Brazil’s Congress overrides president’s veto to reinstate legislation threatening Indigenous rights

By MAURICIO SAVARESE
Associated Press

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s Congress has overturned a veto by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva so it can reinstate legislation that undoes protections of Indigenous peoples’ land rights. The decision sets up a new battle between lawmakers and the country’s top court on the matter. Both federal deputies and senators voted by a wide margin to support a bill that argues the date Brazil’s Constitution was promulgated in 1988 is the deadline by which Indigenous peoples had to be physically occupying or legally fighting to reoccupy territory in order to claim land allotments. In September, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled 9-2 that such a theory was unconstitutional.