Weekly Report - 18 April 2013 (WR-13-15)

From the row over oil royalties to a major show of force by hardnosed conservative Evangelicals determined to keep their man at the helm of the human rights committee, Brazil’s congress has had an unusually lively couple of months under its new 2013-2014 president Henrique Eduardo Alves, who campaigned hard last year for the coveted post and is now having to prove his mettle. In its ordinary sessions, the federal chamber of deputies is a sleepy (and under-attended) place; it tends only to rouse itself from its slumbering pace in the face of some major drama. This week deputies looked by turns bemused and delighted at the eruption into the chamber of some 700 colourfully dressed and feathered indigenous Indians who, singing and dancing, were protesting against proposed changes over how their territorial ancestral lands are demarcated.