A controversial law came into force in Brazil on Thursday that restricts the protection of the land of indigenous peoples. The law is based on the principle of “limitation of time,” an argument that Brazilian indigenous peoples cannot claim exclusive rights to land that they did not physically inhabit or control before 1988, the year in which the Constitution of Brazil came into force there was no ongoing litigation Brazil came into force.
Therefore, on the basis of the law, dozens of appeals made by indigenous populations in recent decades to protect their “ancestral lands” are withdrawn: if an area is recognized as such, the population groups living there receive ownership and exploitation rights exclusively of its resources. The law will therefore allow the start of projects to build roads, dams and mines, which will radically transform these places and worsen the deforestation already underway in various parts of the country.
The decision to set a deadline in 1988 was heavily criticized because many indigenous populations had no contact with the federal government before that year and, in many cases, had already been expelled from their ancestral territories by Brazilian governments, particularly in the 21 years the military dictatorship that ended in 1985. In short, they had had no opportunity to begin a legal battle to retake these territories.
In September, Brazil's Supreme Court ruled against the law, but Parliament still approved it a week later. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) vetoed much of the law's content, but the veto was in turn partially overturned by Parliament. Several parliamentarians from the ruling parties also rejected the president's veto, including Agriculture Minister Carlos Fávaro. Indigenous Peoples Minister Sônia Guajajara said instead that she would appeal to the Supreme Court to ask for the law to be repealed.