Lino João de Oliveira Neves

This chapter examines some of the actions and programmes developed by the native people’s movement in Brazil, and studies their forms of organization and mobilization as examples of counter-hegemonic globalization processes.

Three factors lie at the crux of this approach: a) the consolidation of the native people’s movement in Brazil; b) the active role played by indigenous organizations in inter-ethnic relations with the Brazilian state and with local sectors of Brazilian society; c) my own personal interest as specialist in indigenous populations, having closely followed the struggles of the natives of the Amazon region, particularly in the state of Amazonas (it is of course Amazonas that has the greatest number of different ethnic groups, not to mention the largest contingent of native Brazilians, the most indigenous organizations and the greatest number of indigenous homelands).

The initiatives described here are those that are the most markedly political. They are those that have resulted in the conquest of a political voice for the Indian as an active agent in matters concerning the Brazilian native question. They have also resulted in the assertion of new political facets of the indigenous movement and its local organizations, and are characterized by political negotiation, which polarizes the dispute between the interests of the native peoples and those of the Brazilian society/state. The first part of the chapter will present an overview of the indigenous struggles since the end of the ‘70s, in order to contextualize indigenous initiatives within the wider scenario of Brazilian politics. The second part, which will be based upon empirical data gathered during fieldwork, will discuss the strategies, political achievements, impasses, challenges and risks of the present scenario of interethnic processes in Brazil, with special emphasis given to initiatives aiming at gaining official recognition of indigenous lands and reclaiming control of their territories and of the natural resources within them.

The word ‘south’ is used here not only in the sense of ‘third world’, or of ‘underdeveloped regions’, but also as a metaphor for the peripheral regions of the hierarchy within the world system, subject to domination by the more central members (Santos, 2000: 340). Therefore, ‘south (of south)’ refers to the indigenous peoples, to those on the margin of the hierarchy of the modern world, subjected to violent forms of subordination.

The native words used as epigraph at the beginning of this chapter, ‘Magic Eyes of the South’ is thus the dream that impregnates reality, the utopia capable of destroying another reality; the ‘emerging subjectivity of the South’ (Santos, 2000: 341), the ‘subjectivity of the paradigm shift’ (Santos, 2000: 340). Thus, by extension, ‘Magic Eyes of the South’ aims to make a contribution towards a new context of social relations, taking as a starting-point the counter-hegemonic initiatives of the native Brazilians, and assuming emancipation as a principle and objective.

Thus, these reflections upon the local mobilizations of different groups and of the Brazilian native movement, which are based upon the premises of the Project ‘Reinvention of Social Emancipation: Exploring the Possibilities of Counter-Hegemonic Globalization’, will hopefully contribute to a discussion about the limits between ‘emancipatory’ and ‘retrogressive’ types of initiative, and to the construction of a theoretical/conceptual framework that may be used by different ethnic groups as a support in their struggles for differentiated rights within the wider context of globalized inter-ethnic relations.

The appearance of mobilizations and demonstrations amongst the native peoples of Brazil is directly related to the ethnic movements that have emerged in different parts of Latin America since the ‘70s. It is not easy to approach this question from a national perspective. Factors such as the vast size of Brazilian territory (resulting in excessive transport expenses between different regions); the scattered locations of the indigenous populations; differences between diverse regional contexts; the varying degrees of inter-ethnic contact; and the authoritarian way in which the Brazilian state has historically treated native matters, all represent obstacles to the formation of a ‘unified indigenous movement’. However, the main reason is undoubtedly the great cultural and linguistic diversity that erects barriers to communication between the 215 native peoples today found in Brazil.

The ‘70s represented for the native peoples of Brazil the period of the ‘native assemblies’, marked by mutual discovery and exchanges of information about the inter-ethnic contexts faced by each group. It was a phase that involved the exchange of experiences and discussion of problems, which gave rise to a sense of indigenous solidarity never before experienced, constituting a ‘spirit of co-operation’ (Ramos, 1997: 51) that became the basis for all indigenous mobilizations.

Following the first ‘assembly’, held in April 1974, with the presence of 17 indigenous representatives, the number of assemblies and of participants has increased each year. In addition to making it possible for groups who did not even know each other to meet, the great achievement of these assemblies was their success in consciousness-raising as regards the situation of domination and discrimination to which all ethnic groups were subjected. This new awareness on the part of the native populations resulted in the search for forms of political organization and mobilization in their disputes and impasses with Brazilian society.

These assemblies suffered opposition from the official organ of the native peoples, the ‘National Indian Foundation’ (FUNAI), and from other public institutions such as the Federal and Military Police Forces, and there was open repression from the military dictatorship against initial attempts to form an indigenous movement. Paradoxically, the military repression, crystallized in the ‘Emancipation Project’ of 1978, which aimed to overturn the special legal measures regulating indigenous matters, provided the stimulus for the formation of an alliance between the Indians and sectors of civil society, giving rise to the political conditions necessary for the creation of an organization that would represent the native peoples of the whole country.

In April 1980, a small group of native Brazilian students resident in the capital, Brasilia, set up the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNIND). However, this organization effectively hijacked the process of political organization that was being constructed in all the regions of Brazil, as the young people who had formed it were not very representative of their own communities and retained strong links with FUNAI. Even more importantly, this initiative had not resulted from the discussions taking place in the assemblies of the indigenous leaders. Refusing to recognize the legitimacy of UNIND as representative of the growing political movement of the Brazilian Indians, native leaders met in ‘assembly’ in the city of Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, in June the same year, and created another organization, also called the ‘Union of Indigenous Nations’, adopting the initials ‘UNI’.

Thus, in 1980, as the result of a merger between UNIND and UNI, the first organization was set up which aimed to gain credibility on the national level, claiming to be the legitimate representative of the native peoples of Brazil. The new UNI immediately became the spokesman for the indigenous movement, and continued to organize and coordinate indigenous demonstrations throughout the country for many years.

The disputes, rivalries, disagreements, and, eventually, meetings held for the ‘invention’ and ‘re-invention’ of the UNI attest to the maturity and urgency of the idea, and the need to construct a pan-indigenous organization (Ramos, 1997: 51) for the defence of the rights of the different ethnic groups. As FUNAI gradually weakened and lost political power over the years, the indigenous movement was progressively consolidated throughout the country through native organizations that became the political arm and voice of the native populations.

Brazilian life in the ‘80s was marked by numerous demonstrations clamouring for the end of the dictatorship and the return of the ‘Legal State’. Political struggles for re-democratization unleashed profound changes in the national context, which extended to the indigenous movement, resulting in alterations to the interplay of forces between the different social agents involved in the native question.

