INDIGENOUS PEOPLES-BRAZIL: ”Lula frustrated our expectations”

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava* - Tierramérica

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 28 2005 (IPS) - At age 28, Jecinaldo Barbosa Cabral is leader of an association of Amazonian indigenous organisations, COIAB, the largest group of its kind in Brazil.

As a teacher, he defended and disseminated bilingual education, beginning in his own Sateré-Mawé community. He later created an educational movement, became president of the Indigenous Education Council of the northwestern state of Amazonas and finally the general coordinator of COIAB, which brings together 75 organisations representing 165 indigenous groups – more than 200,000 people, or around 60 percent of Brazil’s indigenous population.

The Sateré-Mawé stand out for their ”intercultural experience” in speaking Portuguese in addition to their own language, and also in the sustainable cultivation of guaraná (Paullinia cupana), an Amazon fruit that is used in making a soft drink consumed around the world.

Barbosa Cabral spoke with Tierramérica about the challenges that Brazil’s indigenous peoples face, especially access to land, at a time when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is dealing with ever-greater demands from peasant farmers to speed up agrarian reform.

Q: Why does COIAB support the Landless Workers Movement (MST – Movimento dos Sem Terra), who staged a march that arrived in Brasilia May 17 to demand agrarian reform?

A: The MST would not exist if Brazil’s problem of concentration of land and profits were being resolved. Part of the pressure on indigenous land stems from that injustice, being fought by organised rural landless workers. Agrarian reform can, undoubtedly, lead to a new regulation of territory that generates social justice and harmonious coexistence between peasant farmers and indigenous peoples, by democratising access to land.

A: In general Lula has frustrated our expectations. He has lacked the drive and political will to meet his commitments to the indigenous peoples, his electoral promises. That became evident in the demarcation of lands, the disjunction of actions on health, education and sustainability issues, among others, and the exclusion of the indigenous peoples from the process of drafting and implementing the ‘indigenist’ policy.

Q: How do you think the situation of Brazil’s indigenous communities – especially in the Amazon – will evolve over the next decade?

A: It will depend on the combination of several factors, among them the consolidation of the internal organisational process, reconciliation of traditional ways of life and the ways acquired in contact with the society that surrounds us, and the efficiency of the public policies that seek to regularise the registry of indigenous lands, and the actions aimed at our communities in terms of economic sustainability, health, education, and revitalisation of our identity and cultures.

All of this will mean strengthening the leading role of indigenous peoples as political subjects who demand and receive the right to autonomy, in the institutional context defined in accordance with the Brazilian state.

Q: What goals does COIAB have for the near future?

A: We want to consolidate COIAB politically and institutionally to respond to the demands of its grassroots, in confronting the external pressures of the globalised world and the closing in of political and economic forces on indigenous territories and their natural resources.

Q: Do you think that all indigenous lands will be demarcated within the next 10 years?

A: We will fight for that. It is an objective that depends on the progress of the indigenous movement. We don’t want demarcation on paper only, but we want the lands to be free of invasions and for sustainable projects to be developed on them. Then, yes, we will be able to speak of territorial guarantees.

Q: Who are the ”enemies” and who are the ”allies” in achieving those goals?

A: The hegemonic sectors will continue to oppose us, because they consider indigenous communities as a sign of backwardness, primitivism and economic nonviability, an anachronistic culture that should be assimilated, that is, extinguished, for the sake of national unity. They are groups that see the demarcation of indigenous lands and our organisation as threats to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, forgetting that it was the indigenous peoples who ensured the protection of the borders and of the immense reserves of Brazil’s natural wealth and biodiversity.

Allies are those who reinforce our organisational progress, strengthening the indigenous role and the creation of decent conditions for the physical and cultural continuity of our peoples.

Q: What coordination can there be between the indigenous movement and environmentalists?

A: It will be fruitful coordination if there is a convergence of expectations, especially with the sectors that support proposals of the indigenous movement and have a broad and integrated view of the universe, of nature, that encompasses social diversity and not just plants and animals.

Q: Indigenous movements have demonstrated their political power in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador. What about Brazil?

A: The strength of the Brazilian movement is reflected in its local actions and in national coordination initiatives that influence governmental policy, particularly as it relates to indigenous peoples.

We now want to create an Indigenous Parliament where all indigenous peoples are represented. It would serve as the context for new relations between the Brazilian state and the communities. That strength, building on experiences in other countries, could be the design for a new era in which diversity, pluri-ethnicity and multiculturalism are not seen as obstacles, but as the wealth of the nation.

(* Originally published May 21 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)