"Controversial Brazil law curbing Indigenous rights comes into force", 28 December 2023

...A controversial law curtailing Indigenous rights in Brazil has come into force, marking a victory for the powerful agribusiness caucus in congress.

The new legislation upholds the so-called “time marker” theory (marco temporal), which establishes that Indigenous peoples can only lay claim to land they physically occupied as of October 1988...

Critics say this fails to acknowledge that many Indigenous groups had been displaced from their ancestral lands before that date...Brazil’s supreme court vindicated such claims when it ruled that the time marker thesis was unconstitutional...But less than a week later the senate voted to enshrine the theory into law.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva went on to veto several parts of the bill, but the conservative-dominated congress overrode his veto by a wide margin earlier in December.

The final law was published in the official gazette on Thursday...Activists warn that the law nonetheless represents a clear attack on Indigenous rights and exposes Native Brazilians to the risk of further violence...The minister for Indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, told the Folha de S Paulo newspaper her office would also appeal to the country’s top court to block legislation...