Decree 1775...
...As of the end of January, two challenges to indigenous areas have been filed with FUNAI, but the full count could be much greater...
...In the worst-case scenario, the new decree could open a juridical Pandora's box that the executive would not be able to control even if it were so inclined...
...The process of reduction of the indigenous societies proceeded over centuries, following frontiers that accompanied various commodity booms: from dye-wood (or pau-brasil, origin of the name "Brazil") in the sixteenth century, to gold, precious stones, sugar and cattle in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indigenous organizations fear that ranchers and mining interests will interpret the recent revision of land-demarcation rules as open season on indigenous land...
...The judicial winds began to shift, however, in lawsuits involving land in the south and northeast, brought by landholders who in some cases could show regular land titles dating back to the beginning of the century...
...All the currently unrecognized land is probably no more than one-tenth the size of the area that already has some level of recognition...
...Two-thirds of the original territory was thrown open to mineral exploitation by garimpeiros (wildcat miners...
...The demarcation process remained paralyzed for most of the first year of his administration...
...Purchased from cooperatives for a fair price, the beans are roasted to perfection on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound...
...After 1988, the federal courts, particularly in Brasflia, garnered a reputation for impartiality, overturning for example the fragmentation of the Yanomami reserves...
...While indigenous rights was a peripheral issue for many on the national level, it fit into the framework of democratization and opposition to authoritarian rule...
...At the height of Brazil's "economic miracle" in the late 1960s, a road project designed by the military government cut through the forest of the Panari indigenous people in the heart of the Amazon...
...The new Constitution paved the way for both the dismantlement of the Calha Norte project, and significant advances in indigenous-land demarcation...
...While the military government created new administrative means for legally defining indigenous areas, this occurred hand-in-hand with devastating incursions of white settlers into territory previously populated largely by indigenous peoples...
...The military's influence, however, waned with democratization...
...By successfully establishing alliances with both progressive sectors of Brazilian society and international activists, indigenous peoples-particularly those in the Amazon-had a stronger hand...
...By 1994, enemies of the indigenous peoples could call the 23.5 million acre Yanomami territory or the 12.4 million acre Mekragnoti Kayap6 area "latifundia," and find echo in the national media...
...All income from purchases is returned to Ometepe for critically needed public health, education and water projects...
...What indigenous-rights advocates find inadmissible is that only areas registered in the land office will be exempt from challenge...
...It is a necessary, but ultimately insufficient condition for the actual protection of indigenous lands...
...The Calha Norte project was the culmination of a series of attempts by nationalists and the right since the late 1970s to solve the indigenous problem by legislating indigenous groups out of existence...
...Between 1987 and 1990, under the Calha Norte apparatus, the Yanomami's 23.5 million acre Amazonian territory was reduced by 70% and subdivided into 19 islands...
...For the great majority of indigenous peoples, securing legal rights to their lands is the most pressing issue...
...Over two-thirds of the small community of 350 died, almost overnight, from the new diseases the whites brought...
...15 (Sao Paulo: CEDI, 1984 ). 6. Constitution of the Republic of Brazil, 1988, Chapter VIll, Article 231...
...1, Year 1 (November, 1994...
...8 On-the-ground struggles typically continue after demarcation...
...When FUNAI was created in 1967 as the government agency responsible for indigenous peoples and land, it became a magnet for local land disputes on the development frontiers of the Amazon...
...This was both a blessing and a curse...
...Indigenous-rights advocates also argue that the revision will legitimize the expropriation of indigenous lands under the pretext of due process...
...After personal contacts with Jobim, the company's lawyer declared that steps underway in the Ministry of Justice would meet his client's objectives...
...After all, 341 areas still await demarcation or completion of the demarcation process, in spite of the constitutional mandate to complete the process by 1993...
...Demarcation consists of the identification of an area by FUNAI, the establishment of the area's boundaries through a decree signed by the justice minister, physical demarcation, ratification by the president, and registration in the land office...
...Land is the subsistence base of indigenous groups, whether they are hunters and horticulturalists in the Amazon or small farmers in the northeast...
