Settler Colonialism and the Capricious Seizure of Unwanted Land, or How the Huni Kuin were Expelled From Plácido de Castro, Acre, Brazil

Abstract

Situated in the Mesoregion of the Acre River, Plácido de Castro is a small municipality in the Brazilian state of Acre. In 2015, with the consent of the authorities, a group of people of Huni Kuin ethnicity occupied an abandoned, state-owned piece of land in the municipal territory, namely, the Parque Ecológico. For two years, the Huni Kuin group has lived in the Parque Ecológico, decontaminating and revalorising the land. Afterwards the Huni Kuin have been gradually dispossessed of the occupied land via various coercive actions, some of which were backed by the authorities. In this paper, the authors draw upon media releases as well as an interview with Hunk Kuin cacique Mapu, in order to signify the events in terms of a violent performance of settler colonialism in the face of the legitimate reclamation of Indigenous sovereignty over Brazilian land. In particular, they look at the ways in which political authorities, police forces, social services, and the broader non-Indigenous society unanimously cooperate towards the total effacement of Indigenous bodies, communities, and subjectivities from the land.