Brazilian authorities reinforce troops after clashes between Indigenous peoples and landowners

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More federal law enforcement officers are being sent to Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state after clashes over land between Indigenous peoples and farmers over the weekend, the Ministry of Justice said Monday.

The National Public Security Force had already stepped up its presence in that region since the beginning of July but will now deploy more agents as reinforcements, the ministry said.

The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said it had received reports of farmers attacking Guarani Kaiowa people in the Douradina municipality Saturday, injuring at least eight people.

Five of the injured were taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where doctors found three had been shot by firearms and two wounded by rubber bullets, a ministry statement said.

Another attack on Guarani Kaiowa took place Sunday evening, the ministry said.

Officials said that in the second incident a fire was set, tear gas used and four gunshots heard, although the perpetrator could not be identified. It said at least one farmer was injured.

Prosecutors will open a police inquiry to investigate possible criminal offences, authorities said.

“The Guarani Kaiowa Indigenous people are reclaiming land” in the Panambi-Lagoa Rica Indigenous territory, an area that was recognized as theirs in 2011 before a court suspended the process, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said.

Frustration with the slow process led the Guarani Kaiowa to set up a camp to reclaim the land on July 14, said Anderson Santos, a lawyer for the Indigenous Missionary Council, a rights group. Local landowners responded by constructing their own camp approximately 150 meters (yards) away and have been harassing the Indigenous camp, he said.

The Guarani Kaiowa “have been sleeping under the lights of trucks for two weeks," Santos said. “Every night these trucks line up in front of them, turn on the lights and spend the whole night with the lights on under their camp.”

Recognition of the Guarani Kaiowa’s land was halted after a court recognized the “time frame” argument, a legal theory that contends the date that Brazil’s constitution was promulgated — Oct. 5, 1988 — should be the deadline for when Indigenous peoples already had to be physically occupying land or be legally fighting to reoccupy territory.

Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected that theory last September, but a week later the Senate approved a bill supporting the “time frame” theory. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva partially vetoed the bill, but his move was overridden by Congress. The influential agribusiness sector, which opposes the demands by Indigenous communities for more territory, has the support of hundreds of Congress members and several governors.

The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples said the “time frame” case has boosted tensions with the legal uncertainty, leading “to acts of violence that have Indigenous people as the main victims.”

Lula took office in 2023 pledging to resume granting lands to Indigenous peoples, a stark contrast to his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who kept his promise not to set aside any more land for Indigenous peoples.

But Indigenous peoples have criticized unfulfilled promises to create reserves and expel illegal miners and land-grabbers from their territories.