Ten years ago, the Macuxi people won a legal battle to expel rice planters from their homeland in northern Brazil. Now, their control over ancestral lands is under attack, this time from Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro. The 1.7 million hectares of grassland lies along the border with Venezuela and Guyana. The area is called Raposa Serra do Sol. It is home to 25,000 native people, many of whom raise cattle. But the land is considered highly desirable by farmers and miners. They believe it is rich in minerals such as gold, diamonds, copper and niobium. Niobium is a metal used to strengthen steel that Bolsonaro considers “strategic.” Chief Aldenir Lima is the leader of the 70 Macuxi communities in Raposa Serra do Sol. He told the Reuters news agency, “In the fight for our land rights, 21 of us died. Since then, we recovered what we had lost and today, the farmers’ rice plantations have been replaced by our cattle...” But that could change if Bolsonaro follows through on his promise to reexamine the area’s borders. He wants to overturn a ban on industrial farming and mining on indigenous lands.
