Os direitos indígenas na Constituição Brasileira de 1988: da conquista aos atuais retrocessos

Abstract

International and domestic legal frameworks guarantee rights and special protections to Indigenous Peoples worldwide. In Brazil, relevant rights are enshrined in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution and in International Law, such as the right of Indigenous Peoples to control their ancestral lands and natural resources. All this promising legislation is an outstanding achievement of the indigenous peoples’ movement that came out as a result of the struggle against invisibility in Brazil. The end of 60’s and throughout the 70’s the world assisted a vibrant rise of organized groups of Natives and of supporters in many countries where they inhabited. In Brazil, Indigenous Peoples, who, until the 60’s, lived fragmented and isolated from each other, moved from a phase of political disarticulation to a phase of organized and unified movement capable of representing indigenous interests in the context of the country's redemocratization and the discussion of a new constitutional text. However, the legal achievements is still part of an endless struggle, as Brazilian government have been resisting to abide them. The article will analyze, on the one hand, the achievements of 1988 as the result of an intense process of political mobilization of Indigenous Peoples with the support of allied civil society sectors combined with a theoretical shift in colonialist conceptions of the inferiority of indigenous ways of life. On the other hand, it will discuss the main obstacles Indigenous Peoples have been facing to enforce the whole legal apparatus in the aftermath of the 1988 Constitution.