Leader of the Guajajara Indians in Brazil was shot dead

A leader of the Guajajara Indians was found dead in the state of Maranhão, in the Amazon, northern Brazil, informed the State Secretariat for Human Rights and Popular Participation.

The body of Zezico Guajajara, director of the Indigenous School Education Center of Azuru, was found, shot, on the access road to the Arariboia Indigenous Reserve, in the jurisdiction of the municipality of Arame.

The Arariboia Indigenous Land is a reserve of 413 thousand hectares shared by 12 thousand Indians of three different ethnicities and where conflicts between indigenous and loggers are recurrent.

The reasons and circumstances of what appears to have been a murder are not yet known, said the State Secretariat for Human Rights and Popular Participation, specifying that it is awaiting information from the police.

According to the Arariboia Indians, Zezico Guajajara left his village on Tuesday for a nearby municipality to shop.

The indigenous leader was the target of death threats, related both to conflicts over the power struggle in Amazonian lands, as well as to claiming land for the indigenous people and the end of deforestation in the jungle.

The leader even denounced these threats to the National Indian Foundation (Funai) and the Federal Police.

The death of Zezico Guajajara was confirmed to the Spanish agency Efe by the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), an organization linked to the Catholic Church, and by Sónia Guajajara, one of the main leaders of the indigenous ethnic group of the Amazon (candidate for vice president in the 2018 elections for the Socialism and Freedom Party). None of these sources has details about what happened.

On its official website, Cimi Regional Maranhão calls for “this crime is not like so many others that took the lives of other indigenous leaders (…) and went unpunished”, demanding “justice for the Guajajara people”.

This is the fifth indigenous leader killed violently in the past five months.

Since December, violence against the Guajajara has led the Federal Government to deploy agents of the National Public Security Force, an elite police group, to the region with the aim of strengthening security in indigenous territories.

However, human rights organizations, which have reported attacks on the area for several years, both by illegal land buyers and loggers, denounce the impunity of crimes against the Indians and the passivity of the Brazilian authorities.

According to Cimi, the invasion of indigenous lands across Brazil has increased by about 44% since January 2019, when Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of the country.

The president is known for his criticism of the creation of indigenous reserves and recently authorized the exploitation of minerals in Amazonian lands. Bolsonaro considers that the Indians should be considered Brazilian citizens like the others.