Guarded by a powerful military police detachment, a massive march of representatives of up to 25 indigenous ethnic groups descends Parallel Avenue, near the headquarters of the legislative assembly of the state of Bahia, in the city of Salvador, in northeastern Brazil.
The policemen, with ostentatious riot gear, show a clear intimidating attitude, while the different indigenous groups of the Pataxó Hã-hã-hãe, Pataxó, Kaimbé, Kiriri, Tumbalalá and Pankararé peoples display their protest dances and songs, wearing their best headdresses feathers and other distinctive ornaments of their identity.
Despite the obvious tension and the fact that the anti-government slogans and the cries of ¡
Fora Bolsonaro !
!
(Bolsonaro outside) are repeated with defiant persistence, the march concludes without incident – unlike the day before, where there was an altercation between the police and the protesters – on the same esplanade from which it started, near the Administrative Center of Bahia (CAB).
There is installed a large camp of indigenous groups from all corners of the state to hold several days of debates and workshops and affirm their rights, which they perceive as diminished and threatened.
Among the activities that arouse the most interest are those organized by the Pataxó hã-hã-hãe women, who work on the feminist agenda and fight against gender violence, which also intensely affects indigenous women.
Hamangai Marcos Melo Patax, a Brazilian indigenous activist who fights against gender-based violence and seeks to highlight the value of women in communities, hugs her sister Itocovouty Galache Melo, in May 2022. Pablo Albarenga
Right: Hamangai Marcos Melo lying on his territory.
She is an indigenous activist who fights against gender violence and seeks to highlight the value of women in communities.
She has turned her own experiences and those of her sister, Itocovouty Galache Melo, into fuel for her fight.
Left: Aerial view of the community of the Pataxó Hã-hã-hãe people in Caramuru, Brazil. Pablo Albarenga
Hamangai Marcos Melo was born and raised in the village of Caramuru Catarina Paraguaçu.
She is a veterinary medicine student at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB) and is the national coordinator of the Engajamundo organization.
Paul Albarenga
The police monitor a massive march of representatives of up to 25 indigenous ethnic groups along Avenida Paralela, in the city of Salvador, in northeastern Brazil.
Paul Albarenga
Several Pataxó indigenous people demonstrate in Salvador de Bahía (Brazil) together with more than 20 indigenous peoples as part of the Regional Free Land Camp, in May 2022. Pablo Albarenga
Portrait of Hamangai Melo's sister, Itocovouty Galache Melo.Pablo Albarenga
Hamangaí Marcos Melo Pataxó broadcasts live on Instagram the indigenous march of which his people are a part, during the Regional Free Land Camp in Bahia, Brazil.Pablo Albarenga
Students from the Caramuru village participate in a women's meeting to talk about gender violence in indigenous communities.
Hamangai Marcos Melo paints posters against gender violence with students and women from the village of Caramuru.
After the meeting of Pataxó hã-hã-hãe women in the Caramuru village in May 2022, where the older ones recount the violence they have been subjected to as a way of encouraging the younger ones to share their experiences, the group of photography.Pablo Albarenga
One of the activists with the most presence in the debates is Hamangai Marcos Melo Pataxó, a 24-year-old girl, daughter of the Pataxó and Terena peoples.
She was born and raised in the village of Caramuru Catarina Paraguaçu, a town located 460 kilometers south of Salvador, in the same state of Bahia.
A veterinary medicine student at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB), she works on the climate agenda and is the national coordinator of the Engajamundo organization, an NGO of young environmentalists spread throughout Brazil.
She is also a counselor for Humana, which works for the human rights of Brazilian girls and women.
Marcos Melo sees that ranchers are the greatest threat that hangs over his territory, since they continue to deforest what little remains of the humid tropical forest known as the Atlantic Forest, and he understands that this fight is related to the battle against other "invisible" evils, like gender issues.
To do this, he promotes that young women have more weight in decision-making spaces, while working on a campaign against violence and sexist abuse.
It is in this context that, returning to the village after the mobilizations in the Salvador indigenous camp, Marcos Melo organizes a new activity on gender violence at the Caramuru school that will be transformative for the reality of the Pataxó hã women. -hã-hãe.
He is aware that there is a lot of pain and suffering accumulated in indigenous women.
She takes him back to the time of colonization and how they were subjected to systematic and terrible violence by the colonizers, who appropriated their bodies as an integral part of the spoils of the conquest.
The young activist incorporates in her political discourse a decolonial vision that claims an indigenous conception of the woman's body, which was colonized, just as the land in which she lives was.
For Marcos Melo, the body of the indigenous woman must be claimed as something sacred, something integral to nature.
The colonial heritage makes the majority have a vision of women as an object
Hamangai Marcos Melo Pataxo
The colonial heritage means that "most have a vision of women as an object," he says.
“And that is very painful, that hits, and it goes from generation to generation.
This practice of violence against indigenous women was left behind by the colonizers themselves”, she affirms, proudly wearing a powerful blue feathered headdress.
"Woman is sacred because she generates life, because she generates food," continues Marcos Melo.
“She is sacred because she brings ancestral knowledge, sensitivity, healing through medicinal plants.
She is sacred because she brings the message, the word, the advice, the wisdom that comes from the heart, that comes from within.
She is sacred because she is an extension of nature”, he concludes.
And it is with this systemic vision of the role of indigenous women that Marcos Melo approaches his community to organize an activity with therapeutic value.
