Observatory identifies 42 politicians with farms on indigenous lands

In Brazil, 42 politicians and their first-degree relatives are owners of farms located within indigenous lands, which constitutes an irregularity from a legal point of view, and threatens the constitutional rights of the original peoples who live there. This is what the second part of the dossier The Invaders, prepared by the observatory De Olho nos Ruralistas, denounces. The document is being released tonight (14) at Cine Petra Belas Artes, in São Paulo, accompanied by a debate on the theme and a screening of the award-winning documentary Vento na Frontier, which portrays a conflict between farmers and Guarani Kaiowá indigenous people on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. The first part of the report was released during Indigenous April, the month in which efforts are made to give greater visibility to the numerous struggles of the indigenous cause across the country. The document had already informed the identification of 1,692 overlaps, of which the portion for which political clans are responsible now stands out. The observatory detected overlapping lands based on the analysis of land data from the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), more specifically, from the bases of the Land Management System (Sigef), the National Rural Registry System (SNCR) and the National Real Estate Certification System (SNCI). The politicians and their network have 96,000 hectares in their hands, equivalent to the sum of the urban areas of Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. With 17 cases, Mato Grosso do Sul leads the list. Then appear Mato Grosso and Maranhão, with seven each. Purchasing power According to the coordinator of the observatory’s projects, researcher Bruno Bassi, the actors who carry out the illegal practice and who threaten indigenous peoples are both politicians and people with purchasing power, who finance such actions and maintain themselves in a certain web of relationships . “Although we have a relatively small number of politicians identified with direct overlap, it is interesting to observe that, in fact, it is not such a small number when we think it is, a [total] which corresponds to a relatively high percentage of that number, considering that one would expect that the image that one normally has of ranchers who dispute areas in indigenous lands, and this is a discourse that is strongly reinforced by the corporate media, is that they are unknown people, who the promoter of these conflicts is the small grileiro, a guy nobody knows, who is in the interior of Brazil, promoting this type of action”, says Bruno. “The advance of territory, especially agribusiness, over indigenous territories or territories claimed by people Indigenous peoples is promoted, on the one hand, by capital, by large companies and corporations, by multinationals, big businessmen, and has a political interface, which ranges from direct ownership by people who are involved in this political universe. We have a governor, federal deputies, a senator, five mayors and deputy mayors with current mandates and 23 former mayors, which demonstrates the size of this municipal sphere, of local power, in land ownership. We have state deputies”, he adds. The coordinator makes another observation about overlaps: “We have since declared cases of invasion, that is, they are in areas [indígenas] homologated, which are attempts at land grabbing, such as the case of Senator Jaime Bagattoli, made by the former owner of the area and which was kept in the land records of the SNCI, and there are cases in which this overlap often prevents the demarcation of the territory itself” , stresses Bruno. And these deadlines have been even longer due to political advances in the Chamber of Deputies. [dos Deputados], especially, in approving the time frame for the demarcation of indigenous lands, which is the basis for contesting several of these processes, a thesis that ignores that these indigenous people were continuously expelled from these areas, mainly during the 40s, 50s and 60s, behind the colonization fronts, in which the Brazilian State itself, through the Indian Protection Service (SPI), expelled these communities and relocated them in extremely small areas, in relation to the territory previously occupied by the indigenous people”. of land in Brazil? The popular movements that fight for agrarian reform and the demarcation of indigenous lands, rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution? Or the land grabbers who invade millions of hectares in the Amazon, in the cerrado and in other biomes?” These are some of the scores that appear in the report. In this line, which criticizes the criminalization of social movements, Bruno Biassi concludes by saying that what the observatory proposes , with the document, is the inversion of the logic that has always been disseminated. “We are also going to guide the invasion of land by agribusiness”, he argues. PL-RO) and federal deputy Dilceu Sperafico (PP-PR). Bagattoli is currently a member of the Environment Commission, the Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Commission and the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of Non-Governmental Organizations – NGOs. Sperafico is a member of the Committee on Agriculture, Livestock, Supply and Rural Development, in the Chamber of Deputies, and published a video, on his Instagram account, celebrating the approval of Bill 490/2007 in the Chamber, which had his favorable vote. In the video, he justified the vote, saying that rural landowners have had their farms threatened by processes of “improper” demarcation of indigenous lands in Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná. And it is precisely in Mato Grosso do Sul – a state with a reputation for violence in the countryside and murders of indigenous people, documented by entities such as the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and the Missionary Indigenous Council (Cimi) – where Sperafico has a farm, Maracay , in the municipality of Amambai. The property he owns covers more than four thousand hectares, according to the Keeping an Eye on the Ruralists observatory, and is located on the Iguatemipeguá Indigenous Land, owned by the Guarani Kaiowá. In the case of Bagattoli, the farm in an irregular situation is São José, located in the municipality of Corumbiara, in Rondônia. The portion that is superimposed is 2,500 hectares in relation to the Rio Omerê Indigenous Land, a place inhabited by the Akuntsu and Kanoê peoples, who live in voluntary isolation. The assets declared by Jaime Bagattoli to the Superior Electoral Court, which includes several rural lots, exceed R$ 55 million. Sperafico’s exceeds R$ 46 million. Invaders of territories belonging to native peoples were also responsible for financing 29 campaigns of candidates for election or re-election to the Presidency of the Republic, the National Congress, state governments and legislative assemblies. The amount of donations exceeded R$ 5.3 million. Considering only people linked to the Agricultural Parliamentary Front, what is observed is that 18 members received R$ 3.6 million in campaign donations, disbursed by farmers linked to overlaps. Agência Brasil tried to contact federal deputy Dilceu Sperafico and senator Jaime Bagattoli, but none of them responded to the report’s questions.

Agência Brasil