Indigenous chief Merong Kamakã Mongoió, who was found dead in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, on Monday morning (Mar. 4), was the leader of the indigenous people who had been living on land owned by mining company Vale for over two years. Previously, they were scattered in urban areas of surrounding towns. The group settled in October 2021 as part of a movement to retake the village.
The Kamakã Mongoiós are a family circle of the Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe people, whose mother village is located on the southern coast of the state of Bahia, at the foot of Mount Pascoal. A video posted on social media through the National Indigenous Union (UNI) in March 2022 shows the progress of his paintings in Brumadinho. In the video, Merong explains that reconquest efforts have led the Kamakã Mongoiós of Bahia, throughout more than 40 years of conflict, to live in urban environments. , in a precarious scenario and without access to the rights that deserve to be guaranteed to indigenous peoples.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic we demanded a guarantee of vaccines and food, and we were denied this right. So we asked the Great Spirit to consult us and we arrived here, to this abandoned land with a spring. Some time later, we discovered that it belonged a Okay. Maybe on paper it is like that, but the company doesn’t live here. This land is for us to live and plant, and for our children to shower in the river and receive a special education. It’s not just our fight. We need the sources. We need the territories of the mining craters.
Another video shows a ceremony held to symbolically demarcate the land. In this recording, the indigenous people appear installing a plaque naming the territory Kamakã Mongoiõ Village. “Our bodies may even serve as fertilizer for this land, but we are not leaving,” Merong said on the occasion.
Contacted through Agência Brasil, the mining giant claimed that the domain was intended for environmental recovery and was the subject of legal litigation. “Vale mourns the death of Chief Merong and stands in solidarity with his circle of family and the indigenous community,” he said.
The property is in a region known as Vale do Córrego de Areias. The site is approximately 20 kilometers from the Córrego do Feijão mine, where a dam ruptured and claimed 270 lives in 2019. Among those affected by the episode is another Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe village. Located on the banks of the Paraopeba river, it was divided after the tragedy and many families ended up leaving.
Merong’s body showed symptoms of hanging. Born in Contagem, Minas Gerais, he is 36 years old. Military police were called to the scene and filed a suicide report, but the leader’s relatives question this hypothesis.
“Chief Merong was killed. They faked a suicide, but it wasn’t a suicide. Merong spoke to me privately for 30 minutes on February 25. He had many plans to expand our struggle,” Brother Gilvander Moreira, a member of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and a friend of the leader, wrote on social media.
The civil police said that “for the moment no line of investigation is ruled out. “The Federal Police also showed interest in the investigation. Their mobilisation is justified because, if Merong was indeed the victim of a crime, the jurisdiction to hear the case will have to be decided on the basis of the reasons at stake. An earlier ruling by the High Court of Justice established that killings involving indigenous populations are discussed at the state level. However, under the Constitution, federal authorities and courts deserve to be held accountable if the crime is akin to a dispute or clash over indigenous rights.
The death of the indigenous leader was deplored in a statement issued through the national indigenous authority Funai. On her social networks, the indigenous federal deputy Célia Xakriabá, of the PSOL, published a message about what happened. “Merong will continue to live in our hearts and in our struggle, because struggle is all we inherited,” he wrote. Expressions of grief were also disseminated through various non-profit organizations, such as the National Confederation of Family Farmers and Family Entrepreneurs of Brazil (Conafer) and the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI).
“Despite signs of suicide, family and friends suspect a possible murder. All probabilities must be studied rigorously and seriously by the public authorities. [However] indigenous suicides should also be thought of as a procedure of violence against indigenous peoples and as a task of extermination,” reads the text published by Cimi.
Chief Merong belonged to the sixth generation of the Kamakã Mongoió family and spent part of his formative years in southern Bahia. An activist, he participated in mobilizations in regions of Brazil and supported the Kaingáng, Xoklengx and Guarani groups. He was enthusiastic about the reclamation of territories, believing it to be a basic form of resistance against the elimination of indigenous peoples.
The other Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe peoples have been victims of several violent movements in recent years. In December last year, chef Lucas Kariri-Sapuyá, 31, was executed in a hideout in southern Bahia. The same thing happened to the shaman Nega Pataxó, murdered by peasants in January of this year, also on Bahian soil. Galdino, the indigenous victim of a barbaric crime that shocked Brazil in 1997, was also from the Pataxó-hã-hã-hãe people: he was burned alive in Brasilia by elite youths.
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