‘We are fighting’: Brazil’s indigenous groups unite to protect their land

“A united people will never be defeated!” shouted Maria Betânia Mota, as the indigenous assembly in a partially burned-out agricultural college began. Hundreds of voices roared back in approval. Betânia Mota is the women’s secretary of its organisers, the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), which represents the majority of those living in the 1.7m hectares of savannah and scrub that make up the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve in Brazil’s northernmost state. It is home to 25,000 indigenous people who raise tens of thousands of cattle and crops on smallholdings and communal farms. Nearly half of Roraima is protected indigenous land. Brazil’s 1988 constitution prohibits commercial farming and mining on indigenous reserves without specific congressional approval, but Brazil’s new hard-right president, Jair Bolsonaro – who has described indigenous people as “like animals in zoos” – wants to change that. He has singled out Raposa for its reserves of gold, copper, molybdenum, bauxite and diamonds. [See footnote] “It’s the richest area in the world. You can explore it rationally beside the indigenous, giving royalties and integrating the indigenous to society,” he said in December. Brazil’s national mining agency has 97 requests, some dating back to 1980, to prospect in the reserve…. Read full this story

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