Brazil averts ’a massacre’ by blocking eviction of Indians | PLACE
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Brazil’s highest court has averted a “massacre” by blocking the eviction of 5,000 indigenous people from disputed land, one of their leaders said, in a ruling that boosted ancestral claims.
Guarani-Kaiowa Indians occupied the land in the southwestern Mato Grosso do Sul state in 2016, amid rising violence and tensions following Indian affairs agency FUNAI’s pledge to return ancestral land - owned by farmers - to indigenous people.
“We were expecting a new Caarapo massacre,” indigenous leader Kunumi Apyka’i Rory said, referring to a 2016 attack on indigenous activists by farmers in the same region.
“It would be a bloodshed but because of Nhanderu and our prayers we managed,” he said in a statement by Conselho Indigenista Missionario (Cimi), a monitoring group linked to the Catholic Church.
South America’s largest country is grappling with scores of deadly unresolved indigenous land issues, in one of the world’s clearest examples of the conflict between preserving indigenous culture and promoting economic development.
Cimi says hundreds of indigenous people are killed each year in territorial conflicts with ranchers in Brazil, rich in land to be exploited and low on deeds and property records.[...]
Brazil’s 900,000 indigenous people - who are disproportionately impacted by poverty and other social problems - control about 13 percent of its territory, mostly in the remote Amazon rainforest.
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