By IPS Correspondents
SAO PAULO, Jan 28 2004 (IPS)

Protests by large landowners and a state government against the demarcation of a reserve in Brazil’s Amazon region is pushing the “indigenous question” to the top of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s agenda.

The Raposa-Serra do Sol reserve, in the northern state of Roraima, bordering Venezuela and Guyana, already exists in fact, but needs the president’s signature to become official.

For the past three decades, some 15,000 Indians – of the Ingarikó, Macuxi, Patamona, Tuarepang and Wapichana communities – have been demanding rights over an area of 1.6 million hectares.

Large landowners and the government of Roraima oppose the delineation of the reserve, arguing that there is a great deal of agricultural activity in the area and that the municipality of Uiramutã would have to be dismantled.

Uiramutã was founded in 1995 within the boundaries of the reserve, despite the fact the these limits had been defined two years earlier by the government’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) and published in the “Jornal Oficial”, the official government register.

The document that Lula is to sign would only confirm the demarcation of the lands as already completed, and would regulate the borders previously established by the government itself.

This presidential administrative act is to take place before month’s end, announced Marcio Thomaz Bastos, minister of Justice. The news has served to placate the aboriginal groups and the Indigenous Council of Roraima, but the month is almost up, and Lula is abroad, visiting India.

The situation of calm on and around the reserve is only tentative as long as there is no definitive accord on the fate of the area.

The Indians and the organisations that defend them have been the target of violence, in a context in which the political and economic interests of large landowners, local governments and non-governmental organisations are all part of the mix.

In the past few years, 12 Indians have been assassinated inside the borders of Raposa-Serra do Sol. According to Manuel Tavares, acting FUNAI administrator in the region, the most recent indigenous victim, was found in January 2003 “100 metres from the main house of a ‘fazenda’ (large farm).”

In early January of this year, three missionaries were kidnapped. They have been released, but the crime has not been resolved.

According to Francisco Loebens, regional coordinator of the Catholic Church-affiliated Indigenist Missionary Council in the northwest (CIMI Norte I), the government cannot legally back away from the agreement, nor can it alter the established borders of the reserve.

The Lula government can only wait for what might be a more opportune moment to sign the law, he said.

“We think the government has already passed the deadline, that this has been delayed too long. The only way to bring peace to Roraima is to act with transparency and not create false expectations among those involved,” said Loebens.

Loebens said that justice authorities have not acted in response to the creation of the town of Uiramutã, and that the indigenous lands – even if they are property of the state – are for the exclusive use of the Indians.

“How is it possible that a municipality, its offices, its mayor, can be set up inside an indigenous reserve?” he wondered aloud.

But some argue that if the town’s residents are expelled from the reserve, the Indians would be left without basic goods, which are currently sold in shops operated there by non-Indians.

However, indigenous leaders say they are building a warehouse to ensure they are supplied with the things they need, says Jacir José de Souza, coordinator of the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR).

According to De Souza, who is a Macuxi, the storage space was to be finished by the end of January and will supply an Indian-owned canteen that already exists there.

The indigenous communities have their own plans for the region’s development. Together they have 27,000 head of cattle, as well as pigs, chickens and horses.

“We work hard on our manioc, banana, rice and bean farms, and we sell our products in Boa Vista,” the capital of Roraima, said the CIR coordinator.

Loebens noted that farming activity was introduced in Roraima by the large landowners, and that its continuation by the Indians forms part of the struggle to recoup their ancestral territory.

The Indians have long worked as cheap labour for the “whites”, and gradually lost their right to hunt and fish on their own land. “Around 35 years ago they began to rebel against this abuse,” said FUNAI official Tavares.

While the native groups wait for the government to make good on minister Bastos’ promise, Brazilian military officials have told the press that it is dangerous to lose sovereignty over an Amazon territory that borders other countries.

“Roraima is becoming impossible to control. They will end up without the presence of any government entity in the entire northern area, and that is unacceptable,” Gen. Alcedir Pereira, former commander for Amazonia, told ‘O Estado de São Paulo’ newspaper.

Pereira says the reserve should be established, but should not encompass certain “strategic areas”.

Márcio Santilli, board member of the Instituto Socioambiental (ISO), an NGO specialising in sustainable development and environment, said the military’s concern is unfounded.

“In Brazil’s border regions there are at least a hundred indigenous reserves, and it does not pose a legal problem,” he said, because the federal police and the armed forces are present in most of them.

Santilli argues that it is the lack of demarcation that foments land takeovers and conflicts. He said the lands of Raposa-Serra do Sol are part of Brazil “thanks to the loyalty of the ‘tuxauas’, the Indian chiefs, to the Brazilian state.”

Joaquim Nabuco, Brazil’s lead negotiator in the border talks with Guyana, mentions this fact in the book “O direito do Brasil” (law of Brazil).

“The Indians assured the country’s sovereignty over that area. The best guarantee that Brazil can have for its borders is to maintain good relations with the Indians who live there,” said Santilli.

Roraima is just one of several points of conflict in what is known as “Amazonia Legal”, an area defined for the purposes of economic planning. It covers several of Brazil’s northern states, the central-western Mato Grosso, and part of Maranhão, in the northeast.

Amazonia Legal has an area of more than five million square kilometres, and is home to around 60 percent of Brazil’s 370,000 Indians.

(* With reporting by Ana Maria Fiori, Agencia Envolverde.)

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