Baía dos Guató indigenous land was homologated by Temer in 2018, but decision ended in the judiciary, following rules that defends new Brazilian President São Paulo 14 JAN 2019 in the 1950 the Guató Indians, who inhabited the marshlands of Mato Grosso , Mato Grosso do Sul and part of Bolivia, were declared extinct by the Indian Protection Service. Expelled from their traditional territories by the cattle of the farmers and by the violence of the jagunchins, this Canoeiro people whose first records date from the 16th century dispersed. It was in 1976 that a missionary found in a slum of Corumbá (MS) The artisan Josefina, descendant of the Guató. From there they began to locate and mobilize several ethnic Indians who lived in the outskirts of the cities of the region in a situation of misery. On April 26, 2018, more than 40 years after being rediscovered, the Baía dos Guató indigenous land, with its 20,000 hectares in Mato Grosso, was homologated by then-President Michel Temer — the only one officialized by the Emedebista. If Jair Bolsonaro’s promises to paralyze indigenous demarcations are fulfilled, the guató will be the last traditional people in the country to have their lands recognised. And they can also be the first to lose them in this new management. In addition to freezing future regularizations of indigenous lands (“I will not demarring a centimetre more of land for Indians,” said the president), the Bolsonaro government intends to review demarcation occurring in the last ten years in cases where they are found Indications of “serious failure”, “inadmissible error” or “procedural fraud”, said the special Secretary of Land Affairs and ruralist leader Luiz Nabhan Garcia, in an interview with O Globo newspaper. “It will be made a broad and general survey of everything that happened in land issues in Brazil, whether in agrarian reform, demarcation of indigenous lands and Quilombolas,” he said. “If there was any flaw and if there is a loophole that shows justice that there was a mistake, anything is possible to nullify,” he said. The Guató are in great danger of being the first victims of this “review”. On December 14, federal judge Leão Aparecido Alves, of the federal Regional Court of the 1st region, suspended in a preliminary ruling the demarcation, using as justification the controversial criterion of the temporal milestone: The magistrate stated that there is no evidence of the occupation From that territory by the Guató in 1988, the year of the promulgation of the Federal Constitution-the fact is that most had already been expelled, and those who stayed were employees of the farms. The action against the Indians was moved by local producers and cattle ranchers. “The individuals that Funai claims are indigenous, in fact, are not Indians, in the case of ordinary Brazilians, marshers,” the lawyers of the farmers said in a passage of the order cited by the judge. The defenders also claim that the river “São Lourenço changed course at the beginning of the twentieth century, which implied the mistaken identification of the ‘ address ‘ of the Guató indigenous territory.” Questioned by the report, the general advocacy of the Union, which represents FUNAI in the process, stated that it still “waits to be subpoenated to decide whether it will appeal”. Following the criteria of the Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on indigenous and tribal peoples, the Brazilian Government determines that the definition of an indigenous is the self-declaration, that is, in the consciousness of a people of their identity Indigenous.
“without the land the Guató culture ends,” says Adílio Guató, 34, born and raised in the region where the indigenous land is today. “We were bred like this, canoers. What we do well is live in the wetland. I don’t see any other form of survival if I take the people there, “he says. According to him, some of the youngest could still survive in the Pantanal tourism sector outside the indigenous land, but the elders “would be doomed”. Adílio remembers with remorse the stories about relatives who left the region and went to live in the outskirts of the surrounding towns: “The greatest misfortune that happened in our people was to have known the city. Those who were unstudied were involved in drugs, drinking… They only learned what sucks. ”
The freezing of the land demarcations promised by Bolsonaro would affect 238 processes driven by dozens of different ethnicities, according to Funai. Mato Grosso, a region that the guató originally inhabited and where they obtained the recognition of their land rights is the state with more lands that will be without official recognition: There are 30 traditional territories claimed to be still in the area. Mato Grosso do Sul and Rio Grande do Sul come next, with 29 and 28 processes that will be sustained, respectively. Only Sergipe, Piauí, Espírito Santo and Distrito Federal do not have processes for land recognition in progress — which does not mean that there are no landings in the sites, informs Funai. One of the consequences of this freezing and the eventual revision of land already demarcated may be the “increase in violence against indigenous peoples,” says the Executive Secretary of the Missionary Indigenist Council, Cléber Buzatto. “It is absurd, it is the duty of the executive to fulfill what is in the Constitution with respect to indigenous peoples,” he said. In October 2018 1 Indian died shot when the group was charging the demarcation of their land on a base of Funai located in Colniza (1,065 km from Cuiabá, MT). Heard by Folha, Francisco Arara, of the Arara people, who participated in the action, stated that they claim since 1987 their lands in the region. Months later a base of Funai in the indigenous Land (it) Vale do Javari, on the border of the Amazon with Peru, was attacked by invaders. Source: Funai [/caption] “People don’t understand, they say we have to evolve” Adílio Guató criticizes the integrationist discourse of the new government, which in practice means “acculturation and loss of identity”. The president has already stated that the idea is “to provide means for the Indians (…) Integrate with society. ” “The Indian wants a doctor, wants a dentist, wants television, wants internet. We will provide means for the Indian to be equal to us, “the captain said. The Minister of the Office of Institutional Security (GSI), General Augusto Heleno, went further and said that “Indian does not want land, wants electricity, wants to attend college”. For young Guató, this vision is mistaken: “Even today people do not understand, they say that we have to evolve. But what we need is rice, beans, our canoes and bow and arrow to fish and Hunt and a terrinha to plant cassava. ” An open letter sent by indigenous leaders to Bolsonaro also criticizes the integrationist strategy. “We have been decimated, tutored and victims of the integrationist policy of governments and Brazilian national state, so we saw in public that we do not accept more policy of integration, policy of guardianship and we do not want to be decimated by means of new actions Government and the Brazilian national State “. Further ahead, the text says that “those who are not indigenous cannot suggest or dictate rules of how we should behave or act in our territory and in our country. We have the capacity and autonomy to speak for ourselves. ” For the President, traditional peoples have too many lands: “We have an area larger than the Southeast region demarcated as indigenous land. And what’s the security for the field? A farmer cannot wake up today and suddenly take notice that he will lose his farm to a new indigenous land. ” In the open letter sent to the captain, the indigenous leaders retreated the statement. “It is not true that indigenous peoples have 15% of land in the country. In fact, it is 13%, with the majority (90%) in the Legal Amazon. This percentage is what was left as a right over the land that was previously 100% indigenous before the year 1500 and was withdrawn. ” Source: www.brasil.elpais.com
