Persecution of Indigenous Minorities in Brasilia

The recent presence of indigenous people in what is now Brasilia dates back to the construction of the capital city in the 1960s, yet according to experts, the area was an important corridor and meeting place for a variety of indigenous groups before Pedro Álvares Cabral's "discovery" of Brazil in 1500. The territory was eventually conquered and subjugated during the process of Brazil's colonization. Yet some indigenous families who were persecuted for the cultural and spiritual identities and expelled from their territory in Brazil's Northeast between the 1950s and 1970s eventually reclaimed their ancestral lands with the intent to preserve their cultural, spiritual, and physical existence as a people living in harmony with nature.

In the case of Brasilia, the site of the old Bananal plantation was eventually absorbed into the National Park of Brasilia (Água Mineral), where it remained occupied for over 40 years by a variety of indigenous ethnic groups (Tuxá, Fulani-ô, Kariri-xocó, Kariri, Guajajara) who carried on traditional activities linked to subsistence farming (horticulture including corn, manioc root, and other crops), craftwork, natural medicine, and religious rites and ceremonies. Today, thirty individuals live on the reservation, but six months a year the site functions as a sacred cultural destination, and the population swells to over 100 as pilgrims travel to the cerrado (Brazilian high plains) for religious ceremonies in the Santuario Sagrado dos Pajés (Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans).

Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans

Preserving and fortifying their cultural identity (some tribes still speak their native language) in a place that, according to the indigenous people themselves, was chosen with the shamans by the Great Spirit Tupã, today indigenous shamans and healers consider the Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans a point of spiritual reference. The Sanctuary was constructed in accordance with native traditions as a "prayer house", where shamans and spiritual leaders from all over the world converge. Tribal religious authorities affirm that native spirituality is connected to the cerrado ecosystem, that the sacred is inherent in nature itself, and that the people communicate with the spirits of their ancestors and devote themselves to Mother Earth (for more on the subject, see a worthwhile text by Eduardo Viveiro de Castro, an anthropologist from the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro who produced the classic study Indigenous Perspectivism).

According to the shamans, all living things are sacred and must be respected and preserved, just as water is the source of all life. The Bananal Indian Reservation is situated on an important aquifer that feeds into the Paranoá river system and the Bananal and Acampamento streams.

Sacred Land or Real Estate Venture?

Today, the Bananal Indian Reservation in the Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans suffers outside pressure from the Federal District of Brasilia's state-owned real estate entity TERRACAP, and sectors of the national and international real estate and financial market notably represented in Brasilia by the Associação de Empresas Imobiliárias, or ADEMI (the Association of Real Estate Companies). All are proponents of the so-called Northwest Sector project, an upscale neighborhood in the cerrado to be constructed on land currently occupied by indigenous people (though still in the design phase, the project's estimated cost is 7000 Brazilian Reales, or US $4350, per square meter). The vice-governor of the Federal District, Democrat Paulo Octávio, is one of the most powerful real-estate moguls in Brazil's Center-West region, head of the Paulo Octávio Investment Group, and a major proponent of the construction project, initially projected to house 60,000 people.

In 1996, the indigenous people initiated a GT (technical group) to officially establish the borders of their territory, but political pressure in FUNAI (The National Foundation of the Indian, a state agency dedicated to Indian affairs in Brazil) delayed their attempt. TERRACAP contends that it has held a claim to the territory since 1992, but the title overlooked the existence of the indigenous community on the Bananal Reservation. Furthermore, specialists in Indian land disputes affirm that Article 231 of the Federal Constitution of 1988 clearly establishes that in instituting territorial borders for land traditionally occupied by indigenous people, special attention is given to the present nature of the occupation, and not that of the distant past.

"The Indians have been occupying that area since the 1960s, and this has implications for the present status of the community. They traditionally occupied this land before the proclamation of the national charter. The indigenous claim [to the land] in this case is beyond question. What we are witnessing in Brasilia is a display of racism and disinformation that only threatens the matter. IBAMA (the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) committed a grave error when it ignored the presence of the indigenous community and its importance for the preservation of the environment in that area," affirmed anthropologist Victor Oliveira.

