RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Thursday(26) that a favorable decision by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) granting the “ancestral” right to land defended by native peoples “would put an end” to the country’s agribusiness, one of the world’s largest.
“If the past understanding changes, immediately, we are going to have to demarcate [create boundaries] by order of the Judiciary another area equivalent to the Southeast region as indigenous land and, then, agribusiness ended,” Bolsonaro has told his supporters during his departure from the Alvorada Palace, his presidential residence in Brasilia.
“People say that the land is theirs (the Indians), but they already own 14% of the territory, and we will be demarcating another 14% equivalent to that,” stressed the conservative head of state.
“Many of the European countries criticize us for the environmental policy. Unfortunately, we have fire and deforestation, but we have more than 60% preserved, and they don’t even have 10%. Foreigners want to buy these lands,” he said.
A few thousand Indians have been concentrated since last weekend in front of the Brazilian Supreme Court building, waiting for a trial to begin Thursday, which should decide on this claimed right.
“The Indians want to produce and do not want any more favors from the State, but many of them are ‘poor people’ who do not know against whom and why they are protesting,” said the president.
What is in question is a thesis known as “time frame”, under which indigenous peoples can only claim as exclusively their own the lands they actually occupied on October 5, 1988, when the current Brazilian Constitution was promulgated.
However, the indigenous movements maintain that this thesis puts an end to “ancestral rights” and favors the legalization of areas illegally occupied by landowners before that date.
The matter reached the Supreme Court through a lawsuit filed by the state-owned National Indian Foundation (Funai) against a decision in 2013 by an appelate court that recognized a government agency of the southern state of Santa Catarina as the owner of former lands of the Xokleng, Guarani, and Kaingang ethnic groups.