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News > Brazil

Brazilian Lower House Approves Anti-Indigenous Territories Bill

  • Indigenous peoples protest against the bill harming their ancestral territories, May 2023.

    Indigenous peoples protest against the bill harming their ancestral territories, May 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @MidiaNINJA

Published 31 May 2023
Opinion

If this law is fully approved, large areas of the Amazon and other Brazilian ecosystems will remain available for the exploitation by private companies

With 283 votes in favor and 155 against, the right-wing controlled Lower House on Tuesday approved a bill that makes it difficult to demarcate Indigenous lands in Brazil.

RELATED:

Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Protest in Defense of Their Lands

Supported by the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), Bill 490, which establishes a time limit for the demarcation of Indigenous lands, will now be analyzed by the Senate.

If approved by the senators, this bill will be sent to Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who must approve it or veto it definitively.

According to the Bill 490, the Brazilian state will only recognize as Indigenous territories those lands that Indigenous peoples had occupied until October 5, 1988, when the country's Constitution was promulgated.

With the current legislation, Indigenous peoples are not required to demonstrate that they were occupying their lands up to that date.

In practical terms, the bill 490 approval will mean that large areas of the Amazon and other Brazilian ecosystems will remain available for the exploitation of natural resources by national or foreign companies.

The text approved by the Lower House allows Indigenous peoples to be expelled from their places of residence if they do not prove that they lived there before 1988. Once the inhabitants are expelled, those lands can be commercialized.

According to official data, Indigenous peoples occupy 13.7 percent of the Brazilian territory. So far, the authorities have recognized the existence of 610 Indigenous territories, 487 of which are already fully delimited. Some 329 demarcated areas are located in the Amazon.

For four years, Bolsonaro completely paralyzed the demarcation of Indigenous territories, which is an essential legal procedure for the protection of communities.

Through this policy, the former Capitan sought to facilitate the activity of mining and logging companies in areas protected by environmental laws.

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