The Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte live along the banks of the Jequitinhonha River in the far south of Bahia, in the municipality of Belmonte in the Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte Indigenous Land. The Indigenous Land covers 9,521 hectares. It is in the challenges phase of the demarcation process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The far south of Bahia is the scene of major land conflicts. Cacao farming predominates on the left bank of the Jequitinhonha River, where the Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte live. It is important to mention that, during the heyday of cacao production, Belmonte was one of the most important cities in the state. It still retains vestiges of that period, like the \u201ccolonels\u201d [as large landowners who held vast power are known].<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After being the subject of various injunctions in land repossession cases, the Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte received a favourable decision from the Federal Appeals Court (TRF-1), which suspended a injunction issued by a lower court judge in Eun\u00e1polis. However, the farmers filed a new repossession lawsuit in the lower court naming \u201cunspecified people\u201d as defendants. This prevented identification of the previous case with the court decision in favour of the Indigenous people. Thus, the lower court judge issued another injunction against the Tupinamb\u00e1, authorizing the use of private force by the plaintiff for the removal of the Indigenous people, which the Ceolin family carried out, according to a denouncement made by the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response, the Human Rights Network went to Brasilia. The TRF-1 issued three more decisions in favour of the Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte and, in one of them, gave the lower court judge in Eun\u00e1polis five days to clarify the \u201capparent disobedience\u201d of the court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In another development in this conflict, the farmers cut off the supply of electricity to the Indigenous Land, even though the Electric Company of the State of Bahia (Coelba) had already started an electrification project. Posts were stolen, leaving the Patiburi community (the main village in the Indigenous Land) without electricity. In response, the National Human Rights Council (CNDH) recommended, among other things, that the government of Bahia do whatever was necessary to guarantee electrical supply to the Indigenous Land, which had lost all its harvest because of the lack of electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The region\u2019s conflicts are recurrent; farmers and the government itself violate Indigenous people\u2019s rights. The Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte have to defend themselves against police accusations of stealing cacao from their own lands, which have already been demarcated by the National Indian Foundation. In 2018, despite successive victories in the federal appeals court (TRF-1), an economic blockade was imposed on the Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte, throwing the previously self-sufficient community into a subsistence crisis. Some families even abandoned the territory and encamped near garbage dumps of Eun\u00e1polis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is worth noting, that the Federal Public Ministry in Eun\u00e1polis issued an opinion supporting the decision against the Indigenous people, and didn\u2019t involve itself in subsequent land possession cases, which were proposed to circumvent the TRF-1 decision. Only after many complaints, and the efforts of the Human Rights Network, did the situation begin to change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is important to highlight that all the Indigenous caciques<\/em> and leaders in the state of Bahia, from communities that face property conflicts, are the target of criminal investigations and charges. In addition, there is no state or federal Public Defender\u2019s Office in these locations. To make things worse, the Special Federal Prosecutor\u2019s Office together with the National Indian Foundation allege that these are \u201cindividual\u201d issues and, therefore, won\u2019t act in these cases. As we have seen, the Federal Public Ministry is acting as an accuser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte live along the banks of the Jequitinhonha River in the far south of Bahia, in the municipality of Belmonte in the Tupinamb\u00e1 de Belmonte Indigenous Land. The Indigenous Land covers 9,521 hectares. It is in the challenges phase of the demarcation process. The far south of Bahia is the scene of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflicts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umoutroceu.ufba.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}