Macron meets Raoni after indigenous defeats in Brazil – 06/04/2023 – Environment

“We are attentive to what Chief Raoni tells us 18 days after the Paris Summit for a New Global Financial Pact that the world needs,” wrote the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, on a social network after meeting this Sunday (4) with the Chief Raoni Metuktire, icon of the fight for the rights of Brazilian indigenous peoples.

The Paris Summit for a New Global Financial Pact, proposed by Macron, will take place at the end of June in the French capital and will discuss financing models against poverty and for the protection of nature as ways of mitigating or reversing climate change.

Raoni represented the indigenous population of Brazil at the inauguration ceremony of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), when he walked up the ramp of the Planalto Palace alongside the elected leader to hand him the presidential sash.

“Preserving the rainforests, guaranteeing respect for the rights of indigenous peoples, this is his life’s work, his fight for humanity,” Macron tweeted after meeting with the Brazilian leadership.

The meeting with Raoni took place at the Élysée Palace, seat of the French government in Paris, just a few days after two defeats were imposed on the indigenous and environmentalist movement by the Brazilian Congress, under strong pressure from the ruralist caucus.

The measures could further jeopardize the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, which President Lula promised to complete in 2023, but which is experiencing a series of impasses, such as environmental conditions required by Europeans.

Last week, the House and Senate approved the provisional measure of the Esplanada dos Ministérios, which emptied the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, led by Sonia Guajajara (PSOL), and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, led by Marina Silva ( Network).

The MP removed the prerogative of demarcating indigenous lands from the newborn ministry dedicated to indigenous peoples, which passed to the Ministry of Justice.

Later, in the same week, the Chamber of Deputies approved PL 490, a bill that established the time frame for the demarcation of indigenous lands. The project was chosen as a priority by the ruralist group in the National Congress and determines that indigenous lands must be restricted to areas occupied by peoples on the date of enactment of the Federal Constitution of 1988.

The thesis is central to the struggle of indigenous movements, which argue that, according to the Constitution, these peoples have the right to their original territories without the limits of a certain date.

The measures ignited the spirits of environmentalists, previously appeased by the commitments assumed by Lula with the protection of the environment and indigenous peoples.

“Cacique Raoni is very aware of what is not good for our people, and he knows that the time frame is indigenous genocide and total disrespect for our history”, says Watatakalu Yawalapiti, who is part of the chief’s entourage.

“Yes, we did the L and we don’t regret having campaigned for Lula”, says the female leader of the Associação Terra Indígena Xingu, who is a co-founder of the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestrality (Anmiga). “We knew that the fight would not stop because Lula won, and that Congress would still be dominated by ruralists, who always defended laws against indigenous peoples.”

Watatakalu says that the indigenous delegation passed through Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France and that it canceled the second part of its tour, in Australia, because of the approval of PL 490. “We are going back to Brazil because of that”, he says .

“We are talking to companies and governments that buy products from Brazil. We are saying that Brazil deforests, contaminates and kills indigenous peoples in the name of the production that is sold to them and that, therefore, they will have to set limits to this production”, he explains.

For Watatakalu, “we need to touch the ruralists’ pockets”. “And they need to understand that [seus negócios] depend on other countries and that these other countries need the forest to maintain the air we breathe”, she evaluates.

“We are going to talk about this with Macron. We want concrete support. Trade negotiations need to change and have rules. The influence of Europeans counts a lot in our country.”

The French president had already met with Raoni in May 2019, when he invited him to participate in the G7 meeting, presided over by France, in Biarritz, in August of the same year.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}