RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Dressed in T-shirts, jeans and masks, the two congressmen stood outside the fence surrounding the grounds of the former Rio de Janeiro Indigenous Museum, now occupied through a demonstration. Looking inward, they introduced an aggregate of insults and threats, calling the population of the domain “urban garbage. “
“This time they arrived unarmed and did not enter,” said Urutau Guajajara, 60, an indigenous language instructor, referring to a 14,300 square metre court a few feet from the huge Maracano football stadium.
Potyr Krikati does household chores in Aldeia Maracano. Credit: Bruno Kaiuca for VICE News.
The current occupiers of the domain expect the land to become a multi-ethnic Aboriginal university. “We don’t need a museum of physical objects, we need a living museum,” Guajajara’s wife, Potyr, said, referring to the Aboriginal museum now in the city center. “There are no Aboriginal human beings there, just pictures. “
But caught between a furious pandemic and several degrees of far-right government, those plans are now under threat. The catastrophic damage inflicted by COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro and a sustained wave of conservative policies endangered the others in the region from the extra eviction and the long-term history in question.
“This is a damaging moment,” said Marize Guarani, president of the Aldeia Maracano Indigenous Association (AIAM) and former occupant of Aldeia.
“[President Jair Bolsonaro] hates indigenous peoples,” Guarani said. In a 1998 speech, then-Congressman Bolsonaro lamented that the Brazilian cavalry had not been “as competent as the Americans, who had decimated their indigenous people in the afterlife and had no longer done so. “this problem. ” When he took it in 2019, he pledged not to grant any new land to indigenous peoples.
Rio de Janeiro state congressman Rodripass Amorim, Bolsonaro’s best friend and one of Aldeia’s two visitors last week, called for the transformation of Aldeia Maracano into a car park or grocery shopping center, adding that “anyone who loves Indians can move to Bolivia. “Guajajara recalled that Amorim had called the domain “crackland” and entered the box dressed in a bulletproof vest in early 2019, accompanied by policemen dressed as civilians from his office.
“Here we had children, elderly people and other people in wheelchairs,” Potyr said, recalling the 2019 incident.
In a press release, Amorim’s workplace wrote that the state congressman had visited the site on September 29 for reports of electricity and phone theft. Citing executive reports on precarious life situations on the ground, Amorim expressed fear for the well-being of its inhabitants. The domain can host “new tourist attractions for the city,” the note says.
Dilmar Puri, a resident of Aldeia, struggled to locate pictures of the pandemic. Credit: Bruno Kaiuca for VICE News.
When VICE News visited the site in early October, it housed five families, a combination of the Guajajara, Xavante, Puri, Ashaninka and Kariri ethnic groups, none had become ill with COVID, Potyr said, adding that a recent test crusade in the city The government had returned negative effects for all occupants. “They were looking to be able to say that we were infected, to be able to say, “Let’s get them all out of here, ” he said.
Once the site of the first indigenous museum in all of Latin America, the domain had been deserted for decades after the museum moved downtown in 1978. It was not until 2006 that a diverse combination of indigenous peoples was organized, descending on eviscerated design and turning it into a collective occupation it would serve as an educational domain for Aboriginal culture from 2006 to 2012, receiving visits from academics around the world.
Then, in the run-up to the World Cup, then-Governor Sérgio Cabral, who lately serves a 294-year sentence for corruption and money laundering, planned to demolish construction to make room for stadium parking. he recoiled and Mayor Eduardo Paes agreed to sign it as a cultural monument, permanently protecting it from demolition. However, the occupants of Aldeia would be evicted and relocated to a transitional accommodation miles away while the government was ready to repair the construction.
Unsure of the government’s commitment, the organization resisted subsequent attempts at kidnapping, deforming only when swarms of military police arrived at the site at 3 a. m. on March 22, 2013, surrounding construction with armored trucks and insurrectionary equipment, forcilly evicted the occupants of Aldeia. “They came here in a position for war. We didn’t have a single gun there. It’s ridiculous,” said Carlos Doethyr-Tukano, then head of the Aldeia.
The organization split in two. One organization held discussions with the government and agreed to expel it on the condition that a State Council for Indigenous Rights and an Indigenous Cultural Center be created to be built in Aldeia.
But Guajajara and a small organization did not make the government keep its promises, and dug, re-occupying the site in collective 2016. Su, known as Aldeia Rexiste (a Portuguese word game to resist and re-exist), now occupies an area in the hope of building a multi-ethnic university through indigenous peoples.
But living is hard.
The government got rid of all running water, sewer and electricity after the 2013 evictions, now a truck stops once a month to fill a particular water tank, and an organization of biologists helped the organization build dry restrooms. locally grown fruits and hand-woven handcrafts. “Selling handicrafts is our only means of survival,” Guajajara said.
The government nevertheless kept its promise to create an Aboriginal council at the state level, opening CEDIND in 2018. Guarani, a member of the council, praised its composition for adding representatives of Rio’s urban and rural indigenous populations, state and local agencies. Universities. ” I can’t think of any other advice that has any of this,” he says.
However, the long-promised cultural center has not yet given the impression seven years later. Tukano, now co-chairman of CEDIND, is skeptical of the government’s monetary apology. “They spent 1. 5 billion rand [270 million dollars] to renew Marocano stadium football,” he said. We only needed $5 million to renovate our building. “
Until the cultural mission with which the occupants dream materializes, the Aldeia remains in danger. Its historical prestige, gained with effort, protects the construction from demolition, but does nothing to prevent modifications inside.
“Other people resent having, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, that is called the cultural capital of Brazil, a construction that speaks and shows the denial of our rights like other indigenous people,” Guaraní said.