SAO PAULO (AP) — A federal court in Para state ordered Brazil’s government Thursday to ensure Indigenous people nationwide can vote in Sunday’s presidential runoff.
“Geographic distance, combined with a lack of accessible transportation, can make a formally recognized right impossible to exercise in practice,” the ruling said.
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The ruling granted a request filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors, who sought free transportation by river, land or air, as well as funding for food, interpreters, cultural facilitators and signs in Indigenous languages at polling places.
The lawsuit cited accounts from Indigenous communities across Brazil, including allegations that municipal governments denied transportation for political reasons and ranchers prevented Indigenous workers from leaving farms to vote.
On Sunday, leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his far-right challenger, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, a son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, will face off in a tight election, according to recent polls. Both men have markedly different approaches to protecting the Amazon.
The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, known as Apib, announced Thursday that it filed an urgent request for the Justice Inspector General’s Office to make sure electoral officials act quickly to help Indigenous people reach voting centers.
The most serious problem involves 43 Indigenous communities deep in the jungle in northern Brazil, Apib said. On Tuesday, the Amazonas state electoral court rejected a petition for transportation assistance filed by Univaja, an association representing Indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley.
Some of these voters live as far as 895 kilometers (556 miles) from their polling places, requiring boat trips of three to five days. Officials need to use military aircraft to transport voting machines and election workers to some remote locations.
“The state brings the ballot box to the forest but does not bring the voter to the ballot box,” Apib said.
Villages in the Javari Valley territory received their first voting centers in 2014, thanks to the efforts of Bruno Pereira, an Indigenous expert who died in 2022 while on assignment in the Javari Valley alongside British journalist Dom Phillips.
The Brazilian government’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, told AP it has consulted communities about transportation needs for the runoff but said state electoral authorities are responsible for arranging it.
Protecting Indigenous territories is widely seen as one of the most effective ways to curb deforestation in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key regulator of global climate.
Researchers warn that continued forest loss could accelerate global warming. A 2022 analysis by MapBiomas, a network of nongovernmental groups tracking land use, found Indigenous territories in Brazil had lost just 1% of native vegetation over three decades, compared with 20% on private land nationwide.
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