Bolsonaro: Ancestors’ right to indigenous lands will end agribusiness

Brasilia, August 26 (EFE). – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro asserted Thursday that the positive decision of the Supreme Court on the “ancestral” right to land defended by indigenous peoples will “end” agribusiness in the country, one of the countries of the world. The largest producers and exporters of foodstuffs.

“If the previous understanding changed, we would immediately have to designate another region equivalent to the southeast region as Aboriginal land, by order of the judiciary, and then the agricultural trade ended,” Bolsonaro told his supporters as he left the palace. da Alvorada, his presidential residence in Brasilia.

“People say the land belongs to them (the Indians), but they already own 14% of the land and we will demarcate the equivalent of that,” stressed the head of state and leader of the Brazilian far-right.

For Bolsonaro, it is a policy that “comes from abroad” in order to “make agribusiness unviable”

He emphasized that “many European countries criticize us for our environmental policy. Unfortunately we have fires and deforestation, but we have more than 60% that have been preserved and they don’t even have 10%. Foreigners want to buy these lands.”

Thousands of indigenous people have been stationed since last weekend in front of Brazil’s Supreme Court awaiting the trial, set to begin on Thursday, which must decide on this alleged right.

“The Indians want production and they don’t want more services from the state, but many of them are ‘young poor’ people who don’t know who and why they are protesting,” the president said.

What is under consideration is a thesis known as the “time-frame”, according to which indigenous peoples can only claim lands they have already occupied as of October 5, 1988, when the current Brazilian constitution was promulgated.

However, indigenous movements assert that this thesis ends with “ancestral rights” and also favor the legalization of areas illegally occupied by landowners prior to that date.

The case reached the Supreme Court through a lawsuit brought by the National Corporation of the State of India (Funai) against a decision of a secondary court that recognized the secular landowner of the Xokleng, Guaraní and Kaingang ethnic groups before a public body from the southern state of Santa Catarina. EFE

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