Indigenous protesters in Brazil interrupt hearing on Amazon grain railway

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Indigenous protesters on Friday tried to prevent a public hearing on the construction of a railway that is planned to run through their lands to carry grains to a northern port in the Amazon.

The 1,000-km (620-mile) Ferrograo railway is backed by farmers and grain companies who say it would reduce reliance on roads and lower costs for transporting soy from the farm state of Mato Grosso to the river ports in the Amazon basin.

But Munduruku and Kayapo Indigenous communities say they have not been consulted on a project that will affect their environment and cause deforestation.

Some 100 protesters holding banners blocked the entrance to the hearing in Novo Progresso in southern Para state, but the meeting eventually began when the protesters left the building, videos on social media posted by attendees showed.

“The railway is a development project that will benefit everybody,” one of its main backers, Senator Zequinha Marinho, told the protesters.

Leading the protest was Alessandra Munduruku, a winner of the 2023 Goldman Environmental for her efforts to stop mining development in the Amazon and protect the rainforest.

“We cannot agree to a project that will hurt our territory and threaten the future of our children and grandchildren,” she told Reuters by telephone.

“We are worried about climate change and trying to save the forest, but Congress is more worried about profiting from our lands,” she said.

The hearing was not to consult Indigenous people, it was about reconciling interests of soy-producing agribusiness that will benefit from the railway and local interests that seek to compensate for a loss of business from reduced road traffic, said Ana Carolina Alfinito, a legal adviser to Amazon Watch, a conservation advocacy group who attended the meeting.

It was held one day after a victory for the farm lobby in Brazil’s Congress when lawmakers overturned a presidential veto that had struck down the core of a bill that limited Indigenous land rights. The issue of a deadline for land claims will now be decided by the Supreme Court.

In August, in a ruling on the grain railway, the top court upheld the suspension of a government plan to reduce the size a forest conservation park to allow for the building of the railroad, pending new studies.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Aurora Ellis)