Prosecutors seek compensation for Amazon indigenous genocide

The Federal Prosecution Service in Amazonas is seeking $15,890,000 in compensation and demanding State apologies for the mass killing of Waimiri-Atroari indigenous people during Brazil's military dictatorship (1964-1985).

The killings happened during the construction of the BR-174 federal highway linking two state capitals in North Manaus, Amazonas state, to Brazil's northernmost state capital, Boa Vista, Roraima—a project that was met with opposition by indigenous people living in that Amazon region.

The lawsuit is based on the findings of the National Truth Commission (CNV) set up in 2012 to investigate serious human rights violations committed between September 18, 1946 and October 5, 1988. The CNV found 3,000 indigenous people lived in the region in the 1970s. The following decade, only 332 members of the indigenous group were found.

The prosecution claims the evidence gathered “shows the Brazilian State acted based on policies of contact and direct attack on indigenous people that led to substantial elimination of the Waimiri-Atroari population.”

Also as part of their case, the prosecutors want primary and secondary school curricula to include studies on human rights violations against indigenous people during the military dictatorship, especially as regards the genocide of the Waimiri-Atroari people, who call themselves Kinja people.

The prosecution has appended letters exchanged between military officers containing orders to “carry out small shows of force to demonstrate the effects of a machine-gun blast, defensive grenades and dynamite destruction” to the Indians. There were also testimonies about bodies being buried on roadsides and air strikes on villages.

“The Brazilian State sponsored raids on indigenous territories and the elimination of Kinja population, and made every effort to carry out ethnic genocide,” prosecutors said in their case. “Genocidal actions by the Brazilian state had been going on at least since 1974 with violent attacks, bombing, shooting, and torture.”

The public-interest civil action was signed by Federal Prosecutor Julio Araujo, coordinator of a group on Indigenous Peoples and Military Regime, along with five other prosecutors.

Extermination

The Federal Prosecution Service says the State has two approaches to indigenous people: one of “pacification”, where contact led to peaceful coexistence, and one of “extermination.” “The Indians were seen as a hindrance to national development, with the so-called 'attraction fronts' being responsible for enforcing the displacement of their territories, moving them further away from development projects,” an excerpt from the suit read.

Concerning the highway project, the MPF argued “pacification” was insufficient because the project had to be completed but there was opposition from the indigenous people. Mounting tension led to the second approach—extermination.

Translated by Mayra Borges