For the native movement, the ‘80s was a phase of alliances with different segments of civil society and with sectors of the public who wished to re-organize. These alliances had the effect of creating closer ties and cooperation, leading to joint actions with progressive churches, non-governmental organizations, and with movements supporting the causes of the natives and the rubber-tappers of Amazonia. This cooperation led to the ‘Forest Peoples’ Alliance’, marking the renewal of environmentalism in Brazil.

However, the military dictatorship that was still in power unleashed harsh repressive measures against the indigenous peoples during the ‘80s, seeing it as a potential enemy of the state and interpreting the name ‘Union of Indigenous Nations’ as a threat to national sovereignty. As a result of this, the Indians and their allies began to use expressions such as ‘indigenous populations’ or ‘indigenous societies’, instead of the term ‘indigenous peoples’, which the military government had sullied in their paranoia about national integrity.

The ‘2nd Assembly of Native Peoples of Upper River Negro’, held in April 1987 in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, was an important milestone for the native Brazilian movement, ‘because, for the first time, government authorities sat down at the negotiating table with leaders of the region to discuss the issue of the native homelands’(Barbosa e Silva, 1995: 21). This event is even more important if we consider that, in addition to 500 native leaders from the region, members of support groups, anthropologists, lawyers and political parties allied to the Indians, this ‘assembly’ also included representatives of federal and state governments, and economic groups with interests in the region. In a document published at the end of the debates, the native leaders demanded the immediate demarcation of lands, and recognition of their exclusive rights over the resources of the soil and subsoil, and the payment of compensation for the illegal prospecting and exploitation of those lands by mining companies (Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, 1991). The Indians of the Upper River Negro were in fact demanding that indigenous policy no longer be dictated from above, from the corridors of power, but that discussions taking place on the level of local power in the villages, be taken as a starting point for inter-ethnic negotiations and be used to orient all actions carried out in the indigenous territories.

Undoubtedly, the most important achievement of the ‘80s and the one that had the greatest impact upon the native question was the right granted to the native peoples by the new Constitution of 1988, to represent themselves in political and legal questions before the State and segments of Brazilian society. Until then, they had been treated in legislation as ‘relatively unable’ and were subject to state protection; consequently they had only a passive role in political affairs, being represented by public bodies invested with the authority to be the channel for their problems and claims. The new ‘status’ of self-representation opened up the way for the conquest of a political voice on the international scene, until then held for them by the Brazilian state.

Before this Constitution, the indigenous movement survived with a kind of ‘tacit illegality" (Ramos, 1997: 53); then after 1988, with the new Grand Charter, the native organizations acquired the ‘status’ of legally accepted social organizations. For the first time in Brazil, the Indians could have an active voice and defend their own interests themselves.

In the ‘80s, the native movement gave rise to a proliferation of experimental organizations. Unlike in other Latin-American countries where indigenous mobilizations occurred first at local and regional level, in Brazil, the movement was in the opposite direction. As the ‘assemblies’ moved from local and regional level to the national, bringing a greater understanding of the wider issues involved for the native populations, the ‘indigenous organizations’ were constituted more and more on the local and regional level, and no longer as a single entity spanning the whole country. In accordance with this trend, the UNI, promoting the new Brazilian constitution, set up local representatives, which were later (at the end of the ‘80s) replaced by ‘grass-root organizations’ formed throughout the country in accordance with local demand.

Within a context of multi-ethnic social relations, as occurs in all the countries of Latin America, conflicts between different ethnic interests tend to encourage the appearance of organizations that differ amongst themselves not only as regards their particular objectives, related to different historical and social contexts, but also as regards ‘ethnic differences, due to the persistence of ideological, semantico-cultural, linguistic, and sometimes even organizational structures, that correspond to the base or previous (ethnic) structure’ (Varese, 1981: 127). Therefore, the formation of ‘associations’, ‘councils’, ‘unions’, ‘movements’, ‘confederations,’ ‘co-ordinations’ etc, is a response to internal ethnic differences and particular forms of political organization, while on the external level, there is a drive to adapt to the different situations of inter-ethnic dialogue (Barre, 1983: 197).

Despite the apparent correspondence between the proliferation of organizations and the large number of indigenous societies, with little contact amongst themselves and few common interests, diluted by the nationalist system of a homogeneous Brazil,

This ‘alignment’ of the indigenous movement in the ‘proliferation’ of local organizations has been achieved through the maturation of the indigenous movement and by the understanding not only of the particular local and national contexts, but also within the national context that is implied in localized actions; these form connections between different local organizations both occasionally, at certain historical moments, and also through wider connections that aim at common targets or even the specific objectives of one of the organizations. The continuation of the connection between the ‘grass-root organisations’ in view of more localized actions, also demands a comprehension of local social and political differences, which often require different strategies.

Therefore, rather than interpreting the proliferation of organizations as a ‘fragmentation’ of the indigenous movement, which could give a false idea of the dilution of political action, it is more appropriate to understand this ‘multiplication’ as an ‘atomization’, directly related to the historical process of dispersion to which these peoples were subjected by the colonization of their traditional territories, or as a fractioning where the grass-root organizations, functioning as ‘fractions’ or ‘atoms’ of a greater movement, liaise amongst themselves in order to connect local strategies and actions within the wider global perspective of the indigenous movement as a whole.

The ‘90s brought significant changes as regards inter-ethnic relations. Bound to a reductive policy of state and third party involvement, state action on the native question fragmented into sectorial policies, in which responsibilities were transferred to different organs of federal, state and municipal government.

Since this basic change in the relation between the state and the native peoples, it is no longer possible to speak of state policy, on the native question, but rather as native questions in the plural. In this context, in which the state holds a monopoly as regards dialogue with the Indians, ‘the language of rights becomes the channel for negotiation, contestation and the creation of meaning in the relationship between the Indians and the state, which takes on the character of dialogue, with the indigenous point of view becoming relatively recognized as valid in the arena of native policy" (Oliveira, Neves e Santilli, undated: 9-10).

As Jorge León Trujillo observes in relation to the indigenous question in Ecuador, there is a close, fundamental connection between the different indigenous organizations based upon the social, economic, cultural, political and legal relations of each ethnic group, although this may not be evident at first glance. With state recognition, the indigenous organizations are converted into representatives of collectivities or of peoples, a recent phenomenon, which is being consolidated with the production of ethnic discourse, the training of staff and formulation of their own political projects (León Trujillo, 1991: 389). The organizations, which have an important role to play as instruments of native claims by providing training for their own staff, are not only being consolidated, but are also multiplying as a result of several factors: the new political context, marked by ‘democratic transition’; the diminished control of the hegemonic FUNAI over indigenous policy; and the emergence of new actors in the field, made possible by the formation of new, wider support networks amongst the native peoples.

