The future of traditional Indian cultures was under challenge on Wednesday as Brazil’s Supreme Court began hearing arguments on whether to break up a vast Amazon reserve.
The dispute concerning the 1.7 million-hectare Raposa Serra do Sol reservation pits about 18,000 Amazon Indians against a handful of large-scale rice farmers who have violently fought efforts to remove them.
Carlos Ayres Britto, the first justice to take up the case on Wednesday, voted in favor of the reservation, saying “according to my vote, all of this area is indigenous.”
PHOTO: AP
But immediately after his vote, a fellow justice asked for a recess to further study the case. The court’s president then said the case would be taken up again later this year, without providing a date.
Indian-rights advocates say a ruling against the reservation could set a precedent that would eventually destroy policies that grant Indians land and autonomy to maintain their traditional cultures.
Politicians from Roraima state, however, say leaving the entire reservation in Indian hands is a threat to national security and strangles economic growth in the sparsely populated state.
State lawyer Luiz Valdemar Albrecht urged the justices to cut the reserve into pieces so the rice farmers can stay alongside 18,000 Indians from the Macuxi, Ingarico, Patamona, Wapixana and Taurpeng tribes.
He argued the anthropological study saying the tribes traditionally inhabited the land was a shoddy “cut and paste job.”
While Brazil’s 1988 Constitution mandated the demarcation of Indian lands within five years, the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve was not created until 2005, and the government still has not enforced its borders.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS