Brazil's indigenous leaders ask President Pedro Sánchez for support to protect their lands and environment

The indigenous people of Brazil are a small minority that is extremely well organized and has a political weight far above its demographic weight. The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, visited the Indigenous Peoples Memorial in Brasilia this Wednesday to hear first-hand the desires and demands of this group that represents less than 1% of the population but plays a crucial role in protecting the tropical forest and thereby mitigate climate change. Sánchez has announced that the line of support for indigenous people developed by the AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation) will finance two projects in Brazil for the first time.

After meeting and having lunch with Lula, Sánchez visited the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, to whom he stressed that the defense of democratic values ​​is one of the pillars of the. social progress. And he has visited an exhibition of the damage caused in the assault on the headquarters of the three powers in January. 2023.

The Indigenous Peoples Memorial welcomes visitors with a humble sign that reminds them: “12,000 years on this earth.” The visit begins with an exhibition of. spectacular feather headdresses that give an idea of ​​the rich diversity of this group.

The arrival to power of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a little over a year ago marked the end of the dark Bolsonaro era for the indigenous people of Brazil. The far-right president gave wings to those who prey on the jungle, wanted to legalize the commercial exploitation of minerals from indigenous lands and kept his promise of not demarcating a single centimeter of land. For this reason, Lula's victory was a balm for them. And he also had the gesture of creating a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and appointing an indigenous woman to lead it, Sonia Guajajara. He placed another native, Joenia Wapichana, at Funai, the official foundation to protect indigenous people. The current president has also created six new reserves, many fewer than the indigenous people demand.

This same afternoon, several of the president's interlocutors have insisted on the capital importance that the lands that the native peoples are still settled in require legal protection to defend themselves from the constant attacks they suffer from poachers of all kinds and in the face of the expansion of the agricultural sector. . One of them has gone so far as to say that the main enemy of the indigenous people right now is Congress, where Bolsonaro's allies are the majority.

They have also emphasized that their diversity. The 1.7 million indigenous people belong to 266 towns and speak 160 languages. Currently they defend their rights aboard motorcycles with satellite phones or with legal arguments before the Supreme Court.

One of the projects that Spain is going to finance, called Morîîpe Upastakon Yamoinonpa (Taking good care of our land), will support the Indigenous Council of the State of Roraima, which brings together 465 communities on 10 million hectares. The idea is to reinforce the work they do as security agents for the indigenous people themselves, brigade members, etc. The other will finance Funai projects to train natives in the environmentally sustainable management of their own territories based on ancestral knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation.

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