Although foreseen in urban expert Lúcia Costa's 1987 project "Brasilia Revisited", the Northwest Sector project endorsed by the government and real estate entrepreneurs and investors demonstrates a complete disregard for the social and environmental reality of the capital and its quality of life, evident in the intense ecological degradation of the unique cerrado biosphere, disorderly occupation promoted in the 1990s, and negative projections predicting a depletion of water resources in the area due to increased human consumption. A full twenty-five percent of the Amazon river system includes tributaries that are directly linked to the cerrado ecosystem, as well as two other important river systems (São Francisco and Araguaia). Meanwhile, we must also consider the effects of global climate change that intensify the detrimental factors impacting the environment here.

The land on which the Bananal Reservation stands today was already the victim of real estate speculation and maneuvering when it was registered by TERRACAP in 1992. Part of the area became the Parque Ecológico Norte (North Ecological Park), today known as Burle Marx Park, which is currently in an abandoned and degraded state, while the majority of original protected area that the Indians currently inhabit has fallen into a legal no-man's land, due to the fact that the area could be claimed by several different parks (the National Park of Brasilia, Environmental Protection Area of the Central High Plains, or Environmental Protection Area of Lake Paranoá). But until now, no public entity involved in environmental protection in the Federal District has bothered to protect the area, aside from the Indians who continue to act as the sole activists and guardians of the cerrado.

The fact is, technical studies based on anthropological standards can determine whether indigenous occupation of the Bananal Reservation can be deemed "traditional" or not, taking into consideration the activities at the Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans. This would permit the federal government to intervene, and to recognize and establish the borders of Indian land. Once recognized, the territory could be expanded (it currently occupies approximately 12 hectares) since ethnic-territorial laws stipulate that the area should fall under Indian control and be considered an ecological preserve of the cerrado. Legal and technical reasoning and the ecological imperative to preserve the territory, including the Bananal Reservation, favor the Indians of the Sanctuary of the Shamans. However, it appears that the government of the Federal District and the financial and real estate lobby know this and nonetheless plan to steamroll any attempts at legal intervention that may recognize the rights of the indigenous people.

First Galdino Pataxó, and now the Indians in the Sanctuary of the Shamans?

Continuing the process of 508 years of persecution against indigenous people in Brazil, Brasilia was recently the site of yet another tragic episode in its long legacy of racism. In April 1997, a Pataxó Indian, Galdino, was inhumanly and brutally attacked by five young men of middle-class background, who burned him alive as he slept in a public plaza. At the time, the culprits claimed that they thought he was "only" a beggar, not realizing he was Indian.

The Indians of the Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans are now being burned by the local media in Brasilia, which has unleashed a hostile public campaign against the indigenous community on the Bananal Reservation, once again instigating cultural intolerance and racism in the capital of the Republic. The democratic right to information has been turned into an explicit program of political persecution and psychological torture against Indians, violating human rights and the freedom of indigenous people.

Over nearly ten months, observers have witnessed a true public lynching promoted by the local press against the indigenous minority in Brasilia. Racist and homophobic statements describing Indians as "savages who eat pit bull", "invaders of public land", and "homosexuals" abound. In a recent statement, the president of TERRACAP proposed that officials "call in the police against these invaders", and Secretary of the Environment Tássio Taniguchi suggested that they "forcibly remove these individuals". The governor of Brasilia himself called the Indians "a joke" and "freaks", when affirming that he was unaware of the indigenous presence in the cerrado of Brasilia. The title of UNESCO World Heritage Site, once bestowed upon the city of Brasilia, should encompass the indigenous culture in the Sanctuary of the Shamans on the Bananal Reservation, respecting diversity and cultural differences and recognizing that the survival of indigenous culture is directly linked to the natural environment, in which no distinction exists between nature and spirituality. The Indians have been invisible for the past forty years they have inhabited this region, caring for the cerrado and Brasilia's water supply. They are now being attacked because their land interests a financial sector with no ethical or ecological claims to it, which will stop at nothing to seize the indigenous territory in the name of profit, in the true spirit of a Capitalist economy. Hasn't it been that way since 1500?

