A historic practice of Indigenous peoples in Brazil targeted by agribusiness: Understanding retomadas

Brasil de Fato

Land occupations, also known as land retaking – retomadas, in Portuguese – through which Indigenous peoples recover traditional territories from non-Indigenous people, are an instrument of struggle. For Karai Tiago dos Santos, a Guarani Mbya leader from the Tenondé Porã Indigenous Land in the city of São Paulo, this is perhaps how “other eyes” see Indigenous land occupations. “But for us, it guarantees our continuity,” he explains.  

Each Indigenous territory reclaimed “means diminishing land in the hands of the capital market,” says the organization Amigas da Terra (ATBr, in Portuguese), which works for environmental justice. Thus, Indigenous occupations have been the constant target of armed attacks by jagunços (the Portuguese word for armed bodyguards working for rich people) and large estate owners, many of them organized by the Invasão Zero (Zero Invasion, in a rough translation) group, which was involved in the death of Nega Pataxó, in southern Bahia.

“When we say retaken,” says Dinamam Tuxá, from the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib, in Portuguese), “it means something has been taken from us. And that we are claiming and returning [to the land], taking back what was once ours and which, due to this very violent colonization process, was stolen from us.” 

Self-demarcation of lands to deal with “the empty promises of white people”

Many of the areas reclaimed in the country are territories that have already been recognized and delimited as having traditional Indigenous occupation, but whose demarcation process has stalled due to legal imbroglios and state delays.   

This is the case, for example, with seven retakes led by the Guarani Kaiowá in the Panambi-Lagoa Rica Indigenous Land, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the other seven made by the Avá Guarani in the Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land, in the state of Paraná. The demarcation of the former has not advanced since 2011; the latter, since 2018.

Both territories are overlapped by big farms and, according to the National Force, have been surrounded by pick-up trucks and attacked by armed men.

Thus, land retakings are a way of self-demarcation, argues Apib. “This is due to the failure of the Brazilian state to fulfill its constitutional duty to demarcate Indigenous lands. By not demarcating them, we are carrying out this process of self-demarcation to guarantee our lives and rights,” Dinamam summarizes.

“We see that we have no rights,” says Laura*, an Indigenous leader from the Avá Guarani people in Paraná. “We know that demarcation is guaranteed in the Federal Constitution, but what happens is that Indigenous lives are being shot down,” she denounces. 

“We’ve been receiving empty promises from white people for a long time – and we’re getting tired of it. That’s why what we’re doing isn’t an invasion,” says Laura, referring to the retaking of areas of the Guasu Guavirá Indigenous Land in the municipalities of Terra Roxa and Guaíra, both in the state of Paraná. “We’re self-demarcating our lands because we’re tired of waiting. We’re going to do it for ourselves, for our children,” she says.

Erileide Domingues, of the Guarani Kaiowá people, lives in a retaken land in the Guyraroka Indigenous Land, surrounded by soybean plantations, in the municipality of Caarapó, Mato Grosso do Sul. “We’ve been resisting for 24 years in defense of our rights, our freedom and our territory. We wait politely and respectfully, but we get tired of waiting,” he says. 

“We are occupying land because we need to retake what has been destroyed, what has been taken from us since the beginning of the invasion of Brazil. We are not invaders, we are retakers: we take back what is ours,” says Erileide. “It’s for us to recover our seeds, to keep our language, our culture: our way of life.”

A way of healing

“The Guarani way of life is not to be squeezed in, with houses very close to each other,” explains Laura. “Anyone who gets to know our reality here in the Guasu Guavirá community will agree with us making these occupations.” 

“We were already sick of being confined for so long. Today, those who have moved to the occupied areas feel more free. They feel good,” she continues “because retaking is also a way of healing.”

Ancestors, spirits and encantados

The return to “ancestral” Indigenous communities, says Karai Tiago, who is also a member of the Guarani Yvyrupá Commission (CGY), doesn’t happen on a material level. “The spirits of our ancestors guide us. The retaking of land takes place in this search. It’s very difficult to understand, but those of us who are Indigenous can understand it perfectly.”

For Cacique Babau, from the Tupinambá de Olivença Indigenous Land, the second largest in the state of Bahia, retaking land is a form of prayer. “A ritual to recover not only the land but our existence. We’re not just referring to the territory, but to taking into our hands the life taken from us,” he says. 

“We, the Tupinambá from Serra do Padeiro, have already said: it is not the white people who governs us. You don’t decide about our lives,” says Babau. “We have an ancestral culture and it’s our encantados (spiritual beings) who determine what we’re going to do. They’re the ones who define how we’re going to walk.”  

Opposition to tutelage 

In an article on the subject, anthropologist Amiel Ernenek Mejía, who studies the experiences of Indigenous autonomy in Mexico and the land occupations in Brazil, says that they “do not end in the universe of land conflicts”, nor are they just “a struggle for resources to improve the conditions of the material and immaterial existence of the Indigenous people.”

More than that, says Mejía, “retaking Indigenous lands seeks to occupy and recover places where the indispensable relationships for the production of what makes and keeps them Indigenous are to be found.”

Therefore, the reclaimed areas become places that oppose “the impositions by the state and national society, especially those determined by the policies of the administration of Indigenous territories and the tutelage of these alterities,” says the anthropologist.

The origin

When asked about the origins of the retomadas, Indigenous leader Babau Tupinambá says that “ever since Europeans arrived in Brazil, we have organized to resist. This resistance has received various names throughout history.” 

But it was from the 1970s onwards, with the Indigenous articulation as a national popular movement, he explains, that what would become the retomadas, with that name, was born.

“At the beginning of the 1980s, a new name began to be used to refer to this struggle, with peoples from northeast Brazil like the Pataxó, Pataxó Hã-hã-hãe, Kiriri: retomada,” Babau says. 

“They were saying that the Indigenous people were only in the Amazon. So, we have to wage a war to retake the land. We live in a state of war. And we have to show that we are here and that they are not going to annihilate us,” says the Tupinambá leader.

Babau’s statement sounds like an excerpt from the interview given by Ailton Krenak in the documentary series Guerras do Brasil (Brazilian Wars, in a rough translation) directed by Luís Bolognesi. “We are at war. I don’t know why you’re looking at me with such a sympathetic face,” says Krenak. “Your world and my world are at war. The ideological falsification that suggests we are at peace is to keep things going. There is no peace anywhere,” he says.

Laura says that in western Paraná, Guarani women have taken the lead in retaking land. “Because we look at our children, who are yet to grow up, and we feel the need for them to have a dignified life,” she says. “And we’re not afraid. For us, it doesn’t matter whether we die or not, whether we fall or not,” says the Avá Guarani leader. “We are sure that for our future generation, this struggle will be worth it.”

*Name changed to preserve the interviewee.