Brazilian Church’s report shows that Indigenous deteriorated with Lula

SÃO PAULO – Although President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil promised during the presidential campaign in 2022 to change the anti-Indigenous policies adopted by former President Jair Bolsonaro, not much has been done.

The figures of violence against native groups during his tenure’s first year, released on July 22 by the Bishops’ Conference’s Indigenous Missionary Council (known as CIMI), showed little has changed in 2023.

As a matter of fact, the number of killings of Indigenous people last year, 208, was considerably higher than that of Bolsonaro’s administration’s last year in 2022, which was 180. The number of conflicts over land rights has remained mostly unchanged – 158 in 2022 and 150 in 2023 – while the number of Indigenous territories invaded fell from 309 in 2022 to 276 in 2023.

The overall lack of assistance to native peoples in Brazil, expressed in figures like the number of deaths of toddlers, continued to be alarming in 2023. At least 1,040 Indigenous children with ages ranging between 0 and 4 died last year. According to CIMI, 670 of such deaths could have been avoided. In 2022, there were 835 deaths, with 356 deemed avoidable.

During the first year of Lula’s third administration (he had ruled Brazil between 2003-2010), the number of deaths of Indigenous people caused by lack of healthcare attention grew from 76 in 2022 to 111 in 2023. While 115 Indigenous persons committed suicide in 2022, 180 killed themselves in 2023.

The deterioration of the living conditions of native groups in Brazil contrasts with all the hope generated by some of Lula’s first gestures as the new president last year, like the establishment of a taskforce to assist the Yanomami people in the Amazon, who were undergoing a terrible humanitarian crisis in January of 2023.

About 20,000 illegal miners had been operating in the Yanomami territory during the Bolsonaro years (2019-2022), leading to a great environmental crisis. The pits produced by their heavy machinery concentrated stormwaters and created the perfect environment for the breeding of malaria mosquitoes, causing a serious epidemic in the region.

Their activities led to the pollution of the rivers and lands with heavy metals. The miners also impeded the villagers from getting to their planting areas and acted violently towards them. Rapes and killings were common.

Lula deployed the army to the Yanomami territory on the first days of his administration in order to expel the intruders. Federal policemen increased their raids against miners in the area, as well as agents of the environmental agency. Medical professionals took care of the most hurt patients.

Despite all such efforts, the year ended without a solution for the crisis, and thousands of miners remain in the Yanomami land.

“To make things even worse, while the government prioritized the Yanomami territory and a few other areas in the Amazon, it left all the rest of the Indigenous lands in the country mostly unprotected,” said Roberto Liebgott, a CIMI coordinator and one of the authors of the report.

In regions like Mato Grosso do Sul state and the southern part of Bahia, bloody land disputes have been causing dozens of deaths of Indigenous activists. Local landowners and land invaders formed militia groups with the participation of policemen and attacks on villages by armed men became common.

In the opinion of CIMI’s analysts, much of such violence could be avoided if the government speeds up the process of land granting to Indigenous groups, making their territories officially recognized and thus less vulnerable to disputes. But that hasn’t been the way Lula’s administration decided to deal with such matters, Liebgott said.

“The government pretended it would prioritize the Indigenous demands, but opted to postpone real solutions to land disputes. It preferred to negotiate with the big landowners’ representatives in Congress and to apply light palliative measures to compensate the Indigenous peoples for the loss of their rights,” he explained.

Even the necessary monitoring operations have been left aside, leading the invasions to Indigenous territories to grow. That’s why violence increased in 2023 and will probably keep growing in 2024, Liebgott said.

The strength of the agribusiness segment in Congress led to the approval of a bill last year containing the so-called milestone thesis, a legal formulation that establishes that only Indigenous peoples who were effectively occupying their traditional territories in 1988 – when the current Constitution was promulgated – can now be officially granted such lands by the government.

The milestone thesis was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2023, but the Congress insisted on it and passed that bill. Now, the Supreme Court has to look at it again and declare its unconstitutionality again. Even if it doesn’t happen, the milestone thesis has been disturbing the Indigenous land grant program.

According to Liebgott, the government has been using it as an additional excuse in order to avoid proceeding with the demarcation of new Indigenous reservations – and thus it avoids conflicts with the Congress.

The consequences of all such measures involve not only direct violence, but also a general lack of quality of life provoked by state neglect.

Luiz Salvador, a leader of the Kaingang people in Rio Grande do Sul state, has been struggling for months to ensure that his group will receive the necessary incentives from the government to expand food production.

Vast areas in his state have been devastated since April after heavy rains. While his group lives in an already demarcated reservation, many other Kaingang have been camped for years by roads and rivers all over Rio Grande do Sul and demand their lands to be recognized.

“We went to Brasilia weeks ago in order to demand the government to invest in our family farming production. Only with the necessary support we’ll be able to grow our food,” Salvador told Crux.

To a great extent, the government’s way of dealing with Indigenous peoples is to distribute food kits among villagers every now and then. Leaders like Salvador are now tired of such policies.

“We have the knowledge and the disposition to plant crops. We only need the equipment to do so, something that is difficult for us to get through the customary ways. Banks don’t give us credit, for instance. That’s why we need the government to listen to us,” Salvador said.