"Protection needs to reach indigenous women," says manager of gender-based violence prevention.

Nathallia Fonseca, Public Agency - “From the year 1500 onwards, the Brazilian State has consolidated itself by being the first to violate the rights and bodies of indigenous women,” says Pagu Rodrigues, who assumed the newly created General Coordination for the Prevention of Violence Against Women at the Ministry of Women. A Fulni-ô indigenous woman, sociologist, and activist, born in São Paulo with roots in the interior of Pernambuco, she wants to prioritize territorial particularities and the characteristics of native populations in the development of guidelines and protocols for protection policies. 

But measuring the proportion of gender-based violence among the 305 Indian people The number of indigenous people in Brazil (according to IBGE) is a challenge. According to Rodrigues, it is necessary to create actions that facilitate the registration and mapping of cases – including alternatives that overcome the language barrier, because there are at least 274 languages ​​spoken in indigenous territories. 

“To this day, no law protecting women addresses the specific needs of Indigenous women. There hasn't been a moment to discuss the major laws combating gender violence [the femicide law and the Maria da Penha law] from the perspective of the specificities of Indigenous women, considering protection measures that work in territories further away from urban areas,” she said in an interview with Agência Pública. 

Raised in the outskirts of São Paulo, Pagu Rodrigues returned to the city of Águas Belas, in the Pernambuco hinterland, for part of her adult life. It is there that most of her family, from the Fulni-ô people, lives. This experience of territoriality is used by the sociologist to highlight another difficulty in implementing policies to combat gender-based violence, which she seeks to reduce. "We have to bring public services closer to indigenous territories if we really want to confront violence against these women." Check out the main excerpts from the interview. 

The current government talks a lot about rebuilding and restructuring public policies. Thinking about your administration, where does this restructuring begin?

My coordination is new [within the national secretariat for combating violence against women], so we are starting from a process of reconfiguring this entire policy, which is part of this general post-Bolsonaro restructuring process. We are now emerging from a government whose policy encouraged misogyny and sexism, and which did not punish this type of crime. I always say that... femicide It is a state project of genocide against women. I say this especially considering a previous administration that not only failed to combat but encouraged violence. We have genocide of the indigenous population, of the black population. The genocide of women, in this same logic, truly appears in the form of a policy of femicide.

Another point that deserves general reconstruction, due to being a huge gap left by the previous government, is economic autonomy, income, and work. We also know that after a period of pandemic crisis, the Bolsonaro government failed to discuss and maintain public policies for income distribution, and once again women are the most affected, whether through unemployment, precarious work, or wage inequality. 

Besides reconstruction, can we talk about progress in terms of policies to combat violence against women? Especially considering that the coordination you took over was newly created?

Historically speaking, for a long time the prevention of violence against women, not only in Brazil but throughout Latin America, was understood solely through a policy of education – educational campaigns, discussions in educational settings, and media campaigns. This is also important, but in our understanding, violence prevention is much broader. It concretely includes a permanent dialogue with services that address violence against women throughout the network. And that is what our coordination will do in practice: policy building with processes that go beyond campaigns, training, and management of resources [which are also carried out]. My team of professionals from various fields and I work on the regulation of laws, protocols, and guidelines of the National Policy, on the points to be observed, and on the approach to each of these policies according to the situation and context.

Considering the demands, we need to invest in specific legislation to address harassment and sexual violence in public spaces, universities, and within the logic of the public sector. This coordination will act very actively and in dialogue with all these fronts and areas of combating violence against women, because we can no longer think that campaigns alone are sufficient to discuss misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism in our society. 

Ao announce the new cargo On social media, you immediately spoke about defending Indigenous women. How do you intend to do this in practice?

I am an Indigenous woman and, not only for that reason, one of the priorities of my coordination will be confronting violence against Indigenous women. We know that even during popular democratic governments this issue was largely invisible, I would even say due to a lack of information, statistical data, and underreporting. So we will have to face this issue. We need to increase reporting, seek guarantees that we will have statistics on what these acts of violence are, how they happen, and in which territories. To prevent this violence, we will need to address changes in legislation. 

Do current laws, such as the Maria da Penha Law, not include indigenous women?

We're talking about 305 indigenous groups in Brazil, right? More than 274 languages. This includes codes of moral ethics that are not the same among themselves and are not the same as ours. It's necessary to understand what is considered a crime according to the perspective of each ethnic group and not from a perspective that believes itself to be universal. Protection needs to reach indigenous women, and the network for combating violence needs to reach this many indigenous territories, without forgetting that there is no uniform, generalized culture.

