Time frame benefits politicians and businessmen in MT – 06/24/2023 – Environment

The time frame thesis, which limits the demarcation of traditional territories, benefits a group of large landowners fined for environmental violations and who have taken over areas of the Batelão Indigenous Land, in the north of Mato Grosso.

Among the occupants of the territory, considered the birthplace of the Kawaiwete Indians —the Kayabis, as they are known—, are the mayor of Lucas do Rio Verde (MT), Miguel Vaz Ribeiro, and his predecessor in office, Marino José Franz. Both are affiliated with Citizenship.

Lucas do Rio Verde is 285 km from Tabaporã, the closest city to the indigenous land.

When he was elected in 2020, Ribeiro claimed to have a net worth of BRL 131 million. On the list of assets is the São Jorge Farm, located on the Batelão land, according to a lawsuit brought by the landowners themselves to try to annul any definition of the territory as indigenous. To the Electoral Justice, the then candidate said that two plots of land in the place were worth R$ 52,500.

Franz, who previously held the position of mayor of Lucas do Rio Verde, is one of the owners of Fiagril, a grain producer with a capital of R$626.8 million, according to company records at the Federal Revenue Service.

Both the current mayor and the former manager were fined by Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) for environmental infractions.

The dispute over the Batelão also involves four other large rural producers who are identified as perpetrators of environmental infractions or crimes.

The report questioned the defense of the six rural producers, including the mayor and the former mayor, and there was no response until publication.

In all, the fight in court against the Kayabis involves 25 groups of individuals and companies. They occupy land in the territory, which has 117,000 hectares, and say they bought the rural properties after the expulsion of the indigenous people from the place.

On the last day 3, the Sheet showed that the deputy mayor of Sinop, Dalton Benoni Martini (PTB), has owned farms on Batelão land for over 30 years. He has owned farms in parts of the territory since the early 1990s, filed a usucaption lawsuit in court, and is dedicated to raising cattle, planting soybeans and corn, and exploiting wood in the area of ​​Amazonian vegetation.

Martini is one of the 25 who are trying to secure ownership of the land in court. The report obtained documents from the ongoing processes, which made it possible to identify who are the rural producers and companies that are exploring Batelão, the birthplace of the Kayabis.

All of them can benefit from the time frame thesis, if it is found to be valid. According to this thesis, indigenous peoples have the right to a traditional territory if they were in that place when the Constitution was enacted, in October 1988.

The thesis ignores conflict situations and commonplace expulsions of indigenous people to other territories, exactly as occurred with the Kayabis.

In the 1940s, the government of Mato Grosso started illegally selling pieces of land to anyone who wanted to explore the area. In the 1960s, due to successive invasions and clashes, mainly with rubber tappers, a portion of the Kayabis was taken by the Villas-Bôas sertanista brothers to the Xingu Indigenous Territory, without consensus and without acceptance by the families.

Some resisted and remained on land close to Batelão, used for hunting, fishing and gathering material for making bows, arrows and sieves. Many moved back from the Xingu to these areas.

In the following decades, rural producers began to occupy and deforest Batelão. The Kayabis want to take back the territory, as the report found in contact with the indigenous people in the nearest villages.

According to the thesis of the temporal framework, the farmers, who claim to have bought the areas, would have more chances of guaranteeing the ownership of the already exploited lands.

On the 30th, the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill that validates the time frame, one of the priorities of the ruralist group in Congress. The text still needs to be analyzed and voted in the Senate.

At the same time, the STF (Federal Supreme Court) analyzes the constitutionality of the thesis.

Justices Edson Fachin, rapporteur of the process, and Alexandre de Moraes have already voted against the time frame. Moraes’ vote was delivered in plenary on the 7th, when Minister André Mendonça asked for a review and suspended the trial. Kássio Nunes Marques voted in favor of the time frame.

In the Batelão Indigenous Land, the Kayabis are no longer present. Farmers took over the place, with vast soy and corn plantations and cattle raising.

In September 2016, federal judge Cesar Augusto Bearsi, from the 3rd Federal Court in Cuiabá, issued a decision in which he considered the Batelão land as being traditionally occupied by the Kayabis. Therefore, according to the ruling, the property titles of the landowners present in the area must be declared void.

The decision also established the need for the Union to pay for improvements made to the farms, due to alleged good faith in the development of rural properties. These indemnities would reach R$ 123.3 million, at 2016 values.

The landowners contest the decision in higher courts.

The improvements on the farm of the mayor and former mayor of Lucas do Rio Verde are worth R$ 12.3 million, as mentioned in the 2016 sentence.

In 2019, Ibama fined Miguel Ribeiro for building a dike and concrete pipeline without authorization from an environmental agency, including within the Chapada dos Guimarães National Park. Marino Franz was fined in 2015 by the environmental agency for carrying out forest management without authorization.

Producer Edson Melozzi, who also owns property in the Batelão area, was fined by Ibama in 2009 for undue fire.

Elpídio Daroit was fined more than R$3 million for illegal deforestation in an area of ​​the Amazon in the region of Nova Ubiratã (MT) in 2013, the same year in which an area of ​​636 hectares was seized by Ibama for the same reason.

Another occupant of the Batelão is Sinopema Indústria e Comércio de Madeiras. In 2019, the company had to make a TAC (conduct adjustment term) with the MP (Public Ministry) of Mato Grosso due to irregularities in the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry).

According to the MP, Sinopema needed to present documents that authorized the farm to remain in overlapping with the indigenous land or exclude the registration overlapping with Batelão.

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