Sawt Falasteen - Prospect of Bolsonaro win looms large over Brazil's Indigenous

The surname they share "represents everything bad for us," Inara Waty, leader of the Satere-Mawe people in the Amazonian city of Manaus, told AFP.

"It mainly means fear," she said, her eyes filling with tears as she recalled life under the last Bolsonaro administration.

Jair Bolsonaro governed the world's most biodiverse country between 2019 and 2022, a period marked by record levels of deforestation in the Amazon and backsliding in Indigenous rights.

His son, the favorite in the October 25 runoff against leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, says he would run a "Bolsonaro 2.0" presidency.

"The greatest way we addressed environmental issues was what we did during president Bolsonaro's administration," the senator said during an interview on the campaign trail.

The candidate believes his father, currently serving 27 years for coup-plotting, "fought" against a "radical environmental agenda."

He claims that extreme weather events that scientists attribute to man-made global warming are merely "cyclical."

- 'Question of life' -

Like his father, Flavio Bolsonaro can count on the support of large-scale agricultural and livestock producers locked in land disputes with Indigenous communities.

Bolsonaro allies were elected in seven of Brazil's nine Amazonian states earlier this month.

"They want land to plant soy, to keep their cattle. We want land to survive, to plant; we want the land so we can take care of it," said Waty.

This divide makes the election a "question of life" for Indigenous people, she added.

A recent video posted online showed women from the Yanomami ethnic group accusing Flavio Bolsonaro of having ties to illegal miners.

"If the forest is destroyed, how are we going to live?" they shout, their faces adorned with paint.

"We don't want to be killed again!"

During Jair Bolsonaro's mandate, this community suffered invasions by artisanal gold miners known as "garimpeiros," whose activities triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Flavio Bolsonaro has proposed treating the environment as a "strategic asset," including a pledge to end "illegal deforestation" by 2029.

That point harks back to a similar, unfulfilled promise by his father, who instead oversaw soaring deforestation rates.

That goal "is incompatible with (Flavio Bolsonaro's) environmental policy," said Adriana Ramos of the NGO Instituto Socioambiental.

His campaign did not respond to AFP's request for information about his environmental program, nor a request for comment about Indigenous and environmental concerns.

- 'Even worse' -

One particularly painful moment for these groups was in 2019, when fires started by government-aligned landowners scorched the rainforest for weeks on end.

Authorities at the time caused "daily madness for everyone," said Suely Araujo of the Climate Observatory NGO.

The Amazon lost around 11,600 square kilometers of rainforest per year under Jair Bolsonaro -- almost 60 percent more than in the previous four years, official figures show.

Lula's government slashed that figure by half in 2025 and expanded the limits of Indigenous lands.

But it also faces criticism for backing oil exploration off the Amazonian coast.

The climate has barely registered as an issue during this election campaign, although Brazil is vulnerable to the El Nino weather pattern, which causes drought and other erratic conditions in the region.

The number of fires in Amazonas state skyrocketed in September and October this year compared to the same period in 2025.

"During Jair Bolsonaro's administration, this drive to destroy the forest was only just beginning, and now (with Flavio) it could be even worse" if he wins, said Araujo.

The senator beat Lula by two percentage points in the first round on October 4.

J.Saleh--SF-PST