Haunted by land loss, indigenous Brazilians brace for election

• Indigenous peoples fear further encroachment, violence
• Bolsonaro, farming groups want crackdown on occupations
• Election challenger Lula backs indigenous protections

AMAMBAI, Brazil - It did not take long for violence to erupt when dozens of military police stormed into a newly established indigenous Guarani-Kaiowá settlement on farmland in southern Brazil one morning in June.

According to local hospitals, four minors were among those shot during the raid, which authorities said targeted drug smugglers in Guapoy, where recently assembled shacks dot a site next to Amambai Indigenous Reserve in the key agricultural state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

"The troops came shooting, pushing people in the direction of the old reserve," said one man, whose 16-year-old son has yet to recover the use of his right hand after a gunshot wound.

Indigenous Brazilians struggling with decades of land loss and overcrowding on demarcated reserves fear such violent incidents could become more common if right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is re-elected on Sunday.

An unexpectedly close runoff vote pits Bolsonaro, who has called for more commercial farming and mining in protected areas, against leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who vows to safeguard indigenous lands.

Lula has a slight advantage, the latest opinion polls have shown.

One of the biggest issues at stake for indigenous rights advocates is a bill supported by Bolsonaro that would crack down on so-called retomadas, which means retakings - occupations by indigenous people of areas they claim as ancestral land.

Brazil's 1988 constitution guarantees indigenous rights to traditional territories, but the bill - which is also backed by powerful agricultural groups - would create a "marco temporal", meaning timeframe, forcing indigenous peoples to show they were occupying the lands in question prior to the constitution.

"To demand that they were in those areas in 1988 is absurd ... It would mean giving a prize to the people who violently drove them off," said Daniele Osório, who is supporting Guapoy in her capacity as federal public defender.

The federal public defender's office is a state body responsible for promoting human rights and providing legal assistance to those unable to pay.

Brazil's Supreme Court is also expected to issue a ruling on the same matter, which campaigners say would make it impossible for many indigenous people to recover land taken from them since European settlers arrived in 1500.

The court has postponed its ruling on the hot button issue, but its president, Rosa Weber, has promised to finalize it before the end of her mandate in October 2023.

'Occupied by white people' 

According to Guarani-Kaiowá leaders and government data, there are eight fully recognized Guarani-Kaiowá territories and more than 50 retomadas in Mato Grosso do Sul, a beef and grain-producing powerhouse that borders Paraguay and Bolivia.

It has Brazil's second-biggest indigenous population after Amazonas state, but the protected territories established throughout the 20th century cover just 2.5% of land, according to an analysis from the Instituto Socioambiental nonprofit.

That stands in stark contrast to many Amazon areas where indigenous communities still hold large territories, with their possession seen as vital to helping protect Brazil's fast-vanishing rainforest.

"Indigenous people were stuck in the back of trucks and dropped in reserves, which served only to empty lands so they could be occupied by white people," Osório said.

The loss of their traditional lands has taken a devastating toll on the Guarani-Kaiowá, who have the world's highest suicide rate, according to a 2016 report from the NGO Survival International.

Overcrowding in the reserves has led more Guarani-Kaiowa  communities to move onto land bordering the protected areas, said Ellen Cristina de Almeida, an indigenous affairs expert and PhD candidate at Brasilia University.

At Guapoy, nearly 100 families live in makeshift shacks covered with plastic sheeting on about 270 hectares (667 acres) of corn fields.

A small part of the land is already occupied by their own recently planted crops - papaya, sugarcane, potatoes, bananas, watermelon and manioc.

In the middle of the fledgling community, an "oga pysy", a prayer house with a thatched roof, is being built in the traditional Guarani-Kaiowá style.

On top of population growth, the nearby reserve has shrunk from its originally assigned 3,600 hectares (8,900 acres) to about 2,440 hectares (6,029 acres) due to a land sale by the government to a non-indigenous private owner, according to an anthropological report co-written by the state and federal public defender's offices.

The growth in the number of retomadas has fueled clashes between the Guarani-Kaiowá, farmers and law enforcement, and some community members fear violence could increase if the "marco temporal" is imposed by Congress or the Supreme Court.

In Guapoy, Daniel Lemes Vasques, a teacher and occupation leader, said the rule would mean "collective suicide" for the community, which had repeatedly asked authorities to take back the area before launching the occupation.

Osório said the "marco temporal" would legitimize what is already happening by illicit means, calling June's raid on Guapoy an "illegal eviction" and denouncing persistent attacks against the community.

A community prayer leader was shot dead in the operation and is now buried in a grave next to the prayer house being built. Two other adults, four under-18s and three police officers were injured, according to local hospitals and the police.

Mato Grosso do Sul's Public Security Secretariat did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the operation, but it has previously defended it, saying it was "called to deal with a crime against property and against life".

It said officers opened fire when they were shot at, though community members have denied using firearms. A police report made no mention of any drug seizures or drugs-related arrests during the operation.

A month after the confrontation, Guapoy leader Márcio Moreira was murdered, and in September a Guarani-Kaiowá businessman was shot dead, according to local media reports, stoking fear among the settlement's inhabitants.

Political scenario 

Bolsonaro's administration has overseen large-scale expansion of farming, ranching and mining in the Amazon and other natural areas in Brazil, but he has repeatedly defended its record on the environment.

He did better than polls had predicted in the first-round vote on Oct. 2, raising fears among forest and indigenous defenders that he could gain an even stronger mandate for his policies in a second four-year term.

In Mato Grosso do Sul, voters will also elect a new governor on Sunday, choosing between two conservatives who have both voiced support for Bolsonaro's stance on indigenous land claims.

Analysts and supporters of the retomada say such incidents would be less likely if authorities adopted a position more sympathetic to indigenous land claims.

"The state's government has been clearly led by members of the agribusiness sector, and the re-election of Bolsonaro would lead to a more radical and violent stance," said Almeida.

A 22-year-old Guarani-Kaiowá social sciences student who was visiting Guapoy to carry out research for her thesis on retomadas was among those wounded in June's raid.

"There will always be a scar on my head," she said as she pulled her hair aside to show the graze wound from a bullet, asking not to be named for fear of reprisals.

"Every time I touch it I remember how and why they did this to us," she said.

(Editing by Helen Popper.)