"With plantation takeover, Brazil’s Indigenous Pataxó move to reclaim their land", 14 July 2022

Frustrated with watching agribusiness and eucalyptus plantations destroy their territory, members of several Indigenous Pataxó communities in the Brazilian state of Bahia took over a plantation, set fire to it, and demanded that the multinational companies leave their land for good...

On June 22, 180 Indigenous people took over Fazenda Santa Bárbara, a plantation that was used for cattle raising and also growing eucalyptus trees for multinational pulp production company Suzano...

On June 25, another group of around 100 Pataxó took over a different farm...[T]he landowners and their supporters allegedly expelled the Indigenous people from the area at gunpoint...

The Comexatibá Indigenous Territory is the site of more land disputes...The Pataxó not only face pulp production companies, but also expanding tourism and agribusiness sectors...

...[A]ctivists have been reportedly been killed in land grabs associated with the expansion of eucalyptus...

Suzano, the world’s largest producer of cellulose, has increasingly bought up or merged with smaller pulp and paper companies...[T]he Pataxó people is clear: in their manifesto, they called out the multinational company as being partially responsible for the ongoing destruction of their territory.

The eucalyptus species that the company grows are especially damaging to the environment and communities that live around the plantations...They require large amounts of pesticides that affect water quality, and suck up large amounts of water...

...Suzano said it was aware of and monitoring the situation, but stated that “the area is not a formally recognized indigenous land and underwent a detailed environmental licensing process with all notifications and requirements duly fulfilled”...