Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) rejected on Thursday night by an overwhelming vote of 9 to 2 a project approved by Congress several years ago as the Marco Temporal, which aimed to prevent the creation of new indigenous reserves in Brazil. Only two judges appointed by Jair Bolsonaro, Cassio Nunez Marques and evangelical pastor Andre Mendonça, voted for the measure, which has been criticized around the world and which judges at the highest levels of Brazilian justice now consider unconstitutional.
The Marco Temporal, created during the government of former President Michel Temer and strongly supported by his successor Jair Bolsonaro, determined that new indigenous territories could only be created on lands that had already been occupied by these indigenous peoples on October 5, 1988. proclamation of the new constitution of Brazil. In practice, this prevented the creation of new reserves, since in most of the cases now analyzed, indigenous peoples who had lived on their homelands for centuries were expelled from them by the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil with an iron fist. between 1964 and 1985, and by invaders who devastated forests to create large agricultural and livestock operations or for the illegal exploitation of timber and minerals.
The “time frame” began being reviewed by the Supreme Court in 2020 but did not continue, largely due to the actions of then-President Jair Bolsonaro, who promised upon taking office in 2019 that during his term he would not give an inch of his life away. land to the indigenous people. This was one of the few promises he kept, and the issue was so important to him, as well as to the military and large landowners who supported him, that he even publicly stated that he would not comply with the decision of the STF if the “Time Frame” was rejected. as it did now, even threatening to take its fanatical followers into the streets to provoke civil disobedience and social chaos in the country if the judges did what they did this Thursday, recognize the right of indigenous peoples to the lands where they were born and have always lived and which were taken away by force.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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