...It is also what most unites Brazil's 206 indigenous societies, faced everywhere by outside interests that would exploit, restrict or occupy their territory...
...The plan had the following guiding principles: the reduction of large continuous indigenous areas...
...and the rubber boom of the nineteenth century...
...In that vast and sparsely settled region, land-tenure relations were vague and conflictual...
...Santilli has considerable credentials as a supporter of indigenous rights: he was a founder of the Nucleus for Indigenous Rights, and executive secretary of the Instituto Socioambiental...
...In 1978, the first national indigenous organization, the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI), was established...
...The demarcation process is in fact closer to completion than critics on either the left or the right typically concede, for opposing reasons...
...direct opponents of indigenous rights had in their corner only the ultranationalist wing of the military, which sees the occupation of the Amazon as a national-security priority...
...Amanaka'a Amazon Network, 584 Broadway #904, New York, NY 10012...
...With the support of President Jos6 Sarney, the Brazilian army formulated the Projeto Calha Norte (North Tributaries Project, referring to the northern affluents of the Amazon) in 1987...
...Having achieved its goal, the broad pro-democracy movement that had supported indigenous rights dispersed...
...isadf@ax.apc.org The Instituto Socioambiental, formed in 1995 from the merger of the indigenous-peoples pro- gram of the Ecumenical Center for Docu- mentation and Information and the Nucleus for Indigenous Rights, was founded to propose inte- grated solutions to social and environmental problems...
...7. Ana Valeria Araujo, A Defesa dos Direitos Indigenas no Judiciario: Acoes Propostas pelo Nucleo de Direitos Indigenas (Sao Paulo: Institute Socioambiental, 1995...
...6 By "original rights," the framers of the Constitution meant that indigenous peoples were the original owners of the land, and hence that their rights precede any administrative act of government...
...When Brazil's first indigenous agency, the Indian Protection Service (SPI), closed in 1967 amidst a massive corruption scandal, probably not more than 10% of this land, at a generous estimate, was acknowledged...
...The Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Islands Association is a volunteer, tax-exempt organization...
...At the national level, arena...
...Some 2,000 Guarani occupied the 22,230 acre Sete Cerros area in thme soumnern state of Mato Grosso do Sul until the mid1970s, when ranchers from Sattin S/A Agropecuiria e Im6veis violently drove mem out The demarcation of the region...
...NW, #1016, Washington, DC 20009...
...Decree 1775 will force the opponents of indigenous areas to produce their evidence and publicly state their case within strict time limits...
...36REPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS An Indigenous Council of Roraima poster supporting Decree 22, which established the original land-demarcation procedure...
...In the densely populated south, east and northeast of the country, almost half the indigenous population lives on less than 2% of the indigenous land...
...Indigenous mobilizations were also supported by the emerging indigenous-rights movement...
...Not to make these changes, argued Jobim, would court disaster...
...Yet indigenous mobilization at the national level met with serious opposition from nationalist sectors of the military, mining interests, and Amazonian regional elites...
...Amazon Coalition, 1511 K St., Suite 627, Washington, DC 20005...
...1-lb vacuum bag $9.75 (Postpaid USA) Wholesale & volume discounts available Order from BOSIA, P.O...
...7 Today 205 indigenous areas, covering over 106 million acres of indigenous land, are registered in regional land offices and/or in the Service of the Patrimony of the Union (SPU...
...the government's willingness and capacity to staunch a potential wave of invasions of indigenous lands...
...For the first time, indigenous rights assumed a permanent character...
...It is unlikely that a single act of government can reverse these larger processes...
...The prospects for indigenous peoples, however, may not be as bleak as they seem...
...The UNI campaign prevailed against the sustained efforts of the military-intelligence community and mining interests in particular to ensure that the Constitution contained grounds for restrictions on indigenous rights and reductions in indigenous territory...
...By creatively framing indigenousrights concerns in terms of opposition to predatory forms of development-the real area of mutual interest among indigenous peoples and environmentalistsindigenous leaders such as Ailton Krenak, Paulo Paiakan and Davi Yanomami were able to attract a significant international constituency...
