Without demarcation, indigenous lands suffer from invasions and the presence of factions

A story full of curves. Indigenists from Funai (Fundação Nacional do Índio) defined the trajectory of the Jaminawas, accustomed to internal conflicts and long pilgrimages in the Amazon.

The Jaminawas keep the memories of deaths in clashes between families alive. They made a pilgrimage for reconciliation and survival, until they were accommodated by the state in a land — the Jaminawa of the Caeté River — in 1997, allowing an armistice for what indigenists called “intertribal wars.”

Now, 25 years later, in the interior of Acre, the conflicts between the Jaminawas have another origin: young people from different villages are co-opted by the biggest criminal factions in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The PCC and the Comando Vermelho are in Sena Madureira (AC), the closest town to the Jaminawa indigenous land on the Caeté River. It’s 80 km away — or, on average, three and a half hours by car over a rough dirt road, the same period spent when it’s possible to take a boat, in the flood season.

The factions co-opted young Jaminawas, as they described to Sheet three parents of indigenous people arrested in the city penitentiary on suspicion of drug trafficking. There are eight recent arrests, according to the reports made inside a simple wooden house with a thatched roof, in the main village of the territory.

As they are part of rival groups, they cannot share the same cells, and family members have to organize themselves for visits on different days. In the villages, when they are free, these indigenous people are no longer found.

Amid the advance of factions in the last five years, the Jaminawas are left to their own devices, in an indigenous land without demarcation. There is no recognition of the occupation of the territory, delimitation and consistent monitoring or inspection against invaders by bodies such as Funai.

Villages in Jaminawa do Rio Caeté lack energy, clean water and schools — the school in the main village has collapsed. In improvised spaces, teaching only exists until the fourth year of elementary school.

The abandonment occurs despite the existence of a Federal Court decision that determined Funai to conclude the report on the territorial occupation made by the Jaminawas, for the purpose of demarcation. The decision was rendered in December 2016. The deadline given was six months. Nothing was made.

Documents from the demarcation process show that Funai, in the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), only reconstituted a technical group, to prepare the report, in February 2022. This is just the initial stage of a long and bureaucratic process that can, one day, culminate in the demarcation.

The situation of the Jaminawa land on the Rio Caeté highlights the consequences of Bolsonaro’s policy of barring any and all demarcation. The approval of this process passes through the pen of the president, who fulfilled the promise and renewed it, in case of reelection: “There will not be a square centimeter demarcated”.

The reduction of demarcations has been progressive over the last presidential terms, but Bolsonaro is the first to zero both the declarations of inauguration —acts that precede the approvals— and the definitive demarcations, according to consultations with the Official Gazette of the Union and data collected by Cimi ( Indigenist Missionary Council) and ISA (Socio-environmental Institute).

Federal court decisions are not enforced. In 2018, the year Bolsonaro was elected, there were 54 decisions determining the progress of the demarcation processes, given the historic lethargy of Funai. In the final stretch of the term, after appeals in court, 20 processes are still in the claim phase; 30, under study; 3, in restudy; and only 1 is in the declaration of ownership phase.

Funai’s database registers 417 approved and regularized indigenous lands. Another 235 have processes in progress, which makes a total of 652. When all claims are included, which is compiled year by year by Cimi, there are 1,300 indigenous lands, twice the number taken into account by Funai.

When contacted, the agency did not respond to questions in the report.

By putting into practice the “not an inch” policy, Bolsonaro set a standard for these territories. THE Sheet traveled 6,000 km, visited seven indigenous lands in the Amazon —five not demarcated and two demarcated, which suffer from the consequences of this policy— and found a reality common to the places, in an increasingly serious escalation: multiple invasions by loggers, fishermen, hunters and land grabbers ; leaders threatened with death; and insurmountable internal conflicts.

The almost total absence of Funai, with the consequent expansion of surveillance fronts by the indigenous themselves, is also a constant. The report had access to documents of administrative proceedings through the Access to Information Law and consulted lawsuits with decisions in favor of demarcations. The stories will be told in five chapters, one per week.

In the Jaminawa of Rio Caeté, the indigenous people preserve the Pano language and rarely use Portuguese to communicate. In five villages, where before there were two rubber plantations, 240 indigenous people live. They arrived on the land in 1997, through the hands of the State —more specifically on the initiative of Funai—, after a history of begging in Rio Branco, 140 kilometers from Sena Madureira.

Before the streets of the capital of Acre, the indigenous people lived on land in Assis Brasil (AC), on the border with Peru and Bolivia. According to indigenists who helped the families in the search for territory, the origin of the group is in Peru. Ancestors lived peacefully in a village, until the appearance of “Peruvian caucheiros” — rubber tappers from the neighboring country.

“I was born in a rubber plantation, between the Acre and Iaco rivers”, says Antônio Jaminawa, one of the pioneers of the indigenous land. “In the rubber plantations, I cut, felled and loaded syringes. Then they killed my brother, in a relative’s fight, and I left the place. It was supposed to be me, he died by mistake.”

The choice of the territory, whose supposed owner had debts with the Union, was made because Jaminawas worked for local rubber tappers, according to Manoel Jaminawa, an indigenous health assistant. He was with Antônio on the land search expedition in 1997. He was 19 years old. Entire families were waiting for the outcome to proceed to the region.

With Funai’s approval, the Jaminawas settled in the territory. There, they maintain their hunting, fishing and cassava and banana cultivation habits. The families regained a more harmonious coexistence, which had been lost by a succession of events: the arrival of caucheiros from Peru, alcoholism in Brazilian villages, dependence on alms on street corners in Rio Branco.

The demarcation never came out. The measure would allow enforcement actions against intruders. The land is adjacent to the Cazumbá-Iracema extractive reserve, created in 2002, five years after the arrival of the Jaminawas. The reserve is dotted with rural properties, where cattle are raised, and has long stretches of degradation.

The coexistence between the two sides was already quite conflicting. A story repeated over and over is the murder of an indigenous person by a policeman in Sena Madureira, during a dispute with an extractivist. The two parties fought over land.

“There are people on the reservation who don’t like us, they don’t like Indians,” says Antônio Pedro Jaminawa, who was the victim’s father-in-law.

The race in Jaminawa do Rio Caeté, today, is for the inclusion of banana and cassava production in the lunch menu in state schools and for the construction of schools in villages without classrooms and without classes from the fifth year of elementary school. The understanding in the communities is that the demarcation would place them on the map of the Brazilian State.

Indigenous people live in fear of factions. They report threats, burned houses and exchanges of fire in other territories where there are Jaminawas in Sena Madureira, also without demarcation —São Paulino and Caiapucá. The fear extends to the stilt houses on the fringes of the municipality, maintained by the indigenous people.

A father sums up the reality of his son imprisoned in the city, suspected of involvement with a faction: “My son hunted, fished, farmed in the village. In the city, he is helpless. He wants to come back here.”