Hundreds of Indigenous people were marching Wednesday in Brazil’s capital, urging Congress to drop a proposed constitutional amendment that has the potential to paralyze and even reverse land allocations. The bill aims to add to the Constitution a legal theory, championed by the agribusiness caucus, that the date the Constitution was promulgated — Oct. 5, 1988 — should be the deadline for Indigenous peoples to have already either physically occupied claimed land or be legally fighting to reoccupy territory. Indigenous rights groups have argued that establishing a deadline is unfair, as it does not account for expulsions and forced displacements.