With the exception of particular political moments, mentioned above, government strategy has been similar to that adopted in the ‘80s for Amazonia. Then, ‘in a counter-strategy to ensure the imposition of its projects, the state...agreed to talks between its institutions and the Indians, and other interested parties, such as people displaced as a result of the construction of dams, gold prospectors, rubber-tappers, nut-gatherers, smallholders, and rural workers. It permits them to sit around the negotiating table, assimilating pressures. However, key government figures do not appear at the discussion, and, consequently, dictate the rules of the game in their absence’ (Almeida, 1994: 533). The difference between this and the previous decade is that, in the ‘90s, native interlocutors were quashed in public institutions that represented the interests of the state and continued to ‘dictate the rules of the game’.

There is no doubt that the indigenous organizations are politically motivated institutions that have been constituted according to a rationale, function and structure that are non-indigenous, and alien to native experience. Despite this, the native organizations may not be taken simply as external entities transplanted into the context of the native questions. Rather, they are political strategies for the viabilization of native demands, oriented according to ethnic conceptions and values, which, even in contact situations, form the basis of their life and struggle in the new scenarios of inter-ethnic relations in which they found themselves following European colonization of their territories. As forms of resistance, the native organizations ‘are, in the end, facets of the same permanent, tenacious struggle: the struggle of each people, alone and together, to continue to be themselves, and their decision not to renounce the right to be protagonists in their own story’, written by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, (1990: 14) about the struggle of the indigenous movement in Mexico, but which may well be applied to the situation in Brazil.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that, while inter-ethnic dialogue is always unequal, with diverging interests that are often in conflict, the relationship between the different groups is always guided by symbolic and material universes that operate both in the shared camp of contact and within the interior of each society. This means that the approximation of distinct cultures and peoples is more than a simple process of homogenization or cultural de-characterization (Neves, 1999a), and that all actions, programmes, projects and other initiatives taken by the indigenous organizations are oriented by ethnic values.

The central question here is related to the confrontation between different symbolic universes that are put into interaction by the contact between different peoples. There are frequently clashes between different epistemological systems, and disputes and negotiations between rival forms of knowledge brought to bear upon indigenous practices, in confrontation with the practices of the surrounding societies. Traditional ethnic social structures have to be reinterpreted, rearranged, and reconfigured as a result of the new political demands emerging out of the situation of inter-ethnic contact.

Analysing the native movement in the ‘70s in Latin America, Stefano Varese (1981: 120) refers to its potential for political creation as ‘the potential for rebellion and for alternative options’, clearly visible even in the less politicized ethnic organizations. Therefore, the expression ‘emerging realities’ (Santos, 1998: 13) would seem to be appropriate to describe the indigenous initiatives, since it suggests the creative potential of a new context of inter-ethnic social relations being constructed by the indigenous movement.

Whether this is based upon local groups or upon the coordinated actions of the ‘indigenous movement’, the Brazilian inter-ethnic scenario is marked by initiatives that are very distinct amongst themselves. Many actions, programmes, projects, courses, training sessions and activities presently being implemented by indigenous organizations in Amazonas, show distinct potential for becoming processes of ‘counter-hegemonic globalization’, constituting what we have termed ‘cosmopolitanism’ (Santos, 1998). Although it is impossible here to describe all of these initiatives, each of which deserves detailed treatment itself, some of the ‘emerging realities’ being constructed by the indigenous peoples of Amazonas are listed below:

- the production and broadcast of radio programmes transmitting political information about the indigenous question at national and regional level;

- the use of information technology to build support networks and distribute news by means of periodic electronic bulletins, permitting expansion of the web of alliances, and closer contacts between members, and providing efficient instruments in the struggle for self-assertion and basic rights;

- the installation of radio systems for communication between different villages of a particular ethnic group, or across the region;

- the formation of professional organizations, such as associations of native teachers, who, by reviving and revaluing traditional knowledge, have managed to incorporate native languages into official school syllabuses;.

- the organization of professional training courses designed to furnish the native people with skills that they might use within the ‘indigenous organizations’ or in their villages; these include courses in accounting, motor mechanics, multi-media and communication, health care etc;

- courses in pedagogical and linguistic skills for indigenous teachers who work at ‘native schools’;

- the construction of economic systems acceptable to the international market, which can provide alternatives to the old subsistence model; these include the sale of crafts, through networks of shops spread throughout the main capitals of the country, and of guarana, sold in Italy by means of an alliance with non-government organizations;

- the implementation of fish-farming projects and the development of techniques for the cultivation of native species of fish, for internal consumption within the villages, and marketing of the surplus;

- the implementation of programmes and projects aimed at environmental protection and control within the indigenous territories, and the sustainable appropriation of their natural resources;

- the promotion of autonomous initiatives designed to promote recognition of the areas of indigenous occupation, through ‘self-demarcation’; these processes, oriented by ethnic concepts and systems for territorial marking, thus constitute new bases of Indian mobilization for the defence of their lands;

- the administration of the Special Indigenous Health Districts (DSEI), public areas recently created to coordinate and implement health policy for the indigenous populations;

- the participation of indigenous representatives from all the regions of the State of Amazonas in the Indigenous Education State Council (CEEI), and in the Municipal Health Council of São Gabriel da Cachoeira.

In addition to these initiatives, we could also cite the construction of discussion forums and political organizations, such as the Amazon Native Teachers’ Committee (COPIAM), an autonomous body charged with the formulation of guidelines for indigenous schooling; the Ticuna Union (TICUNIÃO), a movement presently at the phase of political discussion, whose objective would be to create a union between the Ticuna Indians, brining together groups located in Brazil, Columbia and Peru; and the Indigenous Rights Debate Forum (FDDI), a group formed by the indigenous leaders of the region of Upper River Negro, with the purpose of discussing and proposing alternatives for local politics, and of constituting a base that would permit the Indians of this region to gain control of local power in the near future, through elections.

With the reorientation of Brazilian politics (from the military dictatorship to the neo-liberalism adopted by the governments of Collor de Melo, Itamar Franco and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, via the period of ‘democratic transition’ of the Sarney government), the basic instruments of land planning policy were neutralized, which resulted in the political demise of FUNAI. This led to an almost total paralysis of the processes of demarcation of homelands, leaving the way open for conflict between different parties with interests in the territories occupied by indigenous peoples.

