Guarani and Kaiowá Apyka’i community risks imminent eviction

With Brazil undergoing political turmoil, indigenous communities are facing increasing violence, worsening living conditions, and systematic violations of their right to food. Last week, the 1st Federal Court of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul, issued the provisional enforcement of a sentence that would oblige the legendary Apyka’i community to leave their legitimate territory in a question of days. According to Brazilian law, once the order is communicated to the leader of the community and a representative of FUNAI (the Brazilian governmental protection agency for indigenous issues), the eviction will be carried out in less than a week.

The Apyka’i community is located on the edge of the BR463 highway; seven kilometers away from Dourados city center, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Their ancestral lands are currently occupied by the Serrana farm and used by the São Fernando sugar-cane factory, which is run by two business groups who are big producers and exporters in Latin America. The Apyka’i community has re-occupied 3 hectares of territory.

The eviction order infringes upon article 231 of Brazil’s Constitution, in its main objective and paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6, which recognize and determine the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and prohibit their eviction. Also, it implies a breach vis-a-vis the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, International Labor Organization Convention 169 and more generally the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Reactions on this note have come swiftly. Speaking at the fifteenth session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), Victoria Tauli Corpuz, United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, warned that “the political and economic crisis serves to render Indigenous peoples’ rights and issues invisible and less significant in the eyes of the public.” In her view, it appears “to be a perfect storm on the horizon, in which a convergence of these and other factors will lead to the pursuit of economic interests in a manner that further subordinates the rights of Indigenous peoples.” 

For his part, Elizeu Lopes, leader and member of the Great Assembly of the Guarani and Kaiowá Aty Guasu, stressed they have no right to come and go and are treated “as foreigners in their own territories”. Large companies disrespect their rights and national governments do not meet their constitutional standards concerning the security and defense of their rights. “I urgently ask this forum for a study on the situation of Guarani people on the continent, which has a population of over 250,000 people in especially 4 states and with family connections in many others, forming a great family,” he enquired.

Upon request of the community, FIAN International and its Brazilian section have addressed a letter to H.E. Dr Leandro André Tamura, Federal Judge of the 1st Federal Court of Dourados, requesting the suspension of the order. “Access to territory is fundamental for the realization of basic human rights, particularly the right to food and nutrition”.

You can read the statement of the Aty Guasu, read by Elizeu Lopes at the UNPFII, here.
You can read FIAN’s letter here.

For more information, please contact delrey[at]fian.org

NOTES TO EDITORS:

• The community of Apyka´i has been trying to recover their ancestral territory for years.
  The  community has been repeatedly evicted from their territory in 1990 and again in 1999, 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2014, leaving them but with a tiny piece of land. The latter, which is far from enough to produce food, currently lies between a sugar-cane field and streams of water contaminated with agrochemicals on one side and a highway on the other.