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Brazil: Tension rises at 500th anniversary of colonization |
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April 23, 2000 PORTO SEGURO, Brazil, APR 22 (AP) - Thousands of Indians and landless farm workers, and thousands of police officers converged on the beach resort where the government on Saturday commemorates the first landing by Portuguese colonizers 500 years ago.
Indian leaders plan to march Saturday to Porto Seguro, where President Fernando Henrique Cardoso will meet with Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio. They could be joined by some 2,000 members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, camped on a roadside 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the west. |
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"Now the world can see that what the government says is a lie. Brazil wasn't discovered; our land was invaded," said Hugo Xavante. Like many Indians, he uses his tribe's name as a surname.
Xavante is among more than 3,000 Indians from 186 Brazilian tribes who have assembled to draft a list of grievances - and to stage a "counter commemoration" against what the government calls the 500th anniversary of Brazil's discovery.
Meanwhile, members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement plan to demand that Cardoso speed up agrarian reform in Brazil, where the richest 20 percent of the people own 90 percent of the land, while many have none at all.
Landless movement leaders said Friday they have assembled some 2,000 peasant families in a makeshift camp on a roadside 35 miles (56 kilometers) from this seaside resort, 500 miles (800 kilometers) northeast of Rio de Janeiro.
Of the Indians, about 330,000 members of indigenous groups survive, down from as many as 5 million in 1500. Many perished following the invasions due to lack of immunity to European diseases or in massacres.
The Indians had originally planned to present their document to Cardoso when he arrives Saturday in Porto Seguro, the nearby town where Puertuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral arrived on April 22, 1500.
But rising tensions and planned protests by Indians, landless peasants and blacks' rights groups prompted Cardoso to scale back his visit. Indians now think they won't get a chance to deliver the document.
The document includes age-old demands, such as speedy demarcation of ancestral lands and better health care and education. Indians claim rights to 739 reservations, but to date, the government has recognized only 231. In many areas, white settlers and prospectors live in constant conflict with native residents.
The document also calls for greater respect for traditional Indian medicine and better protection of intellectual property rights, threatened by the incursion of foreign drug companies seeking patents on traditional cures.
The more optimistic said the unprecedented gathering of diverse tribes was a sign that Indians at last may be forging a united front to press for their demands.
"You have to realize there's a warrior history, a lot of these tribes have a historic distrust of each other," said Saulo Feitosa, vice president of the Catholic Church-linked Indigenous Missionary Council, which helped organize the event.
Still, many remained skeptical that the meeting will have much of an impact. "If we don't continue the struggle, the document won't change a thing," said Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae Chief Wilson de Jesus Sousa.
Indian defenders also are worried about a bill pending in Congress that would strip Indians of their traditional status as wards of the state and could open reservations to mining. Feitosa said the bill would make further demarcation of Indian lands almost impossible.
Police have deployed 5,147 security agents and say they will block the passage of anyone trying to upset the planned events.
"There is a limit to freedom of expression, and no one is free to offend the president," said Bahia state police Col. Cristovam Pinheiro.
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