Indigenous peoples and civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) in Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian civic-military dictatorship (1964-1985), under the prerogative of economic advancement and containment of socialist tendencies, carried out actions of depoliticization, fear, torture and repression against various categories of the national population, including indigenous peoples. Purged from their lands, killed, tortured or even forcibly incorporated into the national guard, the indigenous people were victims of atrocities caused by the military government. However, as in all their history, indigenous peoples are not passive agents in this process, but protagonists, and it is during the dictatorial period that the indigenous movement grows and develops as a political force, dispensing with the tutelage hitherto submitted to them. Social Work, as a profession, considering its more progressive version guided by the strategic social direction of the 1990s (known as the Professional Ethical-Political Project), aligns itself with the defense of human rights and the demands of the broad and diverse working class. It should, therefore, include in its debates the discussion on the indigenous issue, still little addressed by the area.