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News > Brazil

Brazil: Indigenous Peoples Call For Help and Solidarity

  • Guarani Indian woman protests against President Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Jan. 31, 2019.

    Guarani Indian woman protests against President Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Jan. 31, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Published 6 February 2019
Opinion

Mato Grosso do Sul's organizations face the onslaught of racism and neoliberalism.

A Brazilian Indigenous woman Thursday send a message, through an open letter, to social movements across Brazil and also abroad, asking for solidarity with Indigenous Peoples living at Mato Grosso Do Sul.

RELATED:
Brazil's Indigenous People March Against Bolsonaro's Policies

“I am Daiara Tukano from the Tukano People... I am sending this message to my friends at the social movements, Landless movement, Feminist movements, Black movements. Right now we are facing a harsh moment... Like in the old-times of the dictatorship, the [President Jair Bolsonaro] administration sent the military, the federal policy, the border police, the national police, all of which are acting as militias seeking the genocide of Indigenous peoples, something which favors landlords and agribusiness.”   

The open letter pleads for help for Indigenous peoples by spreading the news about resistance acts against the far-right racism and neoliberalism which is now attacking them on their ancestral lands.

“Help us by making this message available to thousands. The only way the people could achieve their rights is by keeping pressure [on the government]... we need you to spread images, videos, words. Make people speak about the Guarani Kaiowa People where you live,” Daiara said and warns that “next week a massacre could happen... we are organized and our warriors are going to help in whatever they can. However, we are few, very few.”

Mato Grosso do Sul is one of the midwestern states of Brazil, where at least 11 Indigenous peoples have been requesting the Brazilian state provide legal clarifications on their economic, social and cultural rights.

Early this year, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) called for "Red January, Indigenous Blood", a campaign of demonstrations, across Brazil, against Bolsonaro's land demarcation initiative.

Brazil's president gave the Ministry of Agriculture the provisional power to identify Indigenous lands and redefine their extension, a policy which will make it easier for the dissemination of agribusiness and mining activities in the Amazon basin.

In Brazil, the policies of the Ministry of Agriculture have often come into conflict with rural workers organizations, landless organizations, residents of Indigenous reserves and environmental defenders.

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