Indigenous Communities in Brazil and The Struggle towards Political Representation
Colonialism and its historical legacies had placed indigenous peoples and their communities in vulnerable and disenfranchised positions. The occupation of their lands, erasure of their traditions and cultures as well as exploitation of their labour translate into the disparities experienced by indigenous communities vis-a-vis their settler colonizers. Such relations persist post-independence, where the locus of state authority and practices are oftentimes inherited by dominating local groups. In the context of post-colonial Brazil, indigenous communities were removed from their own agency and capability to determine their position in the larger political context while at the same time faced the pressure of assimilation into modernized subjects. The tension between maintaining indigenous ethnic identity rights and mediating the growing assertion of the modern Brazilian state on indigenous lives highlights indigenous struggles to reclaim their identity and position within the modern political institutions of Brazil.
In her book “Native and National in Brazil: Indigeneity After Independence”, Guzmán (2013) explores the trajectory of indigenous peoples in Brazil in engaging with the national identity of the modern Brazilian state and their efforts to decolonize it. Constituents living near the political and economic centre of colonial Brazil were often mestiço (mixed individuals born from Indigenous American and Portuguese European) who experienced minimum interaction with indigenous communities living in their traditional lands, often isolated from the locus of political activities of colonial legacy. As they inherit the authority of the state, dominant local groups, including intellectuals, political leaders, activists and artists, deliberated the “Indian question” – a term coined by Guzmán – which encompasses the process of assimilating indigenous peoples into subjects of the modern state. Debates took place between groups and individuals, where one side argued for the preservation of indigenous communities as a historical legacy of the state and the other pushing for a modernization of indigenous peoples (Guzmán, p. 35–36). Such discourse not only illustrates the paternalistic position assumed by domestic groups of the modern state, but also reinforces the orientalist lens (see Said, 1978) through which colonizers perceive indigenous peoples.
A set of new laws pertaining to indigenous peoples and their rights legalized in 1831 by the Brazilian government maintained an assimilationist approach towards indigenous. According to Rodrigues (2002), placing indigenous rights under the protection of the “Justice of Orphans” implicated two problematic aspects of the relationship between the Brazilian state and indigenous peoples. It reduced the agency and autonomy of indigenous peoples in their engagement with modern Brazilian subjects and implicated them as orphans in need of guidance by the state. On top of that, the primary objective of the laws would be to assure the assimilation of indigenous peoples into Brazilian society, which threaten the preservation of indigenous ethnic identity and autonomy as separate traditional communities. This would be one of the forms of disparity between “indigenous lived experiences and the interpretation, portrayal, and manipulation of that experience” (Guzman, p. 20) in Brazil. Indigenous peoples were sidelined and placed in a vertical paternalistic relationship with the modern state.
Individual and collective self-identification by indigenous peoples and communities are crucial in their struggles on expanding their political rights and positions in the Brazilian modern state. Collective indigenous mobilizations through re-identification of the “Indian” identity have seen achievements in indigenous political representation through community-wide organizing (Hale, 2002 cited in Bolaños, 2010). Neoliberal policies enacted to maximize resource extraction, particularly in the Amazon where indigenous traditional land lies wide, threatened and destabilized the living space of indigenous communities within the world’s largest rainforest. Thus, political representation was deemed to be urgent by indigenous people in order to prevent the imminent seizure and acquisition of their traditional lands. As illustrated in Bolaños’ piece, the reconstruction of indigenous ethnic identity was inseparable from their identification and attachment to the lands on which their community has lived for centuries. While for the Arapium the land represents the sociocultural history of their ethnicity, the Jaraqui’s relations to the nature and resources through which they survive were the driving factor behind the fight for their land (Bolanos, p. 82)
Democratic transition in Brazil saw the expansion of indigenous rights and political representation, albeit limited by economic and nationalist interests (Rodrigues, 2002). In indigenous movement’s attempts to consistently oversee and advance their political representation in the modern state, Rodrigues (p. 489) conceives the three main factors affecting and supporting such efforts: the relationship between indigenous communities and transnational advocacy coalitions working in environmental and human rights issues, a growing comprehension of the modern Brazilian politics by said indigenous communities, and the emergence and consolidation of a network of domestic advocacy organizations fighting for indigenous rights. Despite such advancements, challenges remain in indigenous movement’s struggle towards political representation, including the elite-dominated and non-consolidated Brazilian democracy, extraneous factor and unpredictable nature of international support, as well as ideological and political differences among advocacy groups (Rodrigues, p. 489). So long as these obstacles are not removed, the struggle towards political representation continues to become an arduous venture for indigenous communities in Brazil.
Indigenous peoples and their communities have long been marginalized and removed from the centre of political organization in the modern Brazilian state. Legacies of colonialism, including its racialized and orientalist perception of indigenous peoples continue to pervade political spaces in Brazil and sideline their rights. Visions of economic development and indigenous rights of traditional land ownership often clash and become the galvanizing factor of indigenous movement in Brazil to assert their position in the political sphere. Self re-identification of indigeneity and indigenous ethnic identity are interlinked with the fight to maintain indigenous land rights. While advances have been achieved in the current democratic state, drawbacks continue to present themselves in the indigenous struggle for political representation. One of such recent drawbacks is the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, known for his disregard for indigenous and environmental rights, particularly in the Amazon. Such challenges posed by unprecedented democratic dynamics will continue to affect indigenous movements to attain their rights and representation in modern Brazil.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolaños, O., 2010. RECONSTRUCTING INDIGENOUS ETHNICITIES: The Arapium and Jaraqui Peoples of the Lower Amazon, Brazil. Latin American Research Review, [online] 45(3), pp.63–86. Available at: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40926270> [Accessed 27 November 2020].
Guzmán, T., 2013. Native And National In Brazil: Indigeneity After Independence. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Rodrigues, M., 2002. Indigenous Rights in Democratic Brazil. Human Rights Quarterly, 24(2), pp.487–512.
Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