With the complete lack of state initiative on behalf of the Indians, the authoritarianism of the present government was expressed in two extremely violent acts. The first, which was of a legal nature, occurred in January 1996, when the Brazilian state passed two legal measures which radically modified the system of land recognition, reducing the participation of the Indians in the demarcation process to a mere formality. With this move, the native people’s struggle suffered a violent process of social regulation, diluting the political involvement achieved during the ‘80s and thus undermining the indigenous movement as a whole. The second was a physical kind of violence, unleashed by the police in April 2000 against the indigenous representatives taking part in native demonstrations against governmental celebrations of the 500 years of the discovery of Brazil. Rather than being an exception, these two violent attitudes demonstrate the continuation of the repressive state policy in relation to indigenous peoples, a policy which, despite political change, has survived centuries and been perpetuated by different regimes.

For the Indians, the ‘90s were marked by the consolidation of ethnic programmes and projects destined to attend to the immediate well-defined demands, as well as local and national initiatives for the occupation of political positions in institutions, as a decisive strategy to break with the brand of domination internalized by the colonized condition. Among the initiatives for the construction of emerging indigenous realities, there are some that require special mention: the great ‘Native March’, which crossed the whole country and culminated in the Indigenous Conference at Porto Seguro, South Bahia, the place where the Portuguese disembarked 500 years ago; and the mobilizations of local groups in the demarcation of their lands, an initiative which became known throughout the country as ‘self-demarcation’.

Without any shadow of a doubt, one of the most important popular initiatives of recent years was the movement ‘Brazil: 500 years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance - Brazil, Another 500’. This was organized by groups excluded from Brazilian society and offered a resistance to the official commemorations for the 500^th anniversary of the discovery of Brazil.

Resuming political strategies used in the ‘70s, when transnational coalitions provided decisive support for the growing indigenous movement Brazil, the Indians rediscovered the importance and political value of alliances and mobilizations in conjunction with other segments of civil society. The turning point which marked the resumption of these alliances was the ‘2nd Meeting for Humanity against Neo-Liberalism’, which took place in Belém do Pará, in Brazilian Amazonia, in December 1999. 2686 delegates from 24 countries of the Americas and Europe took part, with representatives of 31 indigenous nations and numerous political and social organizations from all over the world. Inspired by the Zapatistas, whose claims are bolstered by international support networks, the Brazilian peoples’ movements met with representatives of international solidarity groups at Belém do Pará, building up forces for the organization of a national mobilization of resistance to the festivities and euphoria of the triumphalist government celebrations organized by the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Globe Network.

The participation of the Indians in the ‘Brazil, Another 500 Movement’, was marked by two moments: the ‘Native 2000 March’ and the ‘Conference of the Indigenous Peoples and Native Organizations of Brazil’, which were milestones in the history of the indigenous movements of Brazil. The Native March mobilized around 3600 Indians in caravans from all parts of the country, who followed the route taken by the European occupation in reverse (symbolizing the retaking of Brazil), organizing demonstrations in all the cities it passed through. It was in truth a remarkable exercise in citizenship in defence of basic rights of the indigenous populations.

The ‘Conference’, for its part, was designed to be a forum for reflection about the past and for the definition of common strategies and alliances for the future. It brought together around 6000 Indians, representing 140 indigenous peoples from all over the country, who met from 18^th to 21^st April 2000, in the Pataxó village of Coroa Vermelha in the municipality of a Santa Cruz de Cabrália.

The disastrous breaking-up of the festivities in Porto Seguro does not only represent the crisis of values experienced by the Brazil of 500 years; ‘what happened in Porto Seguro, in April 2000 was something much more serious than the press made out. We do not take on the identity of the Brazilian state, with our roots" (Betto, 2000: 26). The fiasco of the 500th anniversary celebrations demonstrated the virulence and authoritarianism of a Brazil that was prepared to go to all lengths to impose its project of national unity, using force, and exclusion, refusing dialogue, and ignoring the roots of the Indians, blacks and other people that form the basis of Brazilian society, living roots that sustain the society of the ‘deep’ Brazil. The events of the ill-starred official commemorations indicate that Brazil cannot continue to see itself from a European perspective, and that it cannot continue much longer to construct an image for the rest of the world that is drawn from a reality outside the multi-ethnic Brazilian reality.

There are still two very important aspects of the ‘Brazil, Another 500 Movement’ that need to be pointed out. The first concerns the location of the Native Conference in the North East, exactly the place where the first and most intense contacts with European colonization took place, which also happens to be the region where ethnic groups have been most de-characterized. Certain groups, who until then embodied the nationally accepted stereotype that ‘in the North there are no more Indians’, or that ‘the Indians of the North East are no longer Indians’, began to realize that the people of the North East are Indians as much as any others in Brazil, despite having lost many of their distinguishing cultural markers through the long process of contact. The Indians of the North East, who had lost everything over the years - their land, their language, even their dignity - managed, through participation in the ‘Brazil, Another 500 Movement’, with the support and recognition of other peoples as Indians, in the end won back some of their rights (Marés, 2000b). This contact between indigenous peoples not only fortified the Indians of the North East in the eyes of Brazilian society, but also reinforced other areas of the indigenous movement (Amazonia, Centre-West, South). The second important aspect is that the ‘Brazil, Another 500 Movement’ helped Indians to have a perception, for the first time, of the ‘Brazilian homeland’ - that is to say, of Brazil as a vast indigenous land, a land where different ethnic groups are located (Marés, 2000b). This is a new dimension for the indigenous movement, since it transcends the local ethnocentric vision confined within the boundaries of each people’s territory.

After the ‘Native Conference’, Brazil became for the Indians the ‘homeland’ of all the native peoples of Brazil, the land of all the indigenous people on Brazilian territory together. It is ironic that this feeling of belonging to a common land was provoked by the repression of the military apparatus, which affected all ethnic groups indiscriminately, including some that had never before suffered aggression from the public forces. Unintentionally, and probably also unconsciously, the Federal Government and the government of Bahia played an enormous part in strengthening the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Brazil.

As counter-hegemonic markers of the political assertion of a profound indigenous identity, the ‘Native March 2000’ and the ‘Conference of the Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Brazil’ marked a new beginning. They signalled the rediscovery of a non-European Brazil, and the awakening of a national indigenous consciousness that has given rise to the composite indigenous/black/European identity of present-day Brazil.

