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Project September 12, 2022

Agribusiness Advances on Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso

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With a large political bench linked to industrial agribusiness, the state of Mato Grosso has been the laboratory of an agrarian model that advances mainly over legal reserves and indigenous lands, until then protected by the Union.

The bill 337/22 proposed by the federal deputy from Sinop, Juarez Costa (MDB-MT) proposes to exclude Mato Grosso from the Legal Amazon, increasing the reserve area from 80% to only 20%. Concomitantly, there is a loosening of the environmental legislation by the state legislature, with this the government has stimulated the creation of mixed indigenous associations, with the objective of implanting mechanized plantations in indigenous territories, with the consent of federal inspection agencies, supported by the laws.

This is the reality in which the Xavante indigenous people live, who began mechanized farming on their lands located in the cerrado biome, and are now advancing over the transition belt, until they reach the Amazon biome. Xavante leaders have denounced the offensive on their territories.

The next step, according to them, is the occupation of the Parabubure Indigenous Land, in the municipality of Campinápolis, within the Legal Amazon. From the transition zone to the forest, thousands of hectares will become soybean plantations. Preliminary information indicates that the Xavantes have been manipulated into accepting these conditions, and this has led to disputes and conflicts within the villages, among the indigenous people themselves.

This report proposes to go to Campinápolis to narrate the situation from the indigenous perspective, bringing accounts and plenty of visual content that can help in the understanding of this contemporary phenomenon.