In photos: The Brazilian tribal lands under threat from farmers and miners

Bruno Kelly
Thursday 11 April 2019 12:38 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

A decade after the Macuxi people won a bloody legal battle to expel rice planters from their reservation in a remote part of Brazil, their hold over ancestral lands has come under threat again from new right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro.

The sprawling 1.7 million hectares (6,600 square miles) of savannah on the border with Venezuela – a reservation called Raposa Serra do Sol – is home to 25,000 native people whose main livelihood is raising cattle.

But the land remains coveted by commercial farmers and mining prospectors, who believe the area is rich in minerals such as gold, diamonds, copper, molybdenum, bauxite and even niobium, a metal used to strengthen steel that Bolsonaro considers “strategic”.

“In the fight for our land rights, 21 of us died,” says Chief Aldenir Lima, the leader of the 70 communities on the reservation. “Since then we recovered what we had lost and today, the white farmers’ rice plantations have been replaced by our cattle herds.”

That could change if Bolsonaro follows through on his promise to review the borders of the reservation – part of his push to repeal a ban on commercial farming and mining on indigenous lands.

Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in