The new Federal Constitution, which entered into effect in 1988, brought a new aspect to the native question, namely the issue of original rights to land. That is to say, the notion of ‘homeland’ was no longer understood as an option of the state, but as a right due to all native peoples. Previously, the state had recognized land, and in truth, for Brazilian society as a whole, this meant that the state would concede those lands to the Indians. After the Constitution, given that the Indians had a right to land, it was up to the state to officially recognize and legalize that right. For the Indians, before the Constitution, the question of land was perceived as a historical right to be claimed; with the Constitution, it became a constitutional right in recognition of the historical right. It was the Constitution that opened up the possibility of official recognition of Indian participation in the demarcation of their own territories. Previously, the Indians were considered to be a people in transition, a social group that was in the process of being integrated into the national fabric, losing their ‘nationhood’ to become ‘citizens’. Article 231 of the new Constitution granted the native peoples ‘the primitive and collective right to the lands that they occupy, whilst recognizing an individual, therefore public, right of property over those lands, handing over ownership to the Federal Union (Marés, 2000a:14). As it is a ‘collective right’, ownership of the homelands is not individualized. Thus, all the members of a native community are subject to the same rights over the land to which they historically and constitutionally belong; all may dispose of the land but at the same time no one may dispose of it individually, because to do so ‘would infringe the rights of all the others’ (Marés, 2000a: 07). As there was no possibility of relating the native lands ‘to a single title-holder, or person, in traditional terms, this is apparently not a right, but a simple interest’(Marés, 2000a: 07), which means that, even today, the homelands are considered most of the time to be a ‘no man’s land’, both for the people concerned and for the politicians and authorities. This opens up the possibility that the demarcation of the homelands will be contested by outsiders and other parties with claims to ownership. It was this legal ambiguity that enabled the Federal Government to impose Decree Nº 1775, in January 1996, from the Ministry of Justice, that ‘disposes of the administrative procedure of demarcation of the native lands’ and FUNAI’s statute No. 14, which ‘establishes norms for the elaboration of a circumstantial report on the identification and delimitation of the Homelands’. Thus, the political stalemate concerning territorial boundaries was transformed into a legal matter, according to which the occupation of land was perceived not as a historical right but as subject to a decree that could concede to the Indians the right to remain on the lands which had always been theirs (Neves, 1999b: 120).

In a similar situation to that described by José Manuel Pureza (2000), the only argument that the Brazilian state could evoke to legitimize its claim of control over the Indian lands, and consequently control over the demarcation process, was that of ‘effectively consummated facts’. In the light of international principles defending the self-determination of all peoples, the native question in Brazil is a ‘clear black and white case’ of a manifesto that does not respect the basic principles of International Law’ (Pureza, 2000: 11). Through FUNAI and other state agencies set up to deal with native demands, the Brazilian state continues to claim the right to administer the lives of the indigenous populations, by means of the control that it exercises over sectorial policy and, more incisively, through processes of legal recognition of the lands occupied by the indigenous peoples.

The land demarcation process involves a succession of sequenced and prioritized stages, from the situation in which the land does not have any official recognition, to the extreme situation in which its agrarian situation is regulated by means of a register in the Union Heritage Department and in real estate registry offices. For the objectives of this chapter, it is enough to mention four phases of this process: Identification and Delimitation; Demarcation; Legal Ratification, and Agrarian Regulation. To simplify, the whole process of official recognition of native lands is commonly called the ‘demarcation process’.

After the wave of European colonization, which extended to all parts of Brazil, the ‘homelands’ today cover less territory than they did before. The total number of indigenous lands varies in accordance with the criteria used by each agency to manipulate the data. According to figures provided by the Native People’s Missionary Council (CIMI), updated in March 2000, Brazil contains 739 native homelands, of which 179 (more than 24% of the total) are lands claimed by indigenous peoples but for which no provision has yet been made. Of the 560 lands recognized officially by FUNAI, only 231 (around 31%) have their agrarian situation regulated according to official norms, while the other 220 (almost 40%) have suffered invasions and pressures from non-indigenous interests (Reportagem, 1999).

Given the legal ambiguities and ineffectiveness of the state as regards the fulfilling of its constitutional obligation to undertake the demarcation of indigenous lands, the Indians took into their own hands the task of demarcating and protecting their lands. One of the first of these initiatives was carried out by the Kulina Indians of the Upper River Purus region in the state of Acre, on the frontier between Brazil and Peru. They undertook the physical demarcation of their land by opening up pathways in the forest and fixing improvised markers and wooden plaques that they had constructed themselves. Although these plaques and markers were totally unofficial, they served to assert the territorial rights of the Kulina within the region, and as a result, the area was not subject to trespass as it had been before (Monteiro, 1999: 156).

To the Kulina Indians, their initiative constitutes a de facto demarcation, defining the boundaries of the lands that were historically and mythically identified as their ‘homeland’, although the state does not recognize that procedure as a legal demarcation. In an assembly of the Kulina in 1990, the Indians of the Upper River Purus, used their own experience to encourage their relatives to open up tracks on the limits of the Kulina Homeland of the Middle River Juruá. This had been delimited in 1988 by FUNAI but had never been demarcated, and was constantly being invaded by lumberjacks, fishermen, rubber-tappers and, in particular, rubber plantation owners who refused to accept that the land was native territory.

Having decided to take action themselves, ‘ the Kulina, in the same assembly, planned to extend the manioc fields to sustain the arduous work of demarcation’ (Monteiro, 1999: 156). As the time for the start of the work drew near, the population of the region reacted against the Kulina’s initiative in the Middle River Jurua. In order to dissipate tensions, a seminar was held, in which members of the indigenous teams supporting the Kulina and representatives of UNI-Acre and South Amazonas explained to the population and local authorities the nature of and reasons for their activities. From that moment, it became clear to all that the initiative was designed exclusively to attend to native rights and that ‘the Kulina would undertake this work with the aim of marking the limits of the homeland in order to put an end to conflicts, precisely because the Federal Government had omitted to do this and had not fulfilled their obligations’ (Monteiro, 1999: 157).

In the first phase, the work followed a well-tested methodology developed in the short topography courses given at the villages for the training of the Indians. Based upon the use of compasses, boundary posts, and even fireworks and smoke signals in order to guide the direction of the tracks that were being opened up in the forest, there were at first many mistakes and a great deal of imprecision that was later corrected. In addition to technical matters, another obstacle that the Kulina confronted was the supply of food, because, as the paths advanced, the workers drew further away from the villages that supplied them with manioc flour, game and salted fish, their staple diet. This situation persisted during the first two years of operations. In a second stage, the scheme of work was modified on the basis of support from an international aid agency called ‘Bread for the World’ (PPM) and, mainly, due to an agreement between the Brazilian state and the Indians granting legal recognition of the demarcation carried out by the Kulina. Following the signing of the Accord, the orientation of the paths and the implantation of markers and plaques was done using sophisticated measuring equipment, such as theolodites and GPS, which permitted greater technical precision. However, the need to follow the standards and technical norms demanded by the Accord, meant that the work became even more laborious than it had been in the first phase. In addition, the dependence of the technical team on administrative and bureaucratic procedures of the organs of government for funding, not only reduced the efficiency of the work but also contributed to the ‘dejection and disappointment suffered by the Kulina’ (Monteiro, 1999: 159).