...The indigenous cause in the late 1980s was symbolically prominent and enjoyed wide support, in part stimulated by international press coverage...
...The shift in the locus of conflict from the local to the national level had its clearest expression in the Constituent Assembly of the mid-1980s, culminating in the passage of the indigenous-peoples chapter of the 1988 Constitution...
...The Supreme Court, divided over the issues, put off making a decision...
...No Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 37REPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS market can function in the absence of secure property rights, so clarifying land tenure was a precondition for market development...
...Indigenous leaders, especially in the south or close to regional urban centers, found support among student groups, unions, the Church and intellectuals involved in the broad popular mobilization in favor of democratization that took off in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
...3 Today, there are 270,000...
...4 Long before any kind of economic advantage could be demonstrated for doing so, the military conceived and executed infrastructure projects of geopolitical import-roads, dams and hydroelectrics...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 4 o 0 0 0-REPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS restrictions on demarcations within 62 miles of national borders...
...The issues, however, were no longer democracy and civil rights, but "governability," efficiency and economic stabilization...
...Paradoxically, indigenous land rights took specific shape only following the military-inspired expansion into the interior, initiated in the 1940s and 1950s but taking full force in the 1960s and 1970s...
...Although the Amazon is overrepresented in the Congress-the result of a maneuver during the dictatorsnlp to assure sup- The struggle port for the military in the national parliament-the over indigenous region still has only about land has shifted 10% of the national popu- lation and accounts for from the local less than that in the Gross to the national Domestic Product (GDP...
...steves@edf.org The EDF International Program tries to influence the policies and programs of multilateral financial organizations, and has, since 1985, worked with grassroots groups and NGOs in Brazil on indige- nous rights and environmental issues...
...In other words, this land has full legal recognition, with documentation equivalent to that of any legitimate piece of private property...
...The Sete Cerros legal case, involving the Guarani, Brazil's largest indigenous group, has become the fulcrum of the national debate on these issues...
...The current struggle over land is the result, and in some ways a recapitulation, of a long history...
...Estimates of Brazil's indigenous population prior to 1500 vary from between two and five million to as many as 20 million...
...If indigenous people could be redefined as "acculturated," then the obligations of the state towards them would cease or be restricted...
...Identification, the first step of the demarcation process, consists of mapping and anthropological surveys to determine the boundaries of an area...
...The Brazilian Forum in Defense of Indigenous Rights, an umbrella organization of indigenous and indigenous-rights groups, has called for the revocation of the new rules for demarcation, Decree 1775...
...All indigenous lands not registered in land offices (the final step in the demarcation process in the Minister's understanding) would be subject to possible revision as well...
...Such a revision should make the process more transparent...
...Today, the Panard have a village, an airstrip and gardens in their tropical forest land...
...The overwhelming majority of Brazil's indigenous land has been so classified since that time...
...5. Alfedro Wagner B. de Almeida, "As Areas Indigenas e o Mercado das Terras, Povos Indigenas no Brasil," Aconteceu Especial, Vol...
...The government would then have 90 days to respond...
...The new decree could even bring about precisely what it was intended to prevent: states, counties and private claimants in the areas already registered could deluge the courts with suits calling for the annulment or reduction of indigenous areas...
...As a private lawyer and congressional representative (from the catch-all Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), Jobim had previously argued that Decree 22 was unconstitutional...
...The logging operations typically continued, however, as companies cut local deals with indigenous leaders, or engaged in outright theft...
...Definition of indigenous land rights was also, in one sense, in the interest of those with private land claims in the Amazon...
...A broad range of factors brought about recognition of indigenous land rights in Brazil: indigenous population growth, stronger indigenous and indigenous-rights organizations, national and international alliances, and the local resistance of thousands of indigenous people...
...process remained Only in the 1980s did the federal government frozen during take steps to recognize the Guaranf's territorial most of President rights...
...has wide public support...
...nous land will be reduced (although contestants may be indemnified if their claims are found to be legitimate), this is not the message that the national and regional media are sending out...
...The effect, however, has been to give greater voice to the landed interests that have successfully blocked demarcations or illegally occupied indigenous lands in the past...
