by FRANCESCO BILOTTA
There are 183 indigenous candidates in the general elections on October 2 in Brazil, 36% more than in 2018. This is the answer to the “existential threat” represented by the Bolsonaro government. Sunday’s election is of extraordinary importance for indigenous peoples because the future of communities and the Amazon rainforest are at stake.
Bolsonaro’s re-election is seen as a “catastrophe” and, for the first time, Brazilian indigenous associations have mobilized to build a common path that goes beyond the logic of the past in which each people presented their candidates.
The need to increase their presence in the Congress and in the Assemblies of the 26 states, to occupy new spaces of decision and representation, has prompted the associations to launch the “Indigenous Campaign,” coordinated by Apib (Articulation of the indigenous peoples of Brazil), which brought together 31 peoples. According to the 2010 census, the last carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, there are 900,000 indigenous people living in Brazil, belonging to 305 peoples who speak 274 different languages.
The vastness of the territory does not easily facilitate a direct relationship between the communities to define common strategies. Having managed to bring together 31 peoples to define an electoral strategy is considered an extraordinary success.
The confluence that has developed between the regional associations has led to the choice of 30 candidates (12 for the Congress and 18 for the State Assemblies) out of the 183 that have presented themselves and that the indigenous movement is committed to supporting.
Sixteen out of 30 candidates are women, an expression of the battles they have fought in the front row in recent years. And it is a woman, Joenia Wapichana, elected with the Rede in 2018 in the State of Roraima, the only indigenous presence in the current Congress dominated by the “bancada ruralista.” Before Joenia, only one other indigenous person had arrived at the Congress, Mario Juruna, elected with the Partido Democrático Trabalhista (Pdt) in 1982 in the State of Rio.
In Brazil there is no party whose main objective is the defense of indigenous rights, and getting to Parliament is very difficult. The indigenous vote is not enough to elect a federal deputy. The candidates join the parties, seeking consensus outside the communities on the issues of environmental defense and human rights.
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