Indigenous Women in Brazil Mobilize to Run in the 2022 Elections - 05/13/22

Indigenous Women in Brazil Mobilize to Run in the 2022 Elections

The October 2022 elections are mobilizing political parties and pre-candidates across the country to announce alliances and agreements. After all, it is a strategic election that will define the direction of Brazil’s fragile democracy. Many social sectors, especially those that have been most harmed in the last four years by the Bolsonaro government, are organizing to try to occupy seats in the state legislative assemblies and Congress. They are doing so because of the consequences of an ideologically driven action strategy of the current government that dismantled important Councils, secretariats, ministries and agencies, which were responsible for implementing specific public policies for populations that historically have always been on the margins of Brazilian society.

One of the social sectors most openly attacked by this government is the indigenous populations. The last census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE/2010) showed that indigenous people total 800,000 individuals, which represents about 0.45% of the Brazilian population. These people belong to 305 ethnic groups that speak around 274 indigenous languages, a true Brazilian sociocultural heritage. A large part of this population lives in demarcated territories. However, many others live on the sides of roads in a situation of extreme social vulnerability waiting for the conclusions of the demarcation processes of their lands that were completely interrupted when Bolsonaro came to power. Since his campaign for the presidency in 2018, Bolsonaro has claimed that he would not demarcate another centimeter of indigenous land. It is worth mentioning that, according to Art. 231, of the Federal Constitution of Brazil of 1988, it is the duty of the Brazilian State to recognize and demarcate all indigenous territories, as it is an original right of these peoples, which means something prior to the creation of the State itself and prior to any other rights. 

For this reason, the demarcation of indigenous lands continues to be the main struggle of the indigenous movement in Brazil. For indigenous peoples, territories are like extensions of their bodies, where life and the physical and cultural reproduction of future generations take place. These bodies-territories make up a holistic view that, based on the cosmology of these peoples, conceives humans and nature as integral parts of the same ecosystem, where species are interdependent on each other. Such a vision breaks with the dichotomous conception of Western Cartesian thought that sees nature as something to be conquered and exploited to serve human beings. Therefore, the indigenous lands in Brazil are the ones that most protect the environment, guarantee biodiversity and sustain the ecosystem (though rainfall regulation, carbon stock, etc.), which benefit Brazil and the world, especially in mitigating the impacts of climate change.

All this heritage is officially threatened by a set of proposed bills (PLs) currently in Congress, dubbed the “destruction package.” Bolsonaro and his support base, mostly largescale rural landowners and Neo-Pentecostal Christians, are the main articulators of these PLs, which are: PL 490/2007, Marco temporal; PL 191/2020, Mining on indigenous lands; PL 6299/2002, Pesticide package; PL 2633/2020 and PL 510/2021, Public land grabbing; PL 3729/2004 (now PL 2159/2021, under analysis by the Senate) regarding environmental licensing; and PL 2699, a statute on disarmament and possession of weapons. If approved, the “destruction package” will be implemented in indigenous lands and their surroundings through large devastating economic enterprises, such as mining, hydroelectric plants, roads, transmission grids, and monocultures with the ostensible use of pesticides. One of the most nefarious examples of this disaster is currently taking place in the Yanomami indigenous land in the state of Roraima in the middle of Amazon Rainforest. The mere existence of a bill, which has not yet been approved, but encourages mining in indigenous territories has tripled the illegal presence of prospectors in the region in search of gold and other minerals. In addition to forest destruction, soil and water contamination, other serious consequences impact the lives of the Yanomami people. There are many reports of death from murder, disease, rape of women and children, in other words, an extremely calamitous situation. So far nothing has been done to stop this attempt on the lives of the Yanomami.

In this battle, women are doubly victims, for being Indigenous and for being women. They are the ones who feel the full weight of the violence undertaken by the white man, who violates their bodies and their territories with deforestation and environmental degradation. As generators of life in the territories, they feel Mother Earth's pain much more deeply. They are the ones who feel the weight of the Brazilian State's negligence in not providing adequate medical care to their children who end up dying from easily treatable diseases such as diarrhea and/or malnutrition. They are the ones who most deeply feel the pain of seeing a child murdered due to conflicts with non-indigenous invaders. They are also the ones who have fewer opportunities for higher education, due to financial difficulties and for not having a support network to take care of their children while they study in cities.