Along with some collaborators of Engajamundo, he gathers women of all ages around an offering of plants, flowers, fruits, vessels and seed necklaces that symbolize the fertility and femininity of nature.
Helped by her classmates, she places in the center of the community area of the school, on some banana leaves, the different symbolic elements that will preside over the work sessions.
The objective is ambitious, since the internal dynamics of the villages, with their power balances, their hierarchies and their taboo subjects, is not conducive to this type of exercise, which is much more common in urban environments.
But Marcos Melo is determined that the women of her village talk to each other about existing gender problems, which are shared by all communities, whether urban or rural, indigenous, black, white or mestizo.
The process of self-affirmation of indigenous identity in the village of Caramuru opens the opportunity to address some internal conflicts
The Caramuru village is located a few kilometers from Pau Brasil, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants where many of the current inhabitants of the village grew up, which was only retaken in 1997 after a long time in the hands of ranchers.
Here, the process of self-affirmation of indigenous identity opens the opportunity to deal with some internal conflicts that would be much more difficult to deal with in other, more isolated communities with fewer elements of urban culture.
Advancing the rights of women in indigenous environments is not a simple agenda, although the increasingly frequent mobilizations of indigenous peoples, the intensive use of social networks, and the access to university of some of them have made that the feminist conscience and the urgency to evolve towards more respectful and egalitarian schemes with women and nature be increasingly shared.
According to the Ministry of Health, between 2007 and 2017 (the most recent data available) more than 8,000 complaints of cases of violence against indigenous women were registered in Brazil.
Before starting the work sessions, some of the participants organize ritual dances and chants where the feeling of community and belonging is evidenced, which makes them recognize themselves as equals and in solidarity, while at the same time invoking Mother Nature as an element of communion. and indigenous identity.
The sessions, which are developed around the offering of plants, fruits and necklaces, adopt the participatory methodology known as
fish-bowl
(aquarium), where several chairs are placed in the center of the circle in which the attendees congregate, which they will be occupied alternatively and spontaneously by those who wish to participate.
The presence of women from the village is numerous –there are 25, but they can be around 40 at some point– which demonstrates the evident interest aroused by the opportunity to share problems and conflicts, to seek ways out and solutions together.
At first, one might think that the youngest would be the ones who would have more interest and willingness to participate, but the composition of the group is intergenerational.
In it they are represented from the oldest to the adolescents.
And it is some of the older women who carry out the most revealing interventions of the suffering that deep gender inequalities have caused in their hard lives as mothers and grandmothers, caretakers of the village, who have borne the weight of the community without barely being able to get up and demand Your rights.
For them, talking and sharing their pain is very exciting, and they encourage others to do the same.
The old women of the village of Caramuru feel a special responsibility and know that if they speak up, in a huge effort to overcome strong blockades and a law of silence that has always existed, others will speak.
Elderly women feel a special responsibility and know that if they speak, in a huge effort to overcome strong blocks and a law of silence that has always existed, others will speak.
And that is what happens, in an exercise that goes from confession to vindication, from accusation to redemption, and unites the participants in their determination to act together to confront the abuses and violence experienced, to varying degrees. , for each of them.
In the end, it is the emotion and the liberation of having been able to share those moments, of having broken the silence, that gives the
aquarium
session its therapeutic value and its power of self-affirmation.
Solidarity hugs and shared tears are followed by a joint determination to continue fighting to end injustice and advance liberation.
The work continues with a long session where protest phrases, slogans and denunciations are written, and banners are painted that can be used in new mobilizations in favor of the rights of indigenous women and against the gender violence they suffer just them, but so many other villages and communities throughout Brazil.
The awareness that the country was built on the basis of excessive brutality and violence, in which much indigenous blood was spilled, shows that times are changing and that the time has come to rise up.
Even some men, who have watched the exercises from a distance, end up speaking in favor of the defense of rights and the end of violence against indigenous women.
The work ends with the decision to establish a collegiate commission in which a protocol of action in case of gender violence and a catalog of rights with the determination to enforce them will be drawn up.
A portrait session, in which each one is posing in the vindictive position that most represents her, illustrates their projection as powerful women, determined to fight, who build their self-esteem, and culminates in a group photograph that acts as catharsis and end festive days of emotion and intense liberation.
Hamangai Marcos Melo cannot hold back his tears when he appreciates the strength of the exercise carried out at school, the liberating power of stories, and recognizes the transformation that having been able to speak, share suffering and make the decision has brought to the village. to act jointly in the face of inequality and the violence experienced.
That makes him feel encouraged to express his dream: “That we can smile, that we don't have so many moments of tears.
That we also have those moments where we can circulate safely, that we are not afraid of being women, that is, that there is a space where we can be women without fear, within the community, but also outside it, in the city, at the university .
Let us not be afraid of being women in Brazil”.
Affirming the sacred identification of women with nature is a powerful way of defending rights, and is part of a broader process of strengthening indigenous identity, which occurs in an environment degraded by years of colonization and exploitation that has ended up destroying the 90% of the Atlantic Forest that once housed the Caramuru Paraguaçu indigenous land.
Aware of this, Marcos Melo and his companions defend that this sacred dimension contributes to confronting the Western vision, which conceives the world –and women– as something compartmentalized, susceptible to being exploited, squeezed, violated.
What happened in the Caramuru village is a small proof that more and more indigenous women are going to lead this battle, as demonstrated by their great power of congregation in numerous acts of protest.
This report is part of the
Rainforest Defenders series,
an openDemocracy/democraciaAbierta project supported by the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Journalism Fund.
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