On the 1 January 2019, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil by 57.8 million votes. His campaign was laden with racist anti-Indigenous rhetoric and promises to strip land from Indigenous communities in order to access their wealth of resources in gold, timber, and clearances for agricultural land. He has been quoted as saying “this unilateral policy of demarcating indigenous land by the Executive will cease to exist. Any reserve that I can reduce in size, I will do so. It will be a very big fight that we’re going to have with the UN”.

There are 896,917 576 Indigenous people in Brazil across 576 territories, covering over 117 million hectares of land. These peoples are protected under the Brazilian Constitution and domestic law, as well as international legislation such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the International Labour Organisation Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). Crucially, under this legislation, the Indigenous peoples of Brazil are entitled to possession of their lands, and their resources cannot be exploited without their prior consent and the necessary compensation and shares in profit. This means that the actions of the Bolsonaro administration from 2019 onwards have been in violation of these rights.

THE ACTIONS OF THE BOLSONARO ADMINISTRATION

In February 2020, Bolsonaro proposed a bill to the legislature which would allow previously illegal mining and the construction of hydroelectric dams on Indigenous lands. This illegal mining has led to large amounts of violence towards the Indigenous peoples who try to defend their lands, including murders and destruction of property, with 10% of the Amazon’s deforestation resulting from mining. Since Bolsonaro became president, illegal miners, loggers, and ranchers have become more and more emboldened, leading to an increase in this violence and mass deforestation, with the year 2020 holding the record high for land conflicts since records began in 1985.

In addition to this, Bolsonaro has transferred the authority of demarcation of Indigenous territories from FUNAI (the government agency for Indigenous affairs) to the Ministry of Agriculture, and made a series of highly controversial appointments, including the former agribusiness lobby chief as his agriculture minister and an on-the-record anti-environmentalist as his environment minister; as well as putting military personnel into key positions of power despite having no prior political experience. Having his allies and those with a bias towards the agricultural lobby in charge of decisions relating to Indigenous peoples and the environment have allowed Bolsonaro to carry out his agenda without having to face opposition from within government.

To make matters worse, this has come at a time of great global difficulty with the Covid-19 pandemic affecting people everywhere, but especially the Indigenous population of Brazil. This is because Bolsonaro at first refused to acknowledge the virus at all, and later began to use it as a means to an end in terms of Indigenous land acquisition. The Bolsonaro government has been responsible for the firing of law enforcement agents who have tried to protect Indigenous territories from being affected by the virus and have refused to offer additional help in the state of Amazonas. Environment Minister Ricardo Salles was even reported as saying they should use the distraction of the pandemic to push forward on their anti-Indigenous agenda.

THE FUTURE

The present moment is bleak for the Indigenous population of Brazil, with the actions of Bolsonaro leading to deliberately started forest-fires, targeted attacks on indigenous villages and the murders of indigenous activists. One of these activists, Tainaky Tenetehar, who was wounded by loggers while protecting his land, told Survival International “the President has made it clear that he won’t protect even one more millimetre of indigenous land. They want to kill us all and take our land”. 

However, Bolsonaro has been becoming increasingly unpopular due to his handling of the pandemic, and a recent poll by the Atlas Institute shows that 61% of the population would describe his administration’s record as being bad, compared to 21%  when he first took office. Next October the people of Brazil will head to the polls to decide who the next President will be. Former left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is currently leading the polls by nine points, and with protests occurring frequently up and down the country there is hope that these gross violations of rights will finally stop.

Laura recently completed my master’s in Human Rights and Environmental Law at Lancaster University and is currently trying to break into the human rights sector. She also has a bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Conservation, and is passionate about both human rights and environmental protection with a particular interest in the cross-section between the two.

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