Adding to the national mobilization against Bill (PL) 490/07, which weakens the rights of original peoples, indigenous students from Unicamp and supporters held a demonstration this Tuesday (30). The proposal, which threatens the demarcation of lands and aims to allow the advancement of activities harmful to indigenous territories, was approved in the Chamber of Deputies on the same day. The PL now goes to the Federal Senate for evaluation.
“They [deputies] do not have a love for life, but rather for capital, for money. Agribusiness is total destruction. The cattle and Bible bench is very large. But we have our enchanted [beings] and our forests to ask that this be stopped when it reaches the STF [Supreme Federal Court]”, points out Marcela Pankararu, one of the students from the Unicamp Indigenous Collective, who organized the demonstration at the University.
During the mobilization, a march passed through the campus, even in the rain, moments before the vote in the Chamber. During the journey, indigenous students highlighted the importance of land demarcation, guaranteed in the Federal Constitution, both for the survival of original peoples and for the conservation of biomes.
Representatives of the Indigenous Collective read a document repudiating the PL. The proposal “deliberately ignores that indigenous peoples have been expelled from their territories for 523 years, and many were not on their traditionally inhabited lands because they had been plundered, grabbed and violently stolen,” the document states.
PL 490, in addition to making land demarcation unfeasible, points out Marcela Pankararu, “gives miners and farmers the right to enter our TIs [Indigenous Lands]. The greatest damage will be imposed on indigenous people who have no contact. They are at great risk because they may be forced into contact with other human beings.”
With the proposal, the student also says, there will be an intensification of the biome degradation process and, therefore, all of humanity will be affected. She also highlights that the PL affects the perspective of young indigenous people. “Our young people are dying and committing suicide because they think everything will end.”
Gabriel Jesuíno Flores, from the Tikuna ethnic group, from Amazonas, is a Chemistry-Physics student at Unicamp and also expressed his concern about the future of indigenous peoples if the PL advances. “We do not agree with the PL because it erases our ancestral future from the map. We, indigenous people, are fighting hard for our children and children who are growing up now.”
The law project
PL 490 intends to set the date of the promulgation of the Constitution, October 5, 1988, as a milestone for the demarcation of indigenous lands. In this way, only lands could be demarcated where, at that time, indigenous peoples were already present.
The project also aims to transfer the competence for demarcations from the Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch. Therefore, it would remove this competence from Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples), a body that has a specialized technical staff to carry out this type of process, and transfer it to Congress, largely made up of ruralists and their allies, who are interested in the indigenous lands for their economic value. Today, demarcation requires several steps, such as verifying territorial demand and studies to identify and delimit the area. The process also guarantees the right of anyone interested in the area to express themselves.
Another PL proposal is that “actions justified by national security may occur regardless of consultation with the indigenous communities involved or the competent federal indigenous body”. It therefore disrespects Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), of which Brazil is a signatory and which establishes the obligation of free, prior and informed consultation with indigenous peoples possibly affected by activities that interfere in their territories.
Furthermore, the proposal aims to change the indigenous policy of non-contact with isolated people, who could be forcibly contacted in the event of a “public utility state action”. “In practice, this allows the survival of isolated people to be threatened by any highway, hydroelectric, mining, agricultural activity and colonization project”, indicates the Observatory of Isolated Peoples.
“The PL is a huge step backwards because it assumes that indigenous people have always been able to be on the lands they claim, when in fact we know that they were expelled. The legislation, as it is now, does not mean that it is enough for indigenous people to claim land. There is a whole process that is time-consuming, slow, complex, requires different opinions and listens to all parties. So what they are trying to take away is the right to fight for it”, says professor Chantal Medaets, member of the Advisory Committee for Academic Inclusion and Participation of Indigenous Peoples at Unicamp (Caiapi).
Conduct
The urgency request for the project to be processed had 324 votes in favor and 131 against in the Chamber of Deputies. As a result, it went to the vote on May 30th and was approved by the Chamber, with 283 votes in favor, 155 against and one abstention. The text goes to the Federal Senate. If the majority of senators vote in favor of it, the text will be sent for sanction or veto by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The STF will also comment on the time frame, in June. At the beginning of the trial, in August 2021, the action's rapporteur, Minister Edson Fachin, understood that the time frame should not be applied. The second to vote, Nunes Marques, disagreed. The consideration of the matter was suspended after a request for a review from Alexandre de Moraes.
MPF and DPU point out the project’s unconstitutionality
Given the advancement of PL 490, the Federal Public Defender's Office (DPU) and the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) issued opinions opposing the proposal. Unconstitutionality as well as the impossibility of changing the Constitution through ordinary law are elements highlighted in the documents.
“The Constitution guarantees indigenous peoples original rights over the lands they traditionally occupy, with traditionality being a cultural element of the form of occupation of the territory and not a temporal element. Setting a time frame that conditions the demarcation of indigenous lands by the Brazilian State directly violates the original character of indigenous territorial rights”, highlights the MPF opinion.
In the DPU document, the acting public defender, Fernando Mauro Junior, indicates that “at no time did the last Constituent Assembly externalize any time frame for the recognition of these original rights and did not even establish a device that could mistakenly induce the interpreter to such an understanding. The constitutional text only reinforced the institute of Indigenato which, being much earlier than the 1988 promulgation, cannot be characterized as the defining framework of rights”.
The opinion also points out that the thesis of the time frame “would represent a serious violation of human rights, would contradict the duties of the Brazilian State explicit in the UN Convention [Organização das Nações Unidas] on the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide and would also contravene precedents of the Inter-American Human Rights System”.
Watch the Analisa program whose theme is "Time frame as a legal anomaly"
Check out more images from the demonstration:
