No, it’s not every day that we can boast of having shared the bed of a Brazilian minister. In the New Year, that day has arrived for me.
That’s it, rascals, do I have your attention? So let me tell you the unusual story of Sônia Guajajara, an Indigenous woman from northeastern Brazil, born to illiterate parents, a single mother, who has just shattered a glass ceiling as thick as the Amazonian vegetation.
On Sunday, this 48-year-old environmental activist became the first indigenous person to join her country’s cabinet of ministers. She is also the first to head the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, freshly created by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who made the promise during his election campaign.
PHOTO SERGIO LIMA, FRANCE PRESS AGENCY
Sônia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during the swearing-in of members of his cabinet, on 1er January, in Brasília
The entry into office of M.me Guajajara on 1er January, along with the swearing-in of the leftist president, was greeted with great emotion by the 900,000 indigenous people of South America’s largest country. Divided between 305 ethnic groups, speaking 274 languages, these first peoples today form barely 0.4% of the Brazilian population of nearly 214 million and have little political weight there.
According to Mme Guajajara itself, its appointment and the creation of the new ministry are a step towards the “reparation [de torts] historical[s] following centuries of “violence, discrimination and neglect” of these peoples.
His arrival in Brasília is also the result of five years of fierce struggles to block Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president who made a point of flouting both the environment and indigenous rights. , two causes that are one in the eyes of the activist turned politician.
“Bolsonaro’s program is a tragedy and our ultimate goal is his downfall,” Sônia Guajajara told me in an interview during a report in Brazil at the end of summer 2019.
Today, mission accomplished.
When I met Sônia Guajajara, the Amazon rainforest had just gone through one of the worst fire summers in its history. And there wasn’t much natural in it. In some states of Brazil, knowing the country’s presidency on their side, farmers had literally spread the word to start fires in order to expand their agricultural land. That year, violent attacks by poachers, loggers and gold diggers were also commonplace in indigenous territories, where much of the rainforest is located. The inhabitants of the indigenous land of Arariboia – including Mme Guajajara is a native – had just gone through a nightmare.
The little woman had invited me and the Quebec journalist Serge Boire with whom I worked, to accompany him to his native village, four hours by car from the nearest town, in an area of the Amazon rainforest. which is still today on the front line of a war that opposes the defenders of nature to the followers of deforestation.
PHOTO SERGE BOIRE, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Journalist Serge Boire and our columnist Laura-Julie Perreault spent four days in the indigenous land of Arariboia with Sônia Guajajara in 2019.
In our group were also Guilherme Boulos, the leader of the Socialism and Freedom Party. The previous year, in 2018, Mr. Boulos and Mme Guajajara ran respectively for the presidency and the vice-presidency of Brazil, side by side. Giovane Lima, an activist for the rights of peasants, was also part of the adventure. We had arrived in convoy in the middle of the night, covered in red dust.
Because there is not a shadow of a hotel around, we were all accommodated in the family home of Sônia Guajajara. And because she couldn’t imagine me sleeping in a hammock like the majority of her Brazilian guests, the activist offered me to share a bed with her and her 13-year-old daughter.
She barely slept there. When I woke up after short hours of sleep, she was already deep in conversation with her two political allies while coordinating the preparation of breakfast for her twenty guests.
That day, Serge Boire and I witnessed the implementation of a major resistance plan against Jair Bolsonaro. To a rallying of indigenous forces, the urban left and the rural left.
Elected president of the country’s largest indigenous organization, APIB, Sônia Guajajara spent the following years mobilizing Brazil’s indigenous forces, organizing sieges in Brasília and protests to curb the most harmful policies of the presidency. far right. She also alerted world public opinion, traveling to the United States and Europe, attending major world meetings on the environment. She was present during the creation of a compensation fund for indigenous peoples of 1.7 billion at COP26 in Glasgow.
This anthology of brilliance earned him a name on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world of the magazine. Time in 2022.
Me, I give the new minister a place on my list of forces of nature, in the category of political tornadoes, which, in this new year, are likely to get more than one out of the bed of their indifference.