Vast Indian Reserve in Brazil Stirs Conflict
Date: 27-Apr-05
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Julio Cesar Villaverde
But less than two weeks after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a decree sanctioning the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve, unhappy Indians are holding four federal policemen hostage.
And in another part of the reserve in Roraima state, which borders Guyana, Indians and local residents partially blocked a highway connecting Brazil with Venezuela, federal police said.
The fight over the reserves has highlighted complex relations between the government -- which must care for Indians as wards of the state -- and tribes that no longer want to be isolated from non-Indian communities that provide jobs and chances of better schools and hospitals.
Lula has said the reserves will help undo centuries of suffering by the Indian population, which has declined from around six million when the Portuguese arrived in 1500, to about 700,000.
But creation of the Roraima reserve sparked an uproar over the government's plans to clear non-Indians from the area within a year and compensate only those people who can show they have rights to land and property.
Indian groups complained that would halt their economic development by isolating them from jobs and basic infrastructure, despite the government's promises that it will be provided.
Another complication is who is and who is not an Indian in an area where ethnic lines have blurred after decades of contact with non-Indian society.
Roraima's Governor Ottomar Pinto has filed a judicial appeal against formation of the reserve, where some 16,500 Indians from five tribes live in an area of around 5,800 square miles (15,000 square km).
The Roraima Indian Council, which claims to represent the majority of Indians, said the governor and rice farmers have sided with protesting Indians for economic reasons.
The protest "is not of the community, as there exists some pressure from other people. Besides the state government, and state and federal legislators, there is pressure from rice growers inside the reserve," said Marinaldo Justino Grajano, the council's coordinator.
The United Indian Defense Society of Northern Roraima says the reserve would impede economic growth and isolate Indians from health, education and electricity services. The group represents Indians who say they might also lose their jobs if the farmers inside the reserve are forced to leave.
More than 200 federal police have been sent to the area, a police spokesman said. He said the officers being held hostage were well treated but prevented from leaving the reserve.
