A Generation without Land: Environmental Injustice in Indigenous Communities Displaced by Hydroelectric Dams in Brazil since the 1980s

Abstract

Brazil has a long overdue debt with indigenous communities displaced by the hydroelectric dams that power its cities, factories, and farmland. One case that stands out is the Itaparica Dam, built in the 1970s and 1980s in the lower-middle stretch of the São Francisco River, in the country's semi-arid northeast. The dam's reservoir displaced tens of thousands of farmers and the Tuxá, an indigenous group who had lived for centuries along the stretch of the river that the reservoir flooded. For the Tuxá, displacement has been particularly damaging because the government has reneged on its legal obligation to find compensatory land for the group. The Tuxá's material well-being and cultural identity are rooted in their land, but the group has now spent more than three decades without land, a period equal to an entire generation. This article tells the story of the Tuxá's displacement and their subsequent fight for land in an effort to help maintain a spotlight on this still unresolved case of environmental injustice.