Brazil: Start of Landmark Case Bodes Well for Indigenous People
IPS – 28 August 2008
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: A Brazilian Supreme Court hearing on a landmark case got off on a positive footing for the indigenous people who live in the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation in northern Brazil. The Court, which will set an important legal precedent when it decides the fate of the reservation in the Amazon jungle along Brazil’s northern border, delayed the final decision when one of the judges asked for a recess to further investigate the case, on the first day of the hearing Wednesday. Magistrate Carlos Ayres de Britto, the first and only judge to have voted so far, used the Portuguese word “esbulho” (dispossession or unlawful possession) to describe the occupation of parts of the reservation by non-indigenous landowners who want to break up the 1.7 million hectare reserve in order to hold on to the land that they farm. In his vote, Britto said the reservation must remain intact in order to live up to the constitutional rights of the 19,000 members of five indigenous groups who share the territory. The judge also said the anthropological studies on which the demarcation of the reservation was based were sound and widely recognised, and show that “only a continuous territory ensures the rights of physical and cultural reproduction and integral maintenance of customs and traditions” of indigenous groups. The Supreme Court ruling will be decisive not only for the people of Raposa Serra do Sol but for a large part of the indigenous people living in areas disputed by landowners and ranchers in Brazil.