...The onthe-ground struggles of groups such as the Guaranf of Sete Cerros and the Panard will no doubt affect the outcome in the courts...
...For democratic activists, distant conflicts over indigenous land and disastrous contacts between white settlers and isolated indigenous groups like the Panard figured as the "other side" of the military development model...
...Indigenous organizations fear that miners, loggers, ranchers and farmers across Brazil will interpret the revision as open season on indigenous land, leading to violent conflicts...
...While the majority of these isolated communities are in indigenous or other protected areas, many of them could meet the same fate as the Cano6 and Mequens peoples...
...Despite government assertions to the contrary, indigenous organizationsand private landowners-expect the revision to roll back the demarcation process...
...Between 1990 and 1995, the area of indigenous land with complete legal documentation increased more than fourfold...
...and the division of indigenous peoples into "forest dwellers" (silvicolas) and "acculturated Indians'," with different land rights applying to each category...
...Indigenous organizations and their allies suspect that the revision aims to legalize theft...
...The executive branch replaced the Congress as the force for change...
...CafW Oro de Ometepe Socially Responsible Premium Arabica Coffee from Nicaragua This medium-bodied low-acid coffee is grown organically on Lake Nicaragua's Ometepe Island...
...The strategy of Sattin's lawyers was to attack the government procedure for demarcation of indigenous land, called Decree 22/91, alleging that it violated due process of law...
...Legal experts think that registration is less important legally than presidental ratification...
...4. Ricardo Arnt and Stephan Schwartzman, Um Artificio Org~nico: Transicao na Amazonia e Ambientalismo (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1992...
...Justice Minister Nelson Jobim then proposed revising the decree...
...1992, the Sete Cerros community, represented by the Nucleus for Indigenous Rights (NDI), went to court to compel FUNAI to remove the ranch...
...Rather, the right insists that indigenous land could be anywhere, an argument known as the "Copacabana syndrome"--give the indigenous people this area, and next they'll want Copacabana beach...
...When Sattin Cardoso's first brought suit to halt the physical demarcation in year in office...
...FUNAI was in fact responsible for introducing logging to various indigenous areas in the mid-1980s in a series of contracts later overturned in federal court as harmful to indigenous interests...
...For example, over the same period that the majority of demarcations were carried out, mahogany and other hardwood logging in the Amazon increased more than fivefold...
...In 1990, the most systematic survey of indigenous lands and peoples in Brazil counted about 235,000 indigenous people...
...Environmental Defense Fund, 1875 Connecticut Ave...
...This is why exempting only registered areas from revision may prove a fatal error...
...The direct opponents of indigenous land demarcation-local ranchers, goldminers, and loggers-were remote from the political and -. economic center of gravity...
...The Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), the indigenous-rights organization of Brazil's Catholic Church, and the Ecumenical Center for Documentation and Education (CEDI), the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) to track indigenous issues, were both founded in the early 1970s...
...The Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI), backed by a coalition of the Catholic Church, NGOs, unions, professional organizations and proindigenous legislators, succeeded in negotiating a text containing strategic conceptual advances...
...There is evidence of some 53 still isolated groups in Brazil, probably small remnants of larger groups that have fled the settlement frontier for decades or centuries...
...John Hemming, Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians (London: McMillan, 1987) and Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State (New York: Urizen Books, 1977...
...8. Mdrcio Santilli, "Estado Punk," Parab6licas, No...
...Indigenous groups and their advocates won a series of decisions against illegal loggers and miners in indigenous areas in the Amazon...
...For issues such as the legal recognition of land rights which could be resolved through institutional means, the correlation of forces at the local level was inverted...
...The governor of Pard confidently predicted Support Organizations Instituto Socioambiental, SHIS QI 11 bloco K sala 65, 71625-500 Br6silia, DF, Brazil...
...At the moment, one can only speculate about the probable consequences of Decree 1775...
...These advances in the legal recognition of indigenous land rights, particularly in developed southern Brazil, have prompted a powerful backlash...
