BRAZIL: May 2, 2008


BRASILIA - Brazilian Indian leaders pitted against armed farmers in a bloody land conflict said on Wednesday they will fight on despite death threats, political pressure and military concerns over territorial sovereignty.


The standoff marks the height of a movement by Indians to reclaim ancestral lands -- granted to them by the 1988 constitution -- that has big business concerned over property rights.

"Brazil had thought the Indians would assimilate but they've done the opposite, fighting for what they lost over centuries," Saulo Feitosa, deputy secretary of the Catholic Indian watchdog group Cimi, told Reuters.

Police tried this month to evict rice farmers from an Indian reservation that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva created three years ago in Roraima, Brazil's northernmost state.

But the farmers, who claim a right to the same land, blocked roads, blew up bridges and armed themselves with Molotov cocktails to prevent the action.

"We have an army of good Brazilians to prevent the Indians from declaring independence and converting this into a Kosovo," Veja news magazine quoted rice farmer Paulo Quartiero as saying.

The army's chief Amazon commander as well as conservative congressmen said last week that the Indian reservation along the border with Venezuela and Guiana could compromise national security.

They fear Colombian guerrilla fighters and drug traffickers could gain a foothold in the 4.2-million-acre (1.7-million-hectare) reserve.

JUSTICE, NOT ECONOMICS


"They say we are a threat to sovereignty but they don't know their history or our reality," Lourenco Wapichana, chief of the Sao Marcos Indian village in Roraima, told a news conference.

"Our sons and cousins are in the army and we defended that land when the English came down the Orinoco (River) to try and settle it," said Wapichana, who looks like US rock star Carlos Santana with his full mustache and white, braided bandanna.

Farmers and forestry and mining companies in several parts of Brazil are concerned with growing demands for land by Brazil's estimated 750,000 Indians.

Ninety-two Indians were killed last year in conflicts related to land disputes.

The Indian chiefs in Brasilia say land rights are a question of justice, not economics.

"We will not negotiate. This is our land and we demand that the state apply the rule of law," Dionito Makuxi, head of the Roraima Indian council, told reporters in a run-down office building in downtown Brasilia.

"We are accused of opposing progress and they are the ones destroying and using violence," said Makuxi, who resembles a television preacher with his slicked-back hair, loud tie and a wooden cross dangling over his black suit.

He and other leaders have received death threats, he said.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule as early as next month whether to authorize the eviction or annul the Roraima reservation.

"If the court rules against them, it would be the biggest setback to Indian rights in several generations," Feitosa said.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)


Story by Raymond Colitt


REUTERS NEWS SERVICE