Brazil & Southern Cone - May 2026

Brazilian indigenous activists led by the umbrella organisation Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Apib) held the annual Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) from 5-11 April, a series of demonstrations and events in Brasília, in which they reiterated the long-running demands of indigenous movements and sought to exert pressure on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. However, despite the frustrations of activists with the government, indigenous leaders still declared their support for Lula’s re-election bid in the October presidential race, albeit with less enthusiasm compared to the 2022 election.

“We, indigenous peoples of Brazil… affirm that the 2026 election puts before the country a direct contest between the return of a project of death and the continuity of the democratic camp,” Apib declared in a statement released on 10 April. The statement went on to list the various failings on the part of the previous administration led by far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023) that it said made it guilty of a “project of death”, such as the paralysation of the indigenous land demarcation process and the Bolsonaro government’s neglect of indigenous peoples during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic when the disease hit vulnerable communities particularly hard.  

The statement continues: “Amid this context, we affirm our support for the re-election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the 2026 elections. But our support is not blind.” Despite recognising some of the progress achieved under Lula since he took office in January 2023, Apib also criticised what it deemed to be a lack of urgency on the delivery of promises, as well as accusing the government of placating sectors driven by an “anti-indigenous agenda”.

From optimism to frustration

On 1 January 2023 Bolsonaro failed to attend Lula’s inauguration, breaking with the tradition of handing over the presidential sash to a successor, which prompted Lula to choose representatives of the Brazilian people to walk alongside him and hand him the sash during the ceremony. The group of individuals who accompanied Lula as he was sworn in included prominent indigenous activist Raoni Metuktire, whose presence at the ceremony was widely considered a nod to indigenous movements, signalling that Lula would prioritise their needs.

The Lula government was the first in Brazilian history to set up a ministry for indigenous peoples, which was led by former Apib coordinator Sônia Guajajara (2023-2026), who stepped down at the end of March this year to run for a seat in congress in the October general elections. She was replaced by another former Apib coordinator, Eloy Terena, who had served as Guajajara’s second-in-command at the ministry. In another early sign of the government’s commitment to indigenous rights, Lula ramped up efforts in 2023 to address the multifaceted humanitarian crisis afflicting Brazil’s largest indigenous reserve, the Yanomami territory, which spans the states of Roraima and Amazonas [SSR-23-03].

However, the Lula administration suffered a major blow in late 2023, when congress passed a controversial bill that imposed restrictions on the indigenous land demarcation process. This added a new requirement mandating that an indigenous community’s application to have its ancestral land officially demarcated into a protected reserve must provide evidence that it occupied the land on 5 October 1988, the date that Brazil’s current constitution was promulgated. This was the legal thesis known as the ‘marco temporal’ (time frame), which the supreme court (STF) had declared unconstitutional in September 2023 [SSR-23-11]. Despite this, congress included the thesis in a new bill. President Lula partially vetoed the bill in October that year, but two months later the powerful agribusiness lobby rallied enough support in congress to overturn Lula’s veto.

The Apib statement on 10 April condemned the sectors of congress that pass “laws and bills that kill our peoples” and called for the “anti-indigenous agenda in congress” to be stopped. However, the statement also accused the executive government of failing to overcome these “anti-indigenous” interests. Apib highlighted the persistent “contradictions in strategic areas”, suggesting the Lula administration has struggled to maintain the balancing act of standing by its declared aims to support indigenous rights and environmental protection, on the one hand, and boosting the country’s economic development and appeasing powerful congressional lobbies, on the other hand. Notable contradictions listed by Apib included the government’s decision in October 2025 to allow the state-controlled oil company Petrobras to explore oil in ecologically sensitive waters near the mouth of the Amazon River.

The controversial Petrobras oil exploration plans were heavily criticised by indigenous leaders such as Metuktire in November 2025, during the United Nations climate change conference (COP30) hosted in the Brazilian city of Belém, the capital of Pará state. The Lula administration tried to use COP30 to promote Brazil as a leader on climate action that respects civil society and indigenous expertise on rainforest conservation, but the vocal criticisms and demonstrations by indigenous activists during the conference undermined Lula’s efforts to project Brazil as a global climate leader [SSR-26-01]. 

Another major concern for indigenous groups that could dampen their support for Lula is the government’s support for the controversial BR-319 highway reconstruction project. Originally opened in 1976 to connect the cities of Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia state, to Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, BR-319 had fallen into disrepair and by the late 1980s some sections of the highway became impassable. Today significant sections in the middle of the highway are no more than dirt paths, but there have been efforts in recent decades by various governments to restore and repave the road. The Lula government has supported its reconstruction, despite frequent warnings from indigenous groups over the environmental risks of the project and the various legal challenges against the reconstruction works presented by environmental organisations.

In addition to BR-319, the government has also backed an infrastructure project known as ‘Ferrogrão’, an initiative to build a railway connecting the agricultural powerhouse state of Mato Grosso to northern ports in Pará, which has been stalled by legal obstacles. The supreme court (STF) has been reviewing a challenge to the project filed by the left-wing Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL), and on 7 April indigenous demonstrators protested in front of the STF building in Brasília to criticise the project. On 9 April a court session on PSOL’s petition was adjourned after STF justice Flávio Dino demanded more time to review the case. At the time of writing, the STF had not indicated when it will continue to hear the case.

Despite these tensions between the Lula administration and indigenous groups, activists from Apib and other organisations are still expected to endorse Lula’s re-election, perhaps not out of genuine approval but out of fear of the alternative – the return of a far-right ‘Bolsonarista’ government. Lula’s main rival in the 2026 presidential race is expected to be Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. According to pre-election surveys in March and April, Flávio polled slightly ahead of Lula on voter intention, although the two were technically tied. Although many factors have driven Flávio’s rise and Lula’s decline in popularity, a failure to bolster the support of groups that backed Lula in 2022, such as indigenous movements, could further harm his re-election prospects.

Frustration over demarcations

In April 2023, President Lula was invited as an honoured guest to participate in the week-long ATL events in Brasília. At ATL 2023, Lula promised that he would not leave “any indigenous land un-demarcated”. But activist groups have since expressed frustration over the slow pace of granting legal protections to indigenous territories. After 2023, Lula was not invited to attend ATL events. From January 2023 to November 2025, President Lula decreed the demarcation of 20 indigenous territories across 11 states.

Metuktire endorsement

Kayapó chief Raoni Metuktire said on 8 August that President Lula deserves another term in office, despite simmering tensions in recent years. Since Lula’s inauguration in January 2023, he and Metuktire have not had many meetings, which has caused frustration for the indigenous leader. Metuktire met with Lula at ceremonial events in 2024 and 2025, but in the latter months of 2024 he was cited in the press as saying that he had been trying to schedule a meeting with Lula to discuss the demands of indigenous movements, but the president had not received him.