Institutionalized Racism and the Invisibility of Indigenous Minorities

The invisibility of the Indians in Brazilian institutions and society is one of the results of colonization. The silence in response to the massacre and persecution of the indigenous people proves a deep-seated institutionalized racism in Brazilian society. What is visible – the institutionalized racism – implies the invisible, the lack of equal treatment toward different ethnicities in Brazil. The case of the Bananal is representative in this sense, because it exposes the fallacy behind the myth of racial democracy so pervasive in this country.

The environmental agency IBAMA-DF (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources – Federal District) has rendered the Indians invisible, by yielding a questionable license that makes FUNAI responsible for removing the indigenous community from their land so that the first phases of the construction enterprise may begin. Should the Indians not accept the proposal to be relocated, TERRACAP warns that "they will be henceforth considered invaders". The Indians are left with nothing but the institutional and psychological threat of being forced to accept the imposition of a unilateral authority reminiscent of the 1964 dictatorship, which still persists in certain sectors of political life in Brasilia today.

The Indians are made visible as invaders in order to hide the invisible institutional violence being waged against them. In documents questioning the building permit for the Northwest Sector project, the Federal Public Minister of the Environment for the Federal District lists the Indians as an "outstanding issue" to be resolved. This institutionalized racism attacks Indian culture, ultimately constitutes an abuse of power, and marginalizes an indigenous presence in the capital that is beneficial to the preservation of the cerrado – in order to capitulate to the pressure applied by established groups that serve real estate and financial speculation. The balance of justice receives an invisible weight on the side of the government, the banks, enterprises and institutions that visibly violate the rights and liberties of indigenous people, promoting cultural intolerance, racism, political persecution and the criminalization of Indians and all those who struggle for basic human rights.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

If you would like to help protect the Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans and the multiple tribes making their home on the Bananal Indian Reservation, please consider signing and forwarding this online petition to your friends:  http://www.petitiononline.com/Bananal/petition.html

It still needs to be translated in English on the site. Here is a separate translation for your convenience:

To: The National Congress

We, the undersigned, are opposed to the construction of the Northwest Sector neighborhood in Brasilia, because we view it as a typical example of real estate speculation that represents a racist, devastating, and archaic notion of progress. We condemn Governor José Roberto Arruda for his racist statements publicized in the corporate press of Brasilia, of which the government itself is a primary sponsor. We defend the Environmental Protection Area of the Central High Plains and demand the regulation of the National Park of Brasilia's zona de amortecimento. We defend the Multiethnic Bananal Indian Reservation as a traditional indigenous territory and a place of public interest that enhances of the natural, cultural, and social environment of Brazil.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned.

Thank you! Every signature helps.

PHOTOS:

Photos of the Sacred Sancturary of the Shamans:  http://santuariodospajes.naxanta.org/index.php?n=OSantuarioNaoSeMove.FotosEVideos

Photos of protest in front of BNDES (National Bank of Development and Social Economics) headquarters on 3/14/2008:  http://www.midiaindependente.org/pt/blue/2008/03/414601.shtml

Photos of protest in front of IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) on 3/20/2008:  http://www.midiaindependente.org/pt/blue/2008/03/415131.shtml

VIDEOS:

 http://videolog.uol.com.br/santuariodospajesClick on the second video, "Toré", to see a short film with English subtitles featuring a corn festival taking place in the Sacred Sanctuary of the Shamans. All the films on this page are interesting and give you a good idea of what the reservation is like, but this is the only one that is translated into English.

translation by Mari =)