A documentary gives voice to Brazil's native people who live not in the Amazon but near São Paulo, in the indigenous land of Piaçaguera, recounting the battles of yesterday and today in a country where the president himself tramples on their rights. An interview with director Lucca Messer.
We have been resisting for 500 years, and we will keep resisting
Indigenous woman from the Piaçaguera community
Brazil's indigenous people are not only resisting the genocide that began with colonisation and the racism of a nation born from segregation. Today they face yet another obstacle on the road towards what may, one day, be called equality: the election of president Jair Bolsonaro, who has led Latin America's most populous country since October last year — a far-right populist known as the "Trump of the tropics" (though had the Brazilian elections taken place before the American ones, it would probably be his counterpart who'd be called the "gringo Bolsonaro").
The complex interplay between the history and the present-day reality of indigenous peoples in Brazil comes through in the short documentary simply titled Indigenous struggle in Brasil by Lucca Messer, a young director and photographer who divides his time between London and São Paulo. After living for over a decade in South America's largest city, Messer went to meet and film the eleven tribes of Piaçaguera, an indigenous territory just an hour and a half from São Paulo. An area inhabited by 350–400 people who, like roughly half of Brazil's native people, do not live in the Amazon.
The tribes' right to land is guaranteed by the 1988 Constitution, which marked the end of two decades of military dictatorship, and their territories cover 13 per cent of the country's surface area. This right is now seriously threatened by Bolsonaro, whose contempt for native peoples stands in stark contrast to his friendliness towards powerful commercial lobbies such as those representing agro-industry and mining. As he had promised during the election campaign, he opened his term by stripping Funai, the department responsible for indigenous policies, of its responsibility to demarcate their lands, transferring it to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Bolsonaro speaks the language of hatred to legitimise his actions, encouraging racism towards native peoples and, at the same time, the exploitation of natural resources — of which indigenous territories, especially in the Amazon, are rich. Some episodes of violence against indigenous people are also thought to have been fuelled by his statements, such as the recent murder of the chief of the Amazonian Waiãpi tribe by illegal gold miners.
Indians are recognised for their social organisation, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions, and their original rights over the lands they traditionally occupy, with the Union responsible for their demarcation, protection and respect for all their assets.
Article 231 of the Brazilian Constitution
Although Messer's intention was not to investigate the effects of Bolsonaro's policies on indigenous communities, his documentary conveys both the harshness (and the cinematic beauty) of the living conditions of the Piaçaguera community. "I always felt a desire to speak with people on the margins of society because they have something to say but no one listens to them," the director explains. Many focus on the tribes of the Amazon — given the dire state of that ecosystem, where the deforestation rate, which has grown alarmingly under Bolsonaro, has almost reached the point of no return. But Messer's gaze goes further, portraying the social plight of a community living in a small slice of the 1.5 per cent of Brazilian indigenous territories that lies outside the planet's green lung. An area that, regardless of its ecological value, is fundamental to preserving indigenous cultures and ways of life.
Can you tell us about the Piaçaguera community's battle for the demarcation of their land?
In 2016 Dilma Rousseff approved the demarcation of their land before the impeachment proceedings against her began. Her government was the worst in terms of defining indigenous territories (not counting that of her successor Michel Temer); she approved them only two months before leaving office. Since then, the indigenous people of Piaçaguera have been fighting to stay where they are, since demarcation does not necessarily protect against political and social attacks. It is a vast area on the southern coast of São Paulo. This community is constantly under threat because of its proximity to urban centres; evangelisation, for instance, is very widespread and many people are converting.
In the documentary, a woman says that "many indigenous people are ashamed of being so". What difficulties do Brazil's native people face in preserving their identity and culture?
When they become teenagers, young people leave the tribes to go and study in the nearest city. The transition is immediate — or rather, non-existent —; all of a sudden they find themselves at school with people who are not indigenous, and they fall victim to bullying and discrimination. They feel alone and isolated, and come into conflict with the tribe. Their defence mechanism is to deny their identity, crushed by prejudice: this is the beginning of the end. For example, the spiritual leader seen in the documentary told me that no one will succeed him. This is ethnocide, meaning the annihilation of their cultural identity. The media talks a great deal about deforestation in the Amazon, but attention must also be paid to the social implications of this ethnocide and of the genocide that began with the Portuguese invasion (in the sixteenth century, ed.).
Bolsonaro promised that "there will not be one more centimetre of indigenous land" and compared the inhabitants of native reserves to animals in zoos. Why does the Brazilian president hold them in such contempt?
There are around one million indigenous people in Brazil, 0.4 per cent of the population. Bolsonaro still considers them an obstacle because he is completely opposed to the conservation of natural resources and land. But there is something else at play — the desire to eliminate them: they are an impediment to the process of "cleansing" the country in order to build the foundations of what, in the president's eyes, is modernity. It is as if they were a parasite he wants to get rid of.
Around the world, indigenous peoples are recognised as guardians of nature. Are the people of Piaçaguera also committed to environmental protection?
They are involved in that too, but perhaps less so than Amazonian communities. Their struggles are different: the peoples of the Amazon defend their land from exploitation. Piaçaguera does not have many resources that could be taken from it, but here too the native people feel a strong bond with the land. Indigenous life springs from it, from beneath their feet — this is their deity, whom they call Nhanderú. They make the best use of whatever is available to them. Piaçaguera is on the coast and the soil is sandy and not very fertile, so they depend on Funai, which gives them a minimum wage that allows them to buy food from the supermarket.
Given how close it is to São Paulo, do the people of Piaçaguera want to leave their land and change their lives?
The most interesting aspect concerns the young people. They have technology, mobile phones and social media, they live near urban centres, they go to school with people who are not indigenous, they are influenced by all of this. On top of that, there is the process of evangelisation. If we picture a person standing in