An ethnocide that lasts 500 years 

Towards the definitive elimination of indigenous reserves in Brazil

New pattern of domination of indigenous peoples

On the second day of January 2019, the new President of the Brazilian Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, issued Provisional Measure 870 (MP / 870) where he restructured the governing bodies and their functions. Among the changes, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) moved from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, and deprived it of the demarcation and protection of indigenous lands, now transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture (MA). . Now the MA also accumulates the functions of the Institute of Agrarian Colonization and Reform. Therefore, it is the AMqwuien that takes care of the land policy as a whole, which, in addition to the indigenous lands, includes the lands of former quilombos (Afro-Brazilian nuclei or quilombola) and agrarian reform.

In Brazil, there are approximately one million native people, with 274 different languages.

There are currently 436 regularized indigenous lands, totaling almost 106 million hectares. There are also 130 pending demarcation processes, between delimited, declared and approved lands, which correspond to just over 12 million hectares. In addition, there are 115 areas under study. Six areas, totaling just over a million hectares, are prohibited for the protection of isolated indigenous peoples. 

The demarcation of their lands, provided for in articles 231 and 232 of the Federal Constitution, had its climax in the first half of the 1990s and was decreasing, more pronounced during the Dilma Rousseff government, until the paralysis during the Michel Temer government.
The demarcation process stopped and even completely reversed in recent months.

There are currently 436 regularized indigenous lands, totaling almost 106 million hectares. There are also 130 pending demarcation processes, between delimited, declared and approved lands, which correspond to just over 12 million hectares. In addition, there are 115 areas under study. Six areas, totaling just over a million hectares, are prohibited for the protection of isolated indigenous peoples. The regularized lands correspond to 12% of the national territory and the largest indigenous area is concentrated in the Legal Amazon.

A downward curve can be identified in the demarcation processes. But the decline has been more noticeable since the launch of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) in 2007. The PAC provided infrastructure works to integrate the territories with the accumulation chains. It involved the production and distribution of energy and logistics for the production and disposal of mineral and agricultural products. And also to fix labor in these areas.

Despite the legal framework of 1988, the Brazilian State's land policy has prioritized the export of agribusiness on a continuous basis. What has been conquered in the Charter of the Constitution, does not avenge in state policy. The land allocation curve for agrarian reform and quilombola land titling follows the same trend as the indigenous land demarcation curve. They have been treated more as social policies than as land policies.

The demarcation of the land was not exactly proportional to the indigenous population of each region. As mentioned earlier, most of the demarcated lands are in the Legal Amazon, which covers the North region and a part of the Midwest when it was not yet a border of export agribusinesses. The demarcation in these regions ended due to the valorization of the nearby lands.

The accumulation chains, however, now require the integration of all territories. Do not let "an inch out" is ordered. For this, it is necessary to change the legal regulatory framework for land use (water and air). Garimpos mining, cattle land, soybean plantations, cane, cocoa eucalyptus and pine, for example, today border the territories of traditional villages. And they find an insurmountable border in the path of life and indigenous spirituality. There is no way to integrate these areas into productive / extractive practices of capital. The changes in the policies for the indigenous peoples described in MP / 870 and formulated in the declarations of the new government are not only aimed at preventing the continuity of the demarcation processes. Its objective is ethnocide, "deindianization," as the integration of the indigenous population was called during the Old Republic. The intention is the abandonment of their way of life, which is antagonistic to the civilization of capital.

The Minister of Agriculture is Tereza Cristina Corrêa da Costa Dias. Representative of the ruralists, is from Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), where this sector advances over the territories of the Guarani and the Kaiowá. This State, which has already experienced the cycles of yerba mate produced on a large scale, cattle and soybeans, in recent years has been trying to take advantage of the commercial opportunities that derive from the high demand for cane for ethanol production . Farmers in the United States even started cattle auctions to sponsor anti-indigenous militias. This is the minister that will deal with the demarcations. The risk to the people is that, in addition to interrupting the demarcation processes, the criteria that threaten the lands already regularized will be applied, such as those already used in the "time frame".

At the same time, the Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Dalmares Alves, wants a white letter to evangelize the indigenous people. The new government officials use advertisements that are not sure of being applied: the extinction of IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), the withdrawal of Brazil from climate agreements, the non-recognition of ILO Convention 169 , which requires consultation with peoples On the one hand, they tempt and, if necessary, withdraw. But in making these statements, they encourage peasants, miners and loggers to lay their hands on terror against the peoples of the land.

The attack on the natives, their territory and their way of life aims to leave the land, all this, as an unprotected continuum available for "rape", for exploitation by dispossession, for extractivism.

Brazil thus becomes a laboratory for the pattern of domination corresponding to the new capital accumulation model. The Brazilian working classes were disarmed during the last decades of any anti-capitalist project. The organizations that were able to build in the last cycle of struggles were co-opted for capital projects or reduced in their autonomous action. The peoples of the earth cannot be integrated into value chains without dying as a people. The death of their culture is the trump card of the destruction of territories (which includes human energy) to extract value.

What is at stake here is the future of all of us, indigenous and non-indigenous. Let's learn from the people of the earth. They know how to make the world a place to live.

By: Silvia Beatriz, published on 11/01/2019, adapted on 12/4/2019 

translated from:https://jornalggn.com.br/noticia/politicas-de-bolsonaro-visam-o-etnocidio-a-%E2%80%9Cdesindianizacao%E2%80%9D