Indigenous protests

On Tuesday of last week, indigenous peoples occupied the Esplanada dos Ministérios (“Esplanade of Ministries”) in Brasília and marched to the Praça dos Três Poderes (“Park of the Three Branches”) to protest government measures that make demarcation of indigenous lands more difficult, as well as the federal government’s poor environmental management.

The march was part of the Luta pela Vida (“Fight for Life”) occupation that camped out in Brasília all last week. About 6000 individuals from 170 peoples are participating in the occupation. The leaders of this movement said that the action is:

"pela garantia de seus direitos originários e contra o marco temporal". Os indígenas também denunciam "o agravamento da violência contra os povos originários, dentro e fora dos territórios tradicionais".

“to guarantee their original rights and against the temporal benchmark.” The indigenous protestors also denounce “the worsening of violence against original peoples, inside and outside their traditional territories.”

The marco temporal (temporal benchmark) is an element of the government’s efforts to restrict the demarcation of indigenous lands that would only allow original peoples to claim lands that they occupied at the time of Brazil’s most recent constitution - 1988. An ongoing case (heard this past week by the Brazilian Supreme Court and to be resumed in September) is pitting the idea of the temporal benchmark against what is in that 1988 Constitution:

A demarcação de terras indígenas é um direito garantido pela Constituição Federal de 1988, que estabelece aos indígenas o chamado "direito originário" sobre as suas terras ancestrais. Isso quer dizer que eles são considerados por lei os primeiros e naturais donos desse território, sendo obrigação da União demarcar todas as terras ocupadas originariamente por esses povos.

The demarcation of indigenous lands is a right guaranteed by the 1988 Federal Constitution, which establishes for indigenous peoples the so-called “original right” over their ancestral lands. This means that they are considered by law to be the first and natural owners of this territory, and it is the Union’s obligation to demarcate all lands originally occupied by these peoples.

(Quotes in Portuguese from g1.globo.com.)