In Brazil, Lula struggles to stem the rise in violence against indigenous peoples – Libération

Held back by a Brazilian Congress where Bolsonaro’s far right is in the majority, the left-wing president finds himself powerless in the face of conflicts between Native Americans and those who covet their land.

A shot, screams, a woman with a bloody face. The image trembles in the night. A breathless voice shouts, exalted: “If necessary, we will die for our land!” Almost in real time, the images, filmed using a mobile phone, of the attack on Wednesday, August 28 in southern Brazil against the Amerindian Avá-Guarani ethnic group landed on social networks to denounce the resurgence of violence against indigenous peoples. The Avá-Guarani accuse farmers (landowners) armed with weapons for attacking them in their original territory of Guaíra, in the west of the southern state of Paraná. The result: seven wounded.

Not even the elite police unit deployed on the ground since January by Lula da Silva’s government has managed to prevent this new act of violence, the second in the month against the Avá-Guarani. From the Amazon rainforest in the far north to the rich plains of the south, the territories claimed by the first inhabitants of Brazil are disputed by all sorts of economic interests: farmers, gold prospectors, loggers, land grabbers…

208 murders were recorded in 2023

The Avá-Guaranis, for their part, are surrounded by soy plantations.