In non-demarcated lands, conflicts between indigenous people gain strength and become insurmountable

Job is threatened with death. On Panamim Island, in the middle Solimões River, loggers act as if there was no indigenous land there.

“I’m going to shoot you in the chest,” threatened an intruder. “You’ll die with a machete blow,” shouted another.

For 20 years, since he became chief, Jó dos Anjos Samías, 50, has denounced the action of invaders in the Boará/Boarazinho Indigenous Land, on Panamim Island, in Tefé (AM).

In recent years, however, the actions have become more ostentatious and intimidating. Illegal loggers and fishermen feel empowered by the increasingly distant demarcation of the territory.

They pass by the houses of the indigenous people, threaten the chief and go into the forest at the bottom to extract wood or practice the “tufa tufa”, a predatory practice of fish trawling on an island that has 38 lakes.

“Because of the wood, they have already tried to ‘trigger’ me. And the complaints are no use. The loggers keep shooting to intimidate”, says Jó. “They feel comfortable because the land is not demarcated.”

Boará/Boarazinho has seven villages, with around 20 families each, mainly from the Kambeba people. In 2016, the Federal Court in Amazonas determined that Funai (National Indian Foundation) should complete the process of demarcating the territory within three years.

The MPF (Federal Public Ministry) pointed out, in the action that asked for demarcation, the presence of indigenous people on the island at least since the 1960s.

In the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), the chances of demarcation were reduced to zero. The president promised not to demarcate even an inch of indigenous land, fulfilled and renewed his promise in the fight for reelection.

Until today, the process of Boará/Boarazinho is in the claim stage, according to the Funai database and the annual survey carried out by Cimi (Indigenist Missionary Council).

In addition to the increasingly constant and aggressive presence of invaders, a reality leaps to the eyes of those who visit non-demarcated indigenous territories: the intensification of internal conflicts between leaders, often irreconcilably. And these conflicts are related to invasions of territories.

On the island of Panamim, Jó and Francisco wage a relentless dispute. The first accuses the second of having taken over his village.

Job led the Boará village, which means gentle snake, according to him. He says that Francisco took possession of the community, which forced the emergence of a new village: Boará de Cima, led by Jó.

“Francis is a supporter of the invaders”, says Jó. when the Sheet been in the indigenous land, the leadership of Boará was not on the island. The reporter was unable to contact him later.

The conflict bothers the leaders of the other communities, like Vanusa de Barros, 38, ahead of Boarazinho. Vanusa’s gestures and words are favorable to Job. She recognizes in him a pioneering spirit in the region.

“The situation gets worse every year, these loggers were unaware of the disease in the pandemic”, says Jó. “And there are also the areeiros and those who steal our açaí, spoiling the fruits that are not ripe.”

In two years, Jó made five complaints to federal agencies in Tefé, such as Funai, PF and MPF. The last complaint was made on August 16. In the city, he avoids taking the same paths, for fear of threats. “Because it is not demarcated, the invaders feel safe and own the land.”

In Boará/Boarazinho, the indigenous people do not speak Kambeba, and there is no indigenous teaching material. The schools offer bilingual education, in an attempt to rescue the language.

The Santa União Indigenous Land is also deeply divided. The main community revolves around the couple Alexandre Arantes Carvalho, 104, and Maria Ramos Ferreira, 104. In the village, he is the only one who speaks Kokama. A brother in the neighboring community also speaks the mother tongue.

“My parents were Peruvians and they came here on a raft, because they learned about the abundance of fish”, says Alexandre, father of ten children, nine of whom are in the indigenous land, which is in the Middle Solimões region, three hours away by boat. from Fonte Boa (AM).

The community where Alexandre’s brother lives, however, does not have a harmonious relationship with the main village. “They’re too lazy to speak kokama,” he says.

The conflicts have already been very deep, with “near death”, according to the reports of the indigenous people.

“The relatives of the other community don’t want indigenous health care, they don’t want to be indigenous. They are kokamas, but they think it’s ugly to be Indians”, says tuxaua (cacique) João Arantes, 64.

Santa União is adjacent to the Auati-Paraná extractive reserve. For a long time, the Itaboca community, where Alexandre’s brother lives, felt more integrated into the reserve than into the indigenous land.

The members of the main village resent the lack of engagement of the neighbors, for ten years, in the fight for the demarcation.

“There is a lot of invasion here. The land is not demarcated, and these loggers and fishermen only believe in what is demarcated, they say that we have no rights”, says Arantes. “The invaders act motivated by the idea that the demarcation is not going to come out.”

When they spoke to Sheet, the following day, the residents of Itaboca stated that they now understand that demarcation is important. “We saw that there would be no future in the extractive reserve”, says Luiz Arantes, Alexandre’s nephew. “I can’t run away, I can’t say that I’m not there [indígena].”

The residents of the community started to share with others the quotas of the pirarucu and tambaqui management plan, the main source of income in the place and the activity that most involves young indigenous people. A year, 2,100 to 3,400 arapaima are allowed to be fished, depending on the annual quota.

Since 2019, Funai stopped monitoring and intermediating the hiring of buyers for these fish, which left the indigenous people vulnerable and exposed to blows, according to Joel Ferreira Arantes, 38, Alexandre’s grandson.

“The buyer would get Funai’s release in Tefé, and then we closed the purchase and sale contract. Funai participated in the contract. This guaranteed security and assistance. Now we feel alone in fishing, with no one on our side to help solve the problem. problems”, says Joel.

Funai also abandoned inspection actions in the region. The fishermen themselves have organized a surveillance service and take turns monitoring 63 lakes.

The federal government agency did not respond to questions in the report.

In November 2016, as in the case of the Boará/Boarazinho land, the Federal Court in Amazonas determined that Funai must complete the Santa União demarcation process within three years. Funai’s omission had lasted ten years, according to the MPF’s action.

The demarcation documents, obtained by the report via the Access to Information Law, show long periods of paralysis in the process. The last paralysis lasted from August 2015 to July 2019, when a Funai coordinator referred the administrative records.

He pointed out in a dispatch, addressed to the General Coordination of Isolated and Recent Contact Indians, that the identification and delimitation studies of the indigenous land had been authorized, and that there was priority in the process due to the judicial decision, whose deadline would expire in four months. .

The coordinator of Indigenous Peoples, Bruno da Cunha Araújo Pereira, received the case and sent it forward three days later, on July 22, 2019. It was one of the last acts of the process, again paralyzed.

Bruno was dismissed from his position in September 2019, the first year of the Bolsonaro government, due to his work to inspect indigenous lands with the presence of isolated people.

He graduated from Funai and started working directly with the indigenous people of Vale do Javari. On June 5, 2022, he was brutally murdered by illegal fishermen, alongside journalist Dom Phillips, in a scenario of unprecedented escalation of conflicts and invasions in the region.

^{The report was supported by the Amazon Rainforest Journalism Fund, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.}