2024-09-26 14:06:09
(ED) Juarez indigenous leader Sawré at the ceremony to sign the declaration decree for TI Sawré Muybu, together with the Minister of Justice Ricardo Lewandowski (third, right) | Robson Alves / Ministry of Justice
Text updated on 9/26/2024, at 7:43 pm
*With the collaboration of Luiza de Souza Barros
This Wednesday evening (25/9), the Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, signed the declaration order of Sawré Muybu Indigenous Land (TI) (LÍ), with just over 178,000 hectares, equivalent to approximately 255,000 football pitches.
Now declared the permanent possession of the Munduruku people, the area in the region of the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairão, in the southwest of Pará, is one of the epicenters of illegal mining in the Amazon (see the map below). The TI is one of the most pressured and threatened in the country due to illegal mining, deforestation and theft of public lands.
“It was a struggle, with so many ‘self-outlines’. It put a lot of pressure on MJ himself [Ministério da Justiça]at Funai [Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas]for a livelihood, for saying that the territory was ours”, celebrated Alessandra Korap, the leader of the Munduruku people, emotionally in post on social media.
Due to the delay in the official recognition of the area, in recent years the indigenous people themselves have made “self-outlines” in order to pressure the government to continue with the formal administrative process.
“It’s a historic moment! Now, the land is yours”, said Lewandowski, shortly after the signing of the ordinance, together with ten indigenous leaders in Brasília. The Minister pointed out that the measure is important to protect IT from criminals.
“Today’s act has an even more relevant aspect because we are talking about a site which, unfortunately, has become a symbol of illegal mining and illegal logging in recent years. Illegal mining has also affected the region with mercury contamination, mainly affecting women and children,” he said.
The declaration ordinance is one of the most important steps in the limitation process. Now, it is possible to physically delimit the IT borders, then approved by the President of the Republic and, finally, registered by a notary office, complying with all the administrative procedure.
This is the fourth ordinance signed by the Department of Justice during the current administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as President. At the beginning of the month, Lewandowski had declared the TIs Apiaká for Pontal and Isolation (MT), Corrosive e Big Cobra (SHOVEL). Before that, the last act of this kind was published in 2018, during the government of Michel Temer. Lula himself signed the ratification decrees for ten other territories.
The people of Munduruku have been waiting for delimitation for almost 20 years. It was initiated by Funai in 2007. The borders were defined in 2016 and the TI was ready to be declared since 2019, but the process was paralyzed amid the general suspension of border procedures decided by Jair Bolsonaro.
Mining and deforestation
In recent years, the Sawré Muybu TI has suffered from deforestation, mainly as a result of mining. The approval of the borders in 2016 helped to reduce invasions, but the situation worsened again under Bolsonaro’s government. In addition to continuing to protect illegal mining, turning a blind eye to the invasion of protected areas and paralyzing borders, the federal administration destroyed and emptied environmental inspection operations in the Amazon at the time.
A Itaituba National Forest IIA federal Conservation Unit, approximately 85% of the extension of the Sawré Muybu TI overlapped, but even this was not enough to contain the action of miners and loggers.
Source: MapBiomass 2024
In line with the evolution of the general rate of deforestation in the Amazon, the destruction in IT jumped from 25 hectares in 2018 to 146 hectares in 2020, an increase of 484%. Of the 1,800 hectares destroyed so far in indigenous territory, around 27% were destroyed during Bolsonaro’s government, between 2019 and 2022.
In 2020, the then Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, visited the region as part of an inspection operation against the invaders of indigenous territories. He was met by mining leaders in Jacareacanga and made statements defending the legality of the activity. In 2022, in turn, the garimpeiros were found at Palácio do Planaltotogether with local politicians, to discuss the same issue.
The conditions were created for an increase in violence against indigenous leaders. In March 2021, the Munduruku Indigenous Women’s Association (Wakomborum), in Jacareacanga, in the same region, was vandalized, burnt and looted. In May of the same year, the house of Maria Leusa Kaba Munduruku, the coordinator of Wakomborum, was set on fire. Maria Leusa condemned the action of the miners and the crime was aggravated by an inspection operation carried out against them the previous days.
To get an idea of the impacts of mining, a compilation of research carried out by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), in 2021, concluded that 60% of the population of TI Sawré Muybu was contaminated with mercury levels above what is prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Infrastructure works
The limitation on the progress of priority infrastructure works for the federal government could have uncertain consequences. Since the 2010s, the Munduruku have opposed projects to install hydroelectric plants in the region. Because of your struggle, Ibama archived the licensing of the São Luís do Tapajós plant. This year, however, the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel) accepted a request from Eletrobrás to restart the project.
Recently, indigenous people have been fighting to be adequately consulted regarding the construction and socio-environmental impacts of the Ferrogrão railway, between Sinop (MT) and Itaituba (PA). In July, Munduruku organizations withdrew, in protest, from the Working Group created by the government to discuss the project. They claim that the government progressed in studies of the work and Aneel included it in the auctions to be held in 2025 without consulting them.
View of the village of Sawré Muybu Indigenous Land (PA) | Fábio Nascimento / Greenpeace
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