The shift teams that carried out the work in the forest consisted essentially of adult men, generally accompanied by the village chief. The women made a decisive contribution by supplying the necessary food and, in some cases, helping their husbands to fell trees for the opening up of the tracks. It is worth pointing out that all the villages situated in the Kulina Homeland of Middle Jurua took part in the demarcation, though some contributed more intensely than others.

The physical demarcation lasted from 1991 until the beginning of 1998, a period which brought great achievements for the Kulina. They saw the strengthening of their political organizations, got to know their lands in a more detailed way, underwent a technical apprenticeship that enabled them to work with maps, geographical coordinates, boundary markers, satellite pictures etc (Monteiro, 1999:163). As ‘the demarcation of an indigenous territory is carried out within a web of social relations, both internal to the community and external, with the surrounding population, it requires more than the simple application of technical and legal know-how to be long-lasting’ (Monteiro, 1999: 163); consequently, the Kulina demarcation functioned at the same time as a procedure and assertion of rights over the occupied lands, and as a process of affirmation of Kulina self-esteem in the context of inter-ethnic relations. Undoubtedly, ‘respect for the indigenous people grew significantly amongst the urban and rural population of the region as a result of the Kulina’s courage and skill in taking the responsibility to demarcate their own lands’ (Monteiro, 1999: 162).

Therefore, ‘self-demarcation’ began to be seen as an important issue within the indigenous struggle. It was taken the furthest by the Kulina who not only asserted their territorial rights but also generated and consolidated a methodology of demarcation involving the effective participation of local groups in the work of physical demarcation of the lands occupied in the Middle River Jurua, in Amazonas, and which had been legally recognized as indigenous land through the Accord between FUNAI and the Indians.

The ‘self-demarcation’ model, as a strategy for forcing the Brazilian state to officially recognize the lands, spread throughout the country and was adopted by many indigenous peoples. On the same River Jurua, for example, two neighbours of the Kulina, the Kanamari and the Deni, used the system of placing wooden markers and opening paths in the forest to mark the divisions of the lands they had traditionally occupied, having waited many years for official recognition. Although devoid of any formal legality, the Kanamari initiative, carried out in 1991, was very important as an assertion of the right of this people over its lands, and it helped to put an end to trespassing on their territory. Although the move was initially contested by regional estate-owners, the precarious improvised system of markers was adopted by a technical work group that identified and delimited the Mawetek Homeland, the anthropological report of which (Neves, 1998) recognized indigenous rights and validated the boundaries that had been established using the ‘self-demarcation’ process practised by the Kanamari. As regards the Deni, their lands had been identified and delimited in 1985, but they had waited sixteen years for the demarcation process to pass through the interminable administrative bureaucracies of FUNAI. Tired of waiting for solutions that never appeared, the Deni Indians themselves, supported by native organizations and environmentalists recently (September 2001) began the process of demarcating their own lands following the Kulina model. It is interesting that, after an initial negative reaction, in which the president of FUNAI demanded that the Deni’s work of opening and marking boundaries in the forest be stopped, a government decree granted the Deni rights of possession of their lands and established a short period for the beginning of the technical work of demarcation.

Through FUNAI and other agents dealing with the native questions, the Brazilian state made use of the actions and procedures generated by the indigenous peoples, incorporating them into their public policies. The Kulina ‘self-demarcation’ was no exception. On the basis of initiatives taken between the state, indigenous NGOs and native organizations, the methodology and organizational form of ‘self-demarcation’ lost its emancipatory dimension and was subjected to an ‘abbreviating interpretation’ (Santos, 1998), reduced by the PPTAL/FUNAI/GTZ to a model of physical land demarcation. As a model, the strategies and systems created and refined by the Kulina Indians during the ‘self-demarcation’ process were isolated from the political, historical, geographical and inter-ethnic context of the region of Middle River Jurua, and instead were converted into a new type of institutional knowledge, renamed ‘participative demarcation’, and extended by the PPTAL, as a demarcation model, to the 119 native lands located in Brazilian Amazonia. In accordance with its initial proposal, the PPTAL ‘proposed the identification of 55 areas, the demarcation and regulation of 58 and the revision of 6 more’ (Arruda, 1998: 06). Thus, the PPTAL assumed the role of regulator of a successful counter-hegemonic experiment by replicating it in different indigenous contexts, while what was really required were different procedures and treatment, adequate for the different realities involved.

Following this replicated institutional dynamic, the PPTAL promoted two experimental demarcation processes aimed at technically refining the ‘participative demarcation’ model, after which the demarcation of the Javari Valley homeland got under way, the biggest native homeland in Brazil, located on the border between Brazil and Peru.

The Vale do Javari homeland was ‘demarcated during 2000 and ratified in April 2001. Demarcation was carried out by a topography company (SETAG), contracted by FUNAI via public bid. FUNAI, through PPTAL, contracted CIVAJA, which mobilized the Indians to accompany the demarcation process, divulge it and present a plan for the security of the border after demarcation was concluded’ (Mendes, 2001).

The anthropologist, Gilberto Azanha, employee of FUNAI, who accompanied the work in the Javari Valley, stated in a personal interview that the demarcation of this homeland was indeed limited to ‘bureaucratic self-demarcation’ (Azanha, 2000). The Indians were little more than observers, with no active role to play in the process of demarcation of their own land, which was nevertheless presented as ‘self-demarcation’ on the model created by the Kulima.

Although PPTAL recognized that ‘partnerships’ with indigenous NGOs and Indians had been functionally quite successful in the demarcation of the homelands of the Waiãpi of the Upper River Negro and the Javari Valley, their analysis of the development of the regulation process indicated that, both qualitatively and quantitatively, their commitment ‘left something to be desired’ (Arruda, 1998: 07).

