This content was published on June 7, 2023 – 10:33 p.m. June 7, 2023 – 10:33 p.m
(Updates with reactions from indigenous peoples)
Brasilia, 7 June (EFE). – One of the judges of Brazil’s Supreme Court this Wednesday shelved a trial on indigenous people’s “ancestral rights” to land because it required “further consideration” on a “very complex” issue.
Judge André Mendonça asked the presidency of the court for a longer term, which will be determined later, in order to analyze a “very complex and relevant issue because of its historical and legal problems”.
Mendonça called for this time after Judge Alexandre de Moraes suggested the court adopt a “middle ground” of outright rejection of the so-called “temporary framework,” which recognizes as indigenous only those lands that the original peoples had occupied on October 5, 1988. when the current constitution was promulgated.
Voting one against and one in favor of this thesis, Moraes said that the court, as a constitutional court, could not accept this “temporary framework” but also could not “ignore” the rights of many settlers who had settled “in good faith”. may. . on land claimed by indigenous peoples and historically subsidized by the state itself.
Although Moraes voted against the “temporary framework,” he insisted that the judiciary “cannot turn a blind eye to settlers who have farmed their lands for more than 100 years, are protected by public power, and are now in their third or fourth generation live.”
The judge proposed various alternatives to solve these problems.
These include compensation for landowners who may eventually be withdrawn from the lands they occupy, or the ability for indigenous people to accept from the state other lands equal in area to those they claim, on a case-by-case basis.
De Moraes stressed that there was no way these compensations could be considered for settlers who forcibly settled on land owned by the indigenous people.
Several indigenous leaders welcomed De Moraes’ vote but urged their own constituents to remain mobilized to defend their rights.
Speaking to journalists at an indigenous camp set up in Brasilia, MP Célia Xakriabá said that this Wednesday indigenous people had “a day of joy” and “a small” taste of “victory”.
However, Xakriabá has urged indigenous people to remain “vigilant” ahead of the upcoming Senate vote on a bill that would turn the “temporary framework” into law and which he says will put pressure on authorities to protect theirs set territory.
At stake in the trial are the fate of hundreds of lands claimed by indigenous people, who have mobilized across most of the country in recent days to defend their “ancestral rights.”
In fact, around 50 representatives of different ethnic groups attended the court’s plenary session, accompanied by Sônia Guajajara, Minister for Indigenous Peoples, a portfolio created on January 1 by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The case reached the Supreme Court from lower courts and via a state lawsuit challenging a second-instance court ruling that recognized a public entity in southern Santa Catarina state as the owner of land.
Occupied for centuries by the Xokleng, Guaraní and Kaingang ethnic groups, these areas were forcibly evicted in the middle of the last century and eventually ended up in the hands of the Fundación para el Amparo Tecnológico de Santa Catarina, which benefited from today’s ruling being debated by the Supreme Court .
That decision, based on the concept of “temporary framework,” asserted that these lands were owned by the municipality of Santa Catarina in October 1988 and ignored that the indigenous people had reclaimed some of these settlements as of 1996. EFE
ed/cm/mp/wgm/enb
(photo)(video)
© EFE 2023. The redistribution and retransmission of all or part of the content of the Efe Services is expressly prohibited without the prior and express consent of Agencia EFE SA