Brazil's top court backs indigenous land rights in Amazon
Brazil's Supreme Court has sided with Amazonian indigenous tribes in a land dispute that some have called critical for determining the future of the rainforest that sprawls the size of Western Europe.
The court ruling on Thursday upholds the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation for 18,000 indigenous people who lay claim to their ancestral land, despite a handful of large-scale farmers who also occupy the territory in the northernmost reaches of Amazon jungle bordering Venezuela.
The dispute over the 1.7 million-hectare (4.2 million-acre) reservation turned violent last year when authorities tried to evict the farmers.
Though the dispute involves only a few thousand people in remote Roraima state, it represents a large divide among Brazilians over land development and sovereignty.
While the ruling solidifies indigenous rights, detractors said it does nothing to prevent another violent outbreak.
"There is no peaceful solution," Nelson Itikawa, president of the Roraima Rice Growers Association, told the government's Agencia Brasil news service. "It's possible there will be a conflict — there are people who will lose control."
Roraima leaders — including an army general who threatened to defend the farmers in defiance of national law — have said that leaving the reservation in indigenous hands is a threat to national security and strangles economic growth in the sparsely populated state.
A long history of indigenous repression and paranoia about international intervention in the Amazon loomed large in the case, said Brasilia political analyst Alexandre Barros.
"Old sins have long shadows, and there are a lot of sins on all sides that complicate this case," he said.
Ruling threatens national sovereignty, farmer says
Rice farmer Paulo Cesar Quartiero, who grows rice and soybeans and raises cattle on 9,200 hectares, accused the court of bowing to "foreign interests" that purportedly want to control the Amazon and its natural resources.
"The court has endangered our national sovereignty," he said, adding that the ruling "means the forced exodus of at least 600 men, women and children."
Quartiero said he and other farmers would abide by the court's ruling and not resist "this shameful eviction."
Quartiero has been jailed twice when authorities tried to evict them last April.
The court stopped the relocation that month, saying it could escalate into civil war. Justices voted 10-1 in favour of the indigenous population on Thursday.
Everything was calm after the ruling, said Jose Negreiros, federal police spokesman in the Roraima city of Boa Vista.
"There have been no demonstrations for or against the reservation, and nothing has happened to justify beefing up security near the reservation," he said.
To ease tensions, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in late January ordered five million hectares of federal land handed over to Roraima state. The state governor said it could be used to resettle the rice farmers.