Analysis: Isolated indigenous peoples in Brazil threatened as bill moves forward in Chamber

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The text of bill PL 490, approved by a committee of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputiues, allows contact with isolated indigenous groups if there is a “public benefit.” Private companies can contact these groups if they are contracted by the government.

In Brazil, there are about 114 indigenous groups that are oblivious to the political game in Brasília. In their villages, located deep in the Legal Amazon, no news arrived about the approval of Law 490/2007 by the Constitutional and Judicial and Citizenship Commission of the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday (the basic text was approved last week).

They also do not know the term “agrobusiness bench”, the congressional members who were responsible for sanctioning the initiative, which represents a step backward for the rights of all indigenous people in the country.

Although they are unaware of the legislative process, for these 114 isolated indigenous groups – who by their own free will have had no contact with society for centuries but live under the pressure of the advance of logging companies, gold miners, and agribusiness – the passage of the law could mean their extinction, according to experts interviewed by EL PAÍS.

The text now goes to the full Chamber of Deputies, where it must be approved before going to the Senate.

The wording of the bill opens a loophole for these isolated peoples, whose total number is unknown, to be contacted against their will: “In the case of isolated indigenous peoples, the state and civil society are responsible for absolute respect for their freedoms and traditional ways of life, and contact should be avoided as much as possible, except to provide medical assistance or to communicate state measures of public benefit,” the text states, without specifying what these “state measures of public benefit” should be.

Juliana de Paula Batista, a lawyer with the NGO Socio-Ecological Institute, explains the change. “The 1988 Constitution guarantees indigenous peoples their uses and customs. On this basis, since the re-democratization of the country, there has been a policy of non-contact with isolated peoples, as they deliberately choose to remain separate.” According to her, “the bill puts an end to this policy by providing for forced contact through an abstract and generic term such as ‘government action of public benefit,’ which can encompass anything.”

This involuntary contact of isolated peoples opens the door to their “genocide”, Batista points out. Living in isolation, they are communities without immunological memory and therefore vulnerable to any disease.

“These are hazardous contacts. We have historical reports from before the 1988 Constitution of groups decimated by flu and epidemics in less than 48 hours after contact,” she explains.

Currently, there is a specific hygiene protocol and regulations for approaching isolated groups – in the case of incidental contact or when those natives express a desire for contact. “This approach follows a series of health and anthropological precautions for this placement, with a multidisciplinary team,” explains the lawyer. Any initiative of this type must go through the Special Secretariat of Indigenous Health of the Ministry of Health.

But with the approval of the law, the contact action can be carried out by “private entities, national or international”, as long as they are contracted by the state to do so. “This could lead to contacts being made by institutions with no experience in the field,” she said. So, theoretically, “a radical evangelical group interested in evangelizing these groups or a mining company that wants to exploit their land could be responsible for approaching isolated Indians,” Batista says.

There are already records of evangelical missions working in various parts of the Amazon to catechize indigenous populations and advance the urbanization project.

In Peru, there is legislation similar to PL 490 that allows private companies to contact isolated Indians. The result is a very high human cost, responsible for the flight of some Peruvian Indians to the Brazilian Amazon, especially in the Acre region.

“Imagine if Eletrobras, responsible for the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, was responsible for approaching isolated peoples in the assembly. It’s catastrophic and unprecedented,” says Carolina Santana, a lawyer with the Observatory for Human Rights of Isolated and Newly Contacted Indigenous Peoples, who worked at Funai [the federal indigenous bureau] for 10 years. “I don’t see the possibility that forced contact, except through their initiative, will bring any benefit to these peoples,” she says.

Finally, the bill sets a legal time frame for demarcating indigenous lands. Thus, the original peoples would have to prove that they inhabited the claimed territory before the enactment of the 1988 federal constitution, which would pose a problem for isolated peoples if they were contacted. “How can an isolated indigenous people prove this? They have no contact with national society, how can they testify to their presence in a pre-1988 place?”

The federal supreme court (STF) could also stop this project. In coming weeks, the court will analyze the case of the demarcation of lands of the Xokleng people in Santa Catarina, which also involves the problem of the temporal milestone and which could have implications for PL 490 because the decision will constitute a general precedent (i.e., it applies to all similar cases). Justice Edson Fachin has already cast his vote in favor of the Xokleng.

PL 490 is not the first proposal during Bolsonaro’s administration to weaken isolated indigenous peoples. In July 2020, the president sanctioned Law 14.021: one of its articles allows missionaries to stay in territories of isolated peoples, provided they have medical teams’ authorization. “The missions of a religious nature that are already [isolated] in indigenous communities should be evaluated by the competent health team and can stay with the authorization of the competent doctor,” the text states. A direct constitutional challenge filed by the Indigenous Peoples Association of Brazil against this law should soon be analyzed by the STF.

Source: El Pais