...Xavante, Kayap6, Pataxo, Guarani and numerous other indigenous groups won popular support by holding demonstrations and calling reporters to witness tense standoffs between government officials in business suits and club-wielding chiefs...
...Perhaps 80% of the recognized indigenous areas in Brazil suffers some form of invasion by loggers, miners, ranchers, small farmers and landless peasants, or is infringed upon by roads, dams, power lines and railroads...
...FUNAI is now identifying territory for the groups in the few remaining areas that have not been deforested by the half-dozen cattle ranches that occupy their lands...
...The left-loosely, the Catholic Church, NGOs, a few politicians, and more recently indigenous organizations-has understandably wanted to maintain pressure on the government and therefore emphasizes what has not been done...
...The Court's decision, however, was procedural, and lawsuits by both ranchers and the Guarani remained pending...
...There are also some isolated groups, most of which are probably very small, that live outside of areas slated for demarcation...
...All discussions of indigenous rights and lands in Brazil begin with the Portuguese colonization starting in 1500 and the demographic catastrophe it entailed...
...Last September, a consultant on indigenous issues to a US$167 million World Bank-financed "natural resource management" project in the state argued to government representatives in Brasilia that resources to support efforts to establish contact with indigenous groups should be cut off because there were no more isolated indigenous peoples in Rond6nia...
...After 1988, indigenous groups increasingly fought their battles over land in court, as well as on the ground...
...Few in Brazil oppose the principle of administrative revision of Decree 22, or of introducing the "right to contest...
...While Jobim and the President have repeatedly affirmed that Yanomami in northern Brazil...
...They argued that the legal process of demarcation was unconstitutional because it denied the ranchers the right to contest government action, a right guaranteed in the Constitution...
...Brazil's military was propelled by a strategic vision of the need to occupy the Amazon with Brazilians lest it be overrun by foreigners...
...The government is obligated to demarcate their lands, but the rights of indigenous peoples are neither created by government action, nor annulled by lack of it...
...Nearly 20 years later, a group of Panard returned to their traditional territory, only to find much of it destroyed by goldminers, ranchers and colonization projects...
...Over the last 30 years, indigenous peoples have become national political actors that have been able-albeit intermittently-to exercise significant clout...
...n recent years, the tide of public opinion has begun to turn against indigenous peoples...
...With a few notable exceptions, the Congress by 1994 had become a collection of regional, local and even individual patronage interests...
...and the ability of indigenous groups and their supporters in Brazil and abroad to exert effective pressure...
...The first indication of the new trend came in 1993, when the Superior Federal Appeals Court annulled an A0 NA4CLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS item of the demarcation of the Jacar6 de Sdo Domingos area of the Potiguara in Paraiba state in northeastern Brazil...
...Hence, according to this argument, groups like the Yanomami had no need of large, continuous areas...
...The demographic decline reached its nadir in the mid-1970s, and the indigenous population has increased since then...
...Over the last decade, ranchers in the region have probably killed most of the two groups, and have certainly destroyed gardens and deforested game habitat to make way for cattle pasture...
...The 1988 Congress was the major institutional force for change, completing the task of redemocratization and ending the military dictatorship...
...3. CEDI, Terras Indigenas no Brasil, and Instituto Socioambiental, Situagao Juridico...
...At the same time, gains in land demarcation since the passage of the 1988 Constitution have brought indigenous peoples on the national level into conflict with better-established interests than they had previously faced...
...While indigenous groups have more or less the same national allies, the indigenous-rights agenda no longer A Guarani woman and her child in their home in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul...
...During the Earth Summit in 1992, Brazil's largest newsweekly Veja ran a sensationalistic cover story on allegations of rape against Paiakan, an internationally lauded Kayap6 leader...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Stephan Schwartzman is an anthropologist at the Environmental Defense Fund...
...Thus, allowing challenges to areas ratified by the president may open registered areas as well to legal challenge...
...The new Constitution, rejecting the notion of natural assimilation, recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to "their social organization, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions, and the original rights to the lands they traditionally occupy, it being incumbent on the Union to demarcate them, to protect and ensure respect for their goods...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 5