According to the description given by the Coordinator of PPTAL, ‘participative demarcation’ carried out in partnership ‘consisted basically in the contraction of a topography firm for the geodesic survey, opening of tracks and placement of markers’, while the Indians were mobilized ‘directly by the local indigenous organization or indirectly by some NGO indicated by them, to accompany the work on all fronts, place signposts and divulge to their villages and surrounding areas what this implied in terms of territorial rights’ (Mendes, 1999: 19). Explained in this way, the difference between ‘participative demarcation’ and ‘self-demarcation’ becomes obvious. The latter becomes the process by which the Indians resident in the homeland take upon themselves all the activities directly or indirectly related with the physical construction and legal consolidation of their territory according to the norms of the Brazilian state.

While, ‘demarcation’, as an external initiative undertaken by the state has connotations of the outlining of spaces for confinement, reduction, social enclosure and exclusion from relations with the world outside, ‘self-demarcation’, as an indigenous movement for the construction of territory, suggests the exercise of internal organization which extends the political possibility of native organization, thus strengthening the ethnic group in its relations with the state and surrounding society. Although ‘self-demarcation’ and ‘participative demarcation’ have the same aim of achieving the agrarian regulation of the indigenous lands, and often make use of similar methods and procedures, they are substantially different as regards the native participation. While ‘self-demarcation’ is the means par excellence of exercising political mobilization for the formulation of proposals and ethnic emancipation, in ‘participative demarcation’, the indigenous presence is no more than an accessory or support for the fieldwork, and is regulated by technical rules, schedules and administrative plans that are totally alien to the indigenous universe.

As regards the ‘participative demarcation’ model diffused by PPTAL, we may even question whether there are really any differences in relation to the inefficient model of ‘demarcations by bid’, the model traditionally used by FUNAI, since the dynamics involved are very similar. We could also ask to what extent ‘partnerships’ of this type ensure the long-term sustainability of counter-hegemonic indigenous initiatives, given the risks of institutionalization of the indigenous movement, and administrative bureaucratization of its organizations and formalization of its actions and movements. Indications of this loss of counter-hegemonic sustainability may be detected in the ‘bureaucratization’ of the demarcation of the Javari Valley and also in the growing process of institutionalization and formalism that the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the River Negro (FOIRN) and CIVAJA have imprinted onto the indigenous movements of the River Negro and Javari Valley respectively. The most frightening aspect is the way the counter-hegemonic dimension of the indigenous organizations has been weakened by the incorporation by the native movement itself of the ‘abbreviation interpretation’ which sanitizes the process and leads to stagnation of the indigenous initiatives, reducing their efficiency as ‘emerging realities’. The drawing-up of agreements in order to form ‘partnerships’ represents the incorporation of the indigenous ‘mobilization routine’ by the state, to be then sanitized and converted by state rationale into ‘routine mobilization’ which is transferred back to the organized indigenous movement or indigenous organizations as a way of doing politics.

‘Participative demarcation’ formulated by the PPTAL on the basis of the Kulina ‘self-demarcation’, is a new institutional idea, which adapts the indigenous creativity of ‘self-demarcation’ to the obsolete institutional bureaucracy of Brazil’s native question. It is a model in which the participation of the Indians is once more relegated to the work of accompanying and regulating technical work, and is taken as cooperation in the process of the political construction of indigenous territory through demarcation.

The analysis of the emancipatory dimension of the new dynamics of demarcation inspired in the ‘self-demarcation’ invented by the Kulina during mobilization in defence of their lands means that

The demarcation of indigenous lands should not be seen as a simple application of measurement techniques for the delimitation of terrains, or an exercise of environmental division; the demarcation of the native lands is a much more complex political fact than the ‘construction of a new socio-political reality, in which a historical subject, an ethnic group which perceives itself as descendents of the original occupiers of that land, becomes involved in a process of territorialization and becomes recognized under a model of citizenship as an effective participant in the Brazilian nation’ (Oliveira, 2001: 34). For this reason, ‘self-demarcation’ may not be seen merely as the Indians doing the work that the state should have done. If it were this, ‘self-demarcation’ would have been stripped of its myth of being a innovative political potential. It is much more than the Indians merely taking on the job in the state’s absence; it is the safest way for an indigenous people to establish the base for the reinforcement of their ethnic identity. It is the beginning of the process of reorientation of inter-ethnic relations, a step in the direction of a ‘process of social construction by the inhabitants of a territory, which impels them to search for solutions to their problems and needs through the self-diagnosis of their own world’ (Fundación Gaia Amazonas, 2000: 236). Understood in this way, ‘self-demarcation’ becomes similar to the process of ‘territorial planning’ conceived by the indigenous communities of Columbian Amazonia as the cluster of relations that have implications for the life of the population of a given territory, as the ‘backbone that regulates the principles of the governments themselves, and of all cultural, political, economic and social relations, both internally and externally’ (Sanchéz, 2000: 102).

The Kulina ‘self-demarcation’ was not an institutional idea; on the contrary is was a concrete practice constructed with indigenous protagonists within the whole process of political construction of territory, an initiative that revolutionized the institutional way of demarcating indigenous lands, taking on the shape of an ‘emerging reality’. ‘Self-demarcation’ rapidly spread throughout the country, less as a method of demarcation developed empirically by the Kulina than as a way of asserting rights over occupied lands, and today it makes part of the political agenda of all the indigenous peoples.

With the demarcation of the Kulina homeland of the Middle River Jurua, officially recognized through the accord between FUNAI and the Kulina, ‘self-demarcation’ asserted itself definitively as the most important and innovative political mobilization of the indigenous peoples, revolutionizing the whole process and system of land demarcation. These three examples of ‘self-demarcation’ in Amazonas - the case of the Kulina, whose technical work was recognized by an accord between FUNAI and the Indians; the Kanamari, whose limits on the land were validated as the limits of the native land; and the the Deni, which obliged the state to take the attitude that it had long delayed - demonstrate the emancipatory dimension of ‘self-demarcation’. This does not reside only in its capacity to mobilize local populations with the objective of achieving one-off conquests, but also in its ability to construct a new system of relations between the indigenous peoples and the state.

Long before the organized indigenous movement was formed, there were land conflicts in the history of the contact between the indigenous peoples and European society. The struggle for the defence of land is a common mark in the lives of all the indigenous peoples of Latin America, the struggle for the demarcation of those lands is at the root of the indigenous movement.

For the Indian, land is not merely a means of production; ‘it is a totalising concept to which all other aspects belong,such as culture, Indianness, history, religion, politics, economics etc’ (Barre, 1983: 162). The claim for ‘demarcation’ should not be confused with the concept of ‘territoriality’, which emerged from the native struggle together with the concept of ‘property’ that reduces the land to mere means of production, according to the economic perspective. In this sense, the struggle for the demarcation of land has a clearly emancipatory dimension, since it questions the whole cluster of Western presuppositions and values at the service of a ‘northern’ hegemony. The emancipatory, revolutionary, subversive potential of the indigenous peoples offers the Western world ‘prospects of change that are both cultural and civilizational, and which will signify the recuperation and development of communities, cultures and civilizations that could naturally ‘modernize’ in a different way’ (Barre, 1983: 239).

