Nova Bandeirantes and the fall of General Jesus

In a message via the WhatsApp application, addressed to a small group of friends and trusted servants, General Jesus Corrêa said that he was leaving Incra just as he was starting the most complex work, attacking the 30 superintendencies, “wherever there are, in some of them , real criminal organizations installed”. He mentioned the superintendencies of Mato Grosso and Rondônia as the most problematic and said why he thinks it fell:^{[10][11][12][13][14][15]}

“As we were going against interests and acting with ethics and honesty, we became a thorn in the side”, he said.

More explicitly, Colonel Marco Antônio dos Santos, who occupied the Board of Management of Incra, told Crusoé magazine that the group was fired, not for delay in regularization, as the secretary argued, but for going against its interests.^[16][17][18]

“We fell because we bothered Nabhan Garcia and his group, which is a small segment of the ruralist caucus. They thought that we were not complying with the land titles that he asked for. Title over his group. He always wanted me to title farms etc. I never said to title people settled in an agrarian reform program,” he said, according to the magazine.

In the 40-minute interview with Pública, made before the crisis that overthrew General Jesus Corrêa, Nabhan Garcia got irritated several times, especially when asked about the strong influence of the ruralist group on Funai. “How can you ignore a bench that has 305 parliamentarians?”, He said. In the end, he ended the interview sharply, upset with questions about the lack of a government agenda for indigenous organizations and movements that fight for land. Pública sent new questions about the reaction of the military who left Incra and their participation in the conflicts in Pontal do Paranapanema, but the secretary did not respond.^[19]

In August, Nabhan Garcia suffered a bitter defeat in the STF with the removal of the prerogative to interfere in crucial issues for the ruralist caucus, such as the identification and demarcation of indigenous lands. The attribution was linked to the Agriculture portfolio, but the STF sent it back to the Ministry of Justice along with the Funai structure. That is, legally, Nabhan Garcia cannot interfere in demarcation.^[20]

The comings and goings of Funai by ministries are seen by the coordinator of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Rondônia, Northwest of Mato Grosso and South of Amazonas (Opiroma), José Luiz Kassupá, as a sign that the government may try to return the autarchy to the command of Nabhan Garcia through a new provisional measure.^[21][22][23]

“He [Nabhan Garcia] sees us as an obstacle to development. He stopped the demarcations at a time when several peoples were asking for areas that were left out of previously approved processes. Meanwhile, in Congress there are more than one hundred projects that withdraw the rights of the indigenous people under debate to reduce lands and open them up for exploitation”, says Kassupá.

According to him, there are reports that even old villages occupied by isolated groups are destroyed with the purpose of de-characterizing areas of traditional indigenous use and, thus, reducing the indigenous territory to legalize invasions. And he claims that Incra has been carrying out surveys in places occupied by small squatters within indigenous territories and protected forest areas with the aim of regularizing illegal possessions. "We've already seen this: they say it's for the small and then they pass it on to the landowners."^[24]

For the entities, Nabhan Garcia as an agrarian manager and indigenist is, at the very least, a sign of the government's complacency with the backward segment of agribusiness and of retrogression in the rights of traditional peoples.^[25]

“It's like the fox guarding the henhouse,” says Oliveira.