An attempt to turn this situation around was recently announced during the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) or Free Land Camp, the largest indigenous gathering in Brazil that takes place every year during the month of April in Brasília, the country's capital. The event is organized by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), which brings together the main indigenous organizations in the country and aims to unify the mobilizations against the main threats that affect indigenous peoples. Collectively, the indigenous movement is non-partisan, however, the situation is so urgent that after 18 years of the ATL, the “elections” agenda was inevitable. At the gathering, the urgency of having indigenous representatives in the spaces where public policies are defined was discussed; only in this way would Indigenous peoples avoid the total dismantling of the Brazilian State’s indigenous policy. In this new battlefield, several indigenous leaders, most of them women, announced their pre-candidacies to the legislative assemblies of several states and also to the Chamber of Deputies at the federal level.

It is worth mentioning that in almost five centuries of oppression, the indigenous peoples of Brazil have had only two indigenous representatives elected to Congress. The first of these was 30 years ago when Mário Juruna of the Xavante people, was elected federal deputy for the state of Rio de Janeiro. And more recently, Joenia Wapichada was the first indigenous woman elected by the state of Roraima to Congress. So far, no indigenous person has been elected to the Senate. Although she is the only indigenous person in Congress, Joenia Wapichana managed to articulate a network of allies, made up of deputies and senators, representatives of organized civil society, and the indigenous movement, to try to block the “destruction package” and other threats to the people of Brazil. She is also an inspiration and motivation for others who have announced their candidacies, especially for indigenous women, who see themselves in the same place, fighting for the same causes, articulating more allies, including those from other social groups, such as Blacks, residents of quilombos and small-scale farmers, who are also organizing to run in this year's elections.

However, this is not the first time that indigenous people have gotten involved in politics. Many have even managed to get elected as city councilors and even mayors. However, women have always been marginalized from this process. They have been constantly discouraged even by their communities, because, as in the white world, politics is considered a place for men. But for some years now, indigenous women have been breaking this paradigm, raising their voices and strengthening themselves within the scope of the social movement. They organized two large marches of indigenous women, which in 2018 and 2021 brought together in Brasília more than 4,000 warriors from the most distant corners of Brazil, to fight for land and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Sônia Guajajara is one of those warriors. She had already been a vice-presidential candidate for the ticket of Guilherme Boulos of Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) in the last elections. She is now going to seek a seat as a federal deputy for the state of São Paulo, the largest electoral college in the country. On the day of the announcement of the candidacies in the Free Land Camp, Sônia Guajajara reaffirmed that it was past time for indigenous women to leave secondary roles and assume leading positions in politics, as Joenia Wapichana has done. “Today we can participate and build a Brazil that fits all of us. We cannot continue being raped and murdered. We want to strengthen this struggle beyond our village, to also build specific public policies adapted to our realities. Fighting for rights is not asking for favors, because rights are not gifts, rights are inherent”, she declared.

Another pre-candidate for federal deputy for the state of Minas Gerais is Célia Xakriabá. She recalled that she is constantly asked if she is prepared to occupy a seat in Congress. In her speech, Célia emphasized that her preparation resides in her ancestry. “I was prepared on the grounds of my territory, with my Xakriabá people. We are prepared because our hands are not dirty with blood or mud from mining, because the first person the Bolsonaro government attacked was a woman and that woman is the land. And when they attack the land, they attack all of us,” she reaffirmed. Célia also mentioned that indigenous candidacies aim at a collective benefit that goes beyond indigenous peoples, and that democracy needs to be more inclusive. “Our candidacy is for Mother Earth, as indigenous people, we are only 5% of the population of this planet and even so we protect practically 80% of its biodiversity, so we are prepared to take over Congress. We cannot resume democracy in this year 2022 without the presence of Indigenous women; we can no longer tolerate the racism of absence,” she said.

The indigenous movement is not homogeneous, but it understands that there is an urgent need for this unified articulation around the pre-candidates with the greatest possibilities of being elected. Therefore, throughout Brazil, the campaign “Relatives should vote for relatives” is already strong among indigenous communities. But there is still another battle to be won, which is the choice of parties and negotiations for the financing of indigenous campaigns, since it is up to the parties to decide how they will spend the electoral funds distributed by the government to different political parties. It is extremely necessary that the parties actually invest in these candidacies and bet on the innovative political project of indigenous women, which is so necessary at the current stage in which we find ourselves in relation to our democracy, climate change, and social justice. The presence of indigenous women cannot be just to meet the quotas of the parties; it is in fact necessary to create real conditions for these candidacies. As Vanda Ortega of the Witoto people, a candidate for federal deputy for the state of Amazonas, recalled: “The parties only want our cause, but they don't want indigenous women in power. There is no concerted effort within the parties for these women to be elected. That's why we're here because we can no longer accept white men who don't feel our pain, who don't feel what we've been through, who don't defend our territories."

Andreza Andrade is an indigenous member of the Baré people from the Upper Rio Negro, Amazonas (Brazil). She is a journalist and doctoral student in the Postgraduate Program in Communication at the University of Brasília.