RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More federal police are being sent to Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state following clashes over land between indigenous people and farmers over the weekend, the Justice Ministry said Monday.
The National Public Security Force had already reinforced its presence in that region since the beginning of July, but will now send more agents as reinforcement, the ministry said.
The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said it received reports of farmers attacking the Guarani Kaiowa people in the municipality of Douradina on Saturday, injuring at least eight people.
Five of the injured were taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where doctors discovered that three had been shot by firearms and two injured by rubber bullets, a ministry statement said.
Another attack on Guarani Kaiowa occurred on Sunday night, the ministry said.
Authorities said that in the second incident a fire was set, tear gas was used and four shots were heard, although the perpetrator was not identified. He said at least one farmer was injured.
Prosecutors will open a police investigation to investigate possible crimes, authorities said.
“The Guarani Kaiowa Indians are claiming land” in the Panambi-Lagoa Rica Indigenous Land, an area that was recognized as theirs in 2011 before a court suspended the process, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said.
Frustration with the slowness of the process led the Guarani Kaiowa to set up a camp to recover their land on July 14, said Anderson Santos, a lawyer for the Indigenous Missionary Council, a human rights group. Local landowners responded by building their own camp approximately 150 meters away and have been harassing the indigenous camp, he said.
The Guarani Kaiowa “have been sleeping under the lights of trucks for two weeks,” said Santos. “Every night these trucks line up in front of them, turn on the lights and spend the whole night with the lights on under the camp.”
Recognition of Guarani Kaiowa lands was halted after a court recognized the “deadline” argument, a legal theory that states that the date on which Brazil’s constitution was enacted – October 5, 1988 – should be the deadline for when Indigenous peoples already had to physically occupy land or legally fight to reoccupy territory.
Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected this theory last Septemberbut a week later the Senate passed a bill supporting the “deadline” theory. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva partially vetoed the project, but his measure was annulled 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 “deadline” case increased tensions with legal uncertainty, leading “to acts of violence that have indigenous peoples as the main victims.”
Lula took office in 2023 promising to resume granting land to indigenous peoples, a stark contrast to his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who fulfilled his promise to no longer reserve land for indigenous peoples.
But Indigenous people criticized unfulfilled promises create reserves and expel illegal miners and land grabbers from their territories.
