RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More federal law enforcement officers are being deployed to Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state after land conflicts between indigenous people and farmers over the weekend, the Justice Ministry said Monday.
The National Public Security Force had already increased its presence in the region since early July, but will now deploy more officers as reinforcements, the ministry said.
The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said it had received reports of farmers attacking the Guarani Kaiowa people in the municipality of Douradina on Saturday, injuring at least eight people.
Five injured people were taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where doctors determined that three of them had been shot with firearms and two had been injured by rubber bullets, the ministry said in a statement.
Another attack on Guarani Kaiowa took place on Sunday evening, the ministry said.
Officials said the second incident involved setting fires, using tear gas and hearing four gunshots, though the perpetrator could not be identified. At least one farmer was said to have been injured.
Authorities have said that the Public Prosecution Service will launch a police investigation to investigate possible criminal offenses.
“The Guarani Kaiowa indigenous people are in the process of reclaiming land” in the Panambi-Lagoa Rica indigenous territory, an area that was recognized as theirs in 2011 before a court suspended the process, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said.
Frustration over the slow process led the Guarani Kaiowa to set up a camp on July 14 to reclaim the land, said Anderson Santos, a lawyer for the Indigenous Missionary Council, a human rights group. Local landowners responded by building their own camp about 150 meters (yards) away and have harassed the indigenous camp, he said.
The Guarani Kaiowa “have been sleeping under the lights of trucks for two weeks,” Santos said. “Every night these trucks line up in front of them, turn on the lights and spend the whole night with the lights on under their camp.”
Recognition of the Guarani Kaiowa lands was halted after a court accepted the “time frame” argument, a legal theory that holds that the date Brazil’s Constitution was promulgated – October 5, 1988 – should be the deadline by which indigenous peoples had to physically occupy land or legally fight to reoccupy the territory.
Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected that theory last Septemberbut a week later the Senate passed a bill supporting the “time frame” theory. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vetoed the billbut his move was overruled by Congress. The influential agribusiness sector, which opposes indigenous communities’ demands for more territory, has the support of hundreds of Congressmen and several governors.
The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said the “time frame” case has increased tensions with legal uncertainty, leading to “violent acts in which indigenous people are the main victims.”
Lula took office in 2023 promising to once again give land to indigenous peoples, a stark contrast to his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who made good on his promise to stop reserving land for indigenous peoples.
But Indigenous peoples have criticized broken promises to create reserves and evict illegal miners and land grabbers from their territories.
