Brazil among most dangerous countries for human rights advocates
“I faced an attempted murder in this territory early this year.” The statement was made as part of an account given by Xondaro Ruwixa Tiago Henrique Karai Djekupe, from the Jaraguá indigenous territory. “Xondaro ruwixa” means “leader among warriors” in Guarani.
This article is being published by Agência Brasil in partnership with TV Brasil and Rádio Nacional, in the week in which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights celebrates its 75th anniversary. In Brazil, activists and social movements play an essential role in ensuring that fundamental rights and guarantees are enforced. Being a human rights defender in Brazil, however, can be daunting and risky.
A survey by the organizations Terra de Direitos and Justiça Global shows that 1,171 cases of violence against human rights advocates were recorded in Brazil from 2019 to 2022, with 169 people murdered. This puts Brazil among the world’s most dangerous countries for them.
“People walking by near the village, holding a gun threateningly, and pointing, telling everyone in the region a bounty had been put on my head. That’s what’s been making it difficult for me to even live,” says an emotional 29-year-old Karai Djekupe, who is studying architecture and urbanism at Escola da Cidade.
Karai Djekupe is the voice of an ancestral history. “I was born in this land, the Jaraguá indigenous territory, which was invaded in 1580 by the pioneer Afonso Sardinha. He was a trafficker in Angolan slaves, known as the killer of the Carijós. Carijós were the Mbya Guarani people. It’s what they called us,” he said. It is an old and complex story, but it helps to understand the context in which Karai Djekupé’s life came to be at risk.
History
The Jaraguá indigenous territory was a section of a 17th century settlement named Barueri, according to a 2013 report signed by anthropologist Spensy Pimentel with Brazil’s national indigenous agency Funai. After centuries of colonization, many indigenous people died. Some adopted the culture of the colonizers; others resisted. In the 1960s, Djekupé’s family was expelled from another Guarani settlement in southern Brazil. His grandparents were forcibly taken to São Paulo, where they found Guarani survivors from Barueri in Pico do Jaraguá.
Jaraguá is a preserved patch of Atlantic forest in the heart of São Paulo. The area was demarcated in 1987 with just 1.7 hectares, Brazil’s smallest indigenous reserve. In 2015, the last year of former President Dilma Rousseff’s government, it was expanded to 532 hectares. In 2016, a decree by then-President Michel Temer reduced it yet again, this time to three hectares. The indigenous people filed a lawsuit, and an injunction suspended the decree.
The 2016 text, however, was never actually revoked, and the ghost of the reduction continues to haunt the Guarani of Jaraguá. The indigenous reserve is surrounded by major highways and is a strategic location for logistics services and the real estate market. Karai Djekupe learned early on that the economic interests of powerful people served as fuel to the dispute. At least 15 families claim ownership of portions of the area.
Fighting for rights
Karai Djekupe has joined the list of human rights defenders who have fallen victims to violence in Brazil. The survey by Terra de Direitos and Justiça Global shows that those who fight for the right to land or defend the environment—such as the Guarani in São Paulo—are even more at risk. Of every ten cases of aggression, eight involved people linked to land conflicts. Of the total, 140 rights champions were murdered for defending their territories.
Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips, killed for standing up for riverside communities in the Javari Valley in 2022, are included in this tally. But the study has not yet incorporated the murder of Maria Bernadete Pacífico, also known as Mãe Bernadete, a leader of the Pitanga dos Palmares Quilombo in Bahia state, who was killed in front of her grandchildren on August 17, 2023. It is no coincidence that indigenous people and quilombolas are among the main victims in the fight for rights.
“[The fight for rights] is permeated by a dichotomy, so to speak, that has persisted since our slave-owning past, a dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots,” says psychoanalyst Christian Dunker, a professor at the Institute of Psychology at the University of São Paulo (USP).
Dunker questions this reality, where rights are partially guaranteed, under an exclusionary logic. “Those who have a place to live, who have a building permit and build according to the law, and pay taxes, are granted access to health care and education. On the other side are those whose life is seen as worthless. They can be killed with impunity; they are nobody; they’re hardly people. This is a tacit regime of denial of human rights.”
Teary-eyed and with a quivering voice, Karai Djekupe explained what it means to be a person protected by human rights. “I think it means the right to live, the right not to be afraid that someone will kill your child, not to be afraid of someone shooting you when you’re walking out in the streets. Because all you want to do is stand up for who you are. I think that’s it. I’m sorry,” he said.
