Rio de Janeiro (EFE).- At least 258 indigenous people were murdered in Brazil in 2025, a 22.3% increase over 2024. According to a report released on Thursday by a Catholic Church commission, this surge reflects a year of escalating violence against indigenous communities, primarily fueled by ongoing conflicts over land rights.
In 2025, 210 instances of illegal land invasions or resource exploitation were recorded across 151 indigenous reserves. These statistics are detailed in the report «Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil in 2025,» published by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a pastoral body of the Catholic Church.
The report also documents 169 conflicts over territorial disputes across 143 indigenous areas. The majority of these (66%) occurred in territories that have not yet been properly demarcated by the state and where the reserves are not officially recognized.
This prevalence reflects the bureaucratic delays in regularizing indigenous lands, which allows infrastructure projects and economic exploitation to advance without regard for indigenous presence, CIMI noted.
«In many cases, such as among the Guarani and Kaiowá in Mato Grosso do Sul, or the Pataxó in Bahia, actions taken by indigenous communities to recover parts of their territory, where demarcation has been stalled for years, face violent and disproportionate reactions from landowners who form armed militias to attack indigenous people,» the report states.
According to data cited by CIMI, of the 1,443 areas considered indigenous lands in Brazil, only 436 (30.2%) are officially demarcated and registered as reserves. Another 131 (9.3%) are in the legalization process, and 582 (40.3%) are claimed by indigenous peoples but remain unrecognized by the state.
«The increase in territorial conflicts in 2025 reflects a scenario of attacks and the loss of indigenous rights. The rise in conflicts and murders occurs amid legal omission and political and economic pressure against the demarcation of indigenous lands,» the Council stated.
In addition to the 258 murders, the report records 38 attempted murders, 33 cases of bodily injury, mostly resulting from land conflicts, and 46 reports of racism and discrimination in 2025.
There were also 19 reported cases of abuse of power, including the arbitrary arrest of a Pataxó leader in Bahia during a conflict, 18 death threats, 27 other types of threats, and 25 cases of sexual violence, including 20 involving girls under 14.
The report notes that attacks on land are encouraged by legislative measures and judicial decisions that run counter to the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples.
The organization specifically cites the ‘Temporal Framework’ Law, which prevents indigenous peoples from reclaiming lands they were expelled from and were not occupying when the current Constitution was enacted in 1988, a law that was provisionally revoked by the Supreme Court.
«The many facets of violence against indigenous peoples are cruel and seem relentless, repeating year after year. Yet, there are periods when they intensify even more perversely, affecting the most vulnerable due to the State’s failure to demarcate lands,» said Cardinal Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, Archbishop of Manaus and President of CIMI.
According to the Cardinal, the violence against indigenous people in Brazil is structural because it serves the interests of economic groups for whom «land is a commodity and indigenous people are obstacles to be removed.» EFE
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