Lula resumes the creation of indigenous reserves in Brazil that Bolsonaro stopped dead

The bureaucratic file had been ready for many years, pending only the signature of the President of the Republic of Brazil.

Who knows how and when the news will reach the 249 indigenous Nadöb people who live in an area of ​​5,500 square kilometers upstream of the Negro River in Amazonia that their ancestral home is officially the Uneiuxi Indigenous Land.

From now on, the law protects them to expel the invaders.

Uneiuxi is the largest of the six new reserves created this Friday by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

It is a measure with which Lula recognizes the role of the natives as the most effective guardians of the jungle and with which he intends to combat deforestation.

And it also means

With these there are already 427 existing indigenous reserves.

When announcing the six new ones, Lula has affirmed that it is only the beginning: “We are going to work hard to carry out the greatest possible number of demarcations of indigenous lands.

Not only because it is a right of the indigenous peoples, but also because if we want to reach 2030 with zero deforestation, we have to demarcate”, has proclaimed together with Raoni Metuktire, the leader who popularized the cause of the Amazon at the hands of the singer Sting and the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara.

Creating that portfolio and placing this native activist was his first political gesture to this group.

Lula has come to promise that he will sign all pending files before 2026, when he ends his term.

Experience and data indicate that the natives are the most effective guardians of the forest.

Those areas that are legally indigenous lands and, therefore, where the law protects the local inhabitants so that any foreigner who depletes the natural resources is expelled, are the most intact, the best preserved and therefore the most useful. to help curb climate change.

Reducing deforestation to zero by 2030 is one of Lula's promises in his third term.

It will not be easy in view of the most recent data on illegal logging of tropical forests in the Amazon.

Its Minister for the Environment, the veteran Marina Silva, has already warned that there is no silver bullet to stop this destruction that reduces the planet's ability to absorb greenhouse gases.

The Nadöb of the Río Negro had been waiting for seventeen years for the signature of the head of state in Brasilia —2,500 kilometers from their village— to grant them, with all of the law, the usufruct of the lands located in the Amazon that their ancestors had inhabited for a long time. immemorial.

The Nadöb have some neighbors there who are known to exist and who prefer to live without contact with others.

In the absence of knowing their real name, they are called the isolates of the Christmas stream (os Isolados do Igarapé do Natal).

This decree also protects them.

Among the new reserves, that of the ava-canoreiro, who are only nine people, live in an area of ​​310 hectares in the state of Goias and have been waiting for almost three decades for the final signature.

Anthropologist Tiago Moreira, from the Socio-Environmental Institute, explains over the phone that they are the survivors of a group contacted in the eighties who were victims of an attempted genocide.

He recalls that "in the sixties the

[latifundistas] hunted them."

The remaining new reserves are Arara do Rio Amônia, in Acre, with 434 inhabitants;

Kariri-Xocó, in Alagoas, with 2,300 people, Rio dos Índios, in Rio Grande do Sul, with 143, and Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú, in Ceará, with 580 people.

Lula has been careful when choosing these six among the more than 70 dossiers that for years have only lacked the presidential signature.

At first glance, they are all small and each one remains in a state.

But, as the anthropologist Moreira, who knows in detail the progress made in recent decades and what remains pending, points out, the president has made an effort in an "attempt to weigh the political and legal risk, in such a way that he has avoided [demarcating] lands that could have the potential for conflict, but at the same time sending a signal that it unclogs the agenda of recognition of indigenous lands”.

There are another 68 files whose promoters have concluded the laborious process for the authorities to recognize their usufruct (including expeditions to the jungle to mark the boundaries and tons of paperwork), but they are still awaiting the presidential decree.

The Lula government shows a totally non-existent political will in Bolsonaro's time, when the opposite happened.

The previous president kept his promise to “not demarcate one more inch of land” for indigenous peoples or biodiversity.

He always echoed that deep-rooted idea in the rural interior that Brazil "gave a lot of land to a few Indians."

Bolsonaro is in favor of assimilating the natives and also made an enormous effort to dismantle the institutional structure dedicated to protecting the environment and the indigenous people.

Lula himself recently recalled that the environmental protection agency (Ibama) has 700 officials, when it had 1,700.

Among his plans is to call an opposition.

The president has announced the six new reserves to his indigenous compatriots in Brasilia, in the Terra Livre camp, which the natives celebrate every year in the capital to bring their demands to the political heart of Brazil.

Representatives of the very diverse peoples from all corners of the country have met there for five days to discuss their needs, their rights and celebrate their culture.

The country's one million aborigines ―some of whom live in the 12% of the territory that are indigenous reserves while others migrated to the cities― were beginning to get impatient because almost four months into his term, Lula had still not taken any steps to satisfy their main political claim.

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