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INDIGENOUS PEOPLES-BRAZIL:
''Lula frustrated
our expectations''
Mario Osava*
RIO DE JANEIRO, (Tierramérica)
- 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.
Q: Has the Lula government lived
up to the expectations he
created?
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.)
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