The indigenous movement represents a decisive break with the exclusion to which the Indians were historically subjected by colonization; it is a break with the imperial South, the South in the image of the North, a South that reproduces, confirms and reifies the North-South dichotomy in which it is subordinated. It is a ‘paradigmatic political struggle’, which has on its horizon the construction of new social relationships, configuring a new alternative paradigm of inter-ethnic democratic sociability (Santos, 2000: 314). The tenuous line between emancipation and regulation oscillates according to the ambiguity of the ‘partnerships’, which, for tactical reasons, may combine the emancipatory initiatives of the struggle with instruments of social regulation (Santos, 2000: 319).

The demarcation of lands, the issue at the centre of the native claims, is the most explicit and objective way of breaking with this regulatory order that the nation states impose upon ethnic minorities. Therefore, the demarcation of the land is not the final objective of the indigenous movement; it is merely the first step in the affirmation of territoriality as the basis of an ethnic project for the future. For the Indians:

These teachings are dictated by the model of ‘self-demarcation’ invented by the Indians in the historical process of defending their lands. ‘Self-demarcation’ opened up the way, traced the outline, taught the steps, indicated the direction in which the construction of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural social system ought to head, in which equality and difference are the orienting principles of relations between peoples.

However, despite representing processes of assertion of distinct socio-cultural particularities in the scenario of inter-ethnic relations, some initiatives may not realize their emancipatory potential and may lose their counter-hegemonic dimension, becoming ‘globalized localisms’, in the process of ‘hegemonic globalization’. In the case of the indigenous groups, the true counter-hegemonic dimension of the initiatives, originating in local groups or indigenous organizations, rests in the distinction between ethnic affirmation and subordination to nation states.

For the Brazilian state, only two possibilities were reserved for the Indians: 1) ‘isolation from civilization’, like societies paralysed in time; or 2) ‘integration into civilization’, as societies on the margins of national society. It is against this limitation that the Indians are mobilising. The indigenous initiatives, whether they are labelled ‘emerging’, ‘counter-hegemonic’ or anything else, demonstrate that another possibility exists, namely that the indigenous peoples assume themselves as active subjects in the process of inter-ethnic relations.

Indian mobilization has not been impelled by the international solidarity of NGO networks; rather it is ‘emancipatory commonsense’, a ‘subversive order’ (Santos, 2000: 254), a multiple proposal of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society (Patzi Paco, 1999: 13), which subverts democracy, constructing a plural democracy. The indigenous movement is not only ‘anti’; it is above all a movement that proposes a model of society different from the Western model and which manifests itself as anti-Western by its refusal of Western thought in accepting diversity, the possibility of co-existence of difference. In this, the power of the indigenous mobilizations ‘reveals itself to be non-accepting of the democratic character’ (Almeida, 1994: 531).

In the field of the indigenous struggles in Brazil, self-determination is focused on the historical rights to the land and its natural resources, based on an autonomous social organization compatible with the principles of national sovereignty reclaimed by the Brazilian state; an ‘internal self-determination’ which claims ethnic equality as an alternative to homogenization (Santos, 1995: 321). ‘Self-determination’ and ‘emancipation’, understood as the reconquest of immemorial rights’, bring together a group of local issues and specific problems experienced by the different indigenous peoples, while ‘land demarcation’ represents the immediate mechanism for the access of rights and the basic presupposition for achieving the required self-determination and emancipation, autonomy.

The proposal for ‘autonomy’ put forward by the indigenous movement of Brazil is a way of overcoming exclusion, which, in the field of inter-ethnic relations, shaped the ‘exclusive/defensive communities’ closed in upon themselves in defence against the domination (social, cultural, environmental, agrarian, political, epistemological etc) of the state, as an ‘exclusive-aggressive community’ (Santos, 2000: 314). With its objective of constructing a plural, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country, the indigenous movement is close to the paradigm of the ‘amoeba communities’, associated to the ‘principle of internal self-determination’ component of the new emerging paradigm of ‘democratic sustainability and dispersed sovereignty’ (Santos, 2000: 317).

For the indigenous movement in Brazil, ‘emancipation’ expresses a meaning close to ‘autonomy’, without however containing the connotation of ‘national liberation’ or ‘regional autonomy’, so frequently employed by the other indigenous movements of Latin America. The key word for the indigenous peoples of Brazil has always been ‘self-determination’. Recently, as a result of the involvement of indigenous movements and the state in activities and programmes destined to attend to immediate demands, ‘self-determination’ has given way in political discourse to other terms such as ‘partnership’, ‘alliance’, ‘collaboration’, which, though not new, have gained a force which they previously only had in the field of Brazilian native politics. From the theoretical point of view, the question is whether it is possible to reconcile the ‘emancipatory’ interest of the indigenous movement with the Western bureaucratic paradigm into which the indigenous organizations are inserted, by means of the ‘partnerships’, ‘alliances’ and ‘collaborations’.

A careful assessment of the state of the indigenous movement in Brazil suggests that today, the Indians have lost some of the political force and power which they had in the ‘80s for the conquest of support and solidarity from other segments of society. However, the native question continues to be a potential source of social emancipation. This resides in two facts. Firstly, it lies in the inheritance of a recent past in which the indigenous movement represented a great organized force (maybe the only organized force) of resistance to the ‘project of national integration’ of the military dictatorship that unleashed the process of cultural and social homogenization imposed upon the country. Secondly, and more importantly, the indigenous movement, given its intrinsic nature, opposes the national model of society, and from this ‘rivalry’ of different forms of knowledge, values, principles, political systems and social organization, there emerges a ‘social rivalry’.

Despite the anticipated risks and alternatives already confronted, the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Brazil cannot be called a failure. Counter-hegemonic initiatives and the capacity of the indigenous peoples to generate counter-hegemonic initiatives demonstrates that the struggles of the ‘70s have not been forgotten, only that they are sometimes put on hold in a varadouro to be resumed at the most opportune moment. Thus, this may be seen as a strategic manoeuvre on the part of the movement, local organizations, or indigenous peoples in their constantly renewed counter-hegemonic struggle against colonization, subordination and the exclusion of 500 years.

Marés, Carlos Frederico (2000a), Os Direitos Coletivos. Artigo apresentado no Simpósio "Reinvenção da Emancipação Social", Coimbra: CES, MacArthur