Ministry of Indigenous Peoples created, but the new government faces situations of great demand since the Bolsonaro era
Two world-renowned Amazon defenders, Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara, have been appointed ministers in Brazil’s new government in a bid to intensify attacks on indigenous territories and the environment.
The announcement was made by new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will take office Sunday after four years of rainforest destruction under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Silva, 64, will return to her post as environment minister, which she held from 2003 to 2008, a time when Brazil especially controlled deforestation in the Amazon.
Guajajara, 48, will head Brazil’s first ministry for indigenous peoples, created in reaction to the wave of violence and land invasions brought on by Bolsonaro’s dismantling of indigenous and environmental protections.
“[This is] a milestone in our history of struggle and resistance,” Guajajara said. “The creation of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples is evidence of President Lula’s commitment to safeguarding our autonomy and space to make decisions about our territories, our bodies and our life tactics.
Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous and anti-environmental policies were laid bare earlier this year with the murders of indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon, where deforestation has surpassed 60 since 2019.
Speaking after Lula’s election in October, Silva said the new fight would be to honor the memory of those jungle martyrs through the construction of “a new democratic ecosystem” in which conservation, sustainability and the climate emergency would be prioritized.
Silva was born in 1958 in a remote rubber-growing network in the western Amazon and has become Brazil’s youngest senator and a world-famous environmentalist. politics.
Guajajara was born in the territory of Araribóia, in the eastern Amazon, and has become one of the leading figures in Brazil’s burgeoning indigenous rights movement, as well as a prominent leftist politician. In 2018, Guajajara became the first indigenous woman to run for vice president of Brazil. He won a seat in Brazil’s predominantly white men’s Congress in the October elections.
During a recent visit to the Amazon, Guajajara said the new ministry, which will make up Brazil’s 307 indigenous teams, exemplifies Lula’s true commitment to protecting the environment and indigenous communities that had been “threatened, weakened and vulnerable” through Bolsonaro.
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However, experts say the new government will face major difficult situations in its war to rebuild indigenous and environmental protections, given the planned dismantling of Bolsonaro’s environmental ministry.
“The ministry has been destroyed. It no longer exists. It will have to be rebuilt almost from scratch,” said Marcio Astrini, director of an NGO, the Climate Observatory.
Astrini welcomed the return of experienced and expert environmental figures like Silva, but warned that tough politicians and criminal gangs pushing the rainforest toward a catastrophic tipping point will not go away. “Deforestation in the Amazon will not be liquidated overnight,” he said.