An enclave in the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Land: the invention of the municipality of Uiramutã and the update of colonialism

Abstract

The emergence of a federative entity can appear in a fetishized way, depending on the ability of the actors involved to hide the conflicts that occurred during that process. This is what happened during the creation of the municipality of Uiramutã, in the state of Roraima, which sought not only to erase the disputes surrounding the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Land, but also to make the indigenous peoples of the region invisible. By reading the minutes of the commissions setting up the municipality, as well as documents produced by the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous Council of Roraima and other indigenous organizations, this article describes and analyses the tactics and strategies adopted by political and economic elites to occupy and liberate indigenous lands for economic exploitation. I intend to demonstrate how the state is ‘made’ empirically and locally through the creation of bureaucratic structures, fostering exclusions and asymmetrical relations. We will thus see that the war of conquest continues to be reworked through the exercise of power over indigenous peoples and territories. In my view, colonialism should not be understood as a reminiscence of a distant past, but as a field of power that still structures inequalities.