To this day, no law protecting women addresses the specific needs of Indigenous women. There has been no time to discuss the major laws combating gender violence [the femicide law and the Maria da Penha Law] from the perspective of the specificities of Indigenous women, considering protection measures that work in territories further away from urban areas. Another point not considered in non-Indigenous logic is the way children involved in domestic violence are cared for. Many villages have a culture of community-based child-rearing rather than family-based, and this impacts child protection policies as well. There is also the removal of the aggressor, who may sometimes be the provider for an entire community. All of this needs to be studied to create policies that truly protect these women.

We also need to confront this dynamic imposed by agribusiness, large landholdings, and illegal mining, which leads to violence against Indigenous women. When these groups arrive in Indigenous territories, the first victims in this process are women. This can be through attempts to prostitute their bodies, or through attempts and the actual occurrence of numerous acts of violence. This dynamic is also related to areas of land conflict, which in itself is a security problem and an aggravating factor that hinders assistance. This is another issue that we will have to address in the discussion, including alongside the team from the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. 

Violence against indigenous peoples, especially women, is a historical legacy of the construction of Brazil as we know it. What do you believe has been the State's greatest failure in this process?

From 1500 onwards, the Brazilian state consolidated itself by being the first to violate the rights and bodies of Indigenous women. This is the initial configuration of what we call the rape culture of the Brazilian state. The kidnapping of Indigenous women to marry men, necessarily colonists, was also a form of expropriation of Indigenous territories. This is an important historical landmark. When we consider the constitution of the state starting with the 1988 Federal Constitution, then, there are countless flaws that prevent the existence of Indigenous women.

For a long time, the State has upheld the narrative of integrating the indigenous population and, in general, has not confronted this logic of rape culture. It is urgent to address the specific rights of indigenous women, who are the last to be considered in discussions in Brazil. It is also important to say that when we fail in the process of demarcating indigenous lands in Brazil, we are taking away the main condition for the life of the indigenous population, which is having their land to live on, and therefore women are the first to suffer the effects of this. 

It is crucial that this government manages to address the problems faced by the indigenous population in Brazil, whether through land demarcation policies, economic autonomy, or access to universities. 

And what about protection for other groups?

Still at the intersection of gender, race, and class, we must address with utmost care the demands of Black women, who are the first in line in terms of femicide numbers. We have to create policies that are for all women in Brazil, of all races and classes. This fight against femicide, considering the alarming numbers in Brazil and the Ministry of Women in general, is a top priority. Not only mine, but also that of Minister Cida Gonçalves and the Secretary for Combating Violence, Denise Dau. We can no longer have a woman killed every six hours. 

In several of your research projects, you discuss territorialities and public policies. What specific characteristics should be considered and prioritized for the implementation of policies that address the protection of women in all parts of Brazil?

I am a person who moves between territories. Between the outskirts of São Paulo, where I grew up, and the interior of Pernambuco, where I returned later and was raised in the Fulni-ô customs of my father's family. This helped me see that a crucial difference between these territories, and one that must be considered for public policies to work, is access. When we think about the logic of preventing and confronting violence against women, this is even more serious because it's about having or not having a protective resource. In a city like São Paulo, for example, you have more resources and the distances to travel to reach them are shorter. The difficulty there is that the resources are not prepared for specific needs, such as in the case of indigenous women.

In the North and Northeast, and I would say in most of the Midwest as well, the situation is much more difficult. Because in addition to the issue of the equipment not being ready, it doesn't even reach these indigenous territories. So you have cases where a woman travels five days to reach a shelter and file a complaint. We need to bring these public services closer to indigenous territories if we really want to confront the violence against these women. 

President Lula (PT), on more than one occasion, spoke about strengthening the presence of indigenous people in government. What strategies do you believe should be adopted to increase this indigenous representation in positions of power? 

I think the starting point is recognizing that the Indigenous population cannot remain confined to a box. We have countless Indigenous people in Brazil, both inside and outside the villages, who are fully capable of taking on roles ranging from public administration to academic spaces, the arts, and film, and not necessarily only to address our specific agenda. That is fundamental, but we have many relatives who concretely want to act more broadly in the fields they were trained in and gain recognition for what they choose to do. The first step is to recognize this. To guarantee the breadth of the space we can occupy. But we will only achieve this when we truly discuss racism in relation to the Indigenous population.