A língua de ferro ecoando no discurso sobre a grilagem de territórios indígenas: ideologia, silêncio e memória

Abstract

This study proposes a reflection on the effects of meaning in the legal discourse present in Law 601 of 1850, which regulated land ownership in Brazil during the Second Empire, and its contemporary iteration in Bill 490/2007, which addresses the demarcation of Indigenous lands. The analysis is grounded in Discourse Analysis (DA), as initiated by Michel Pêcheux and expanded by Eni Orlandi, highlighting how legal discourse reproduces and updates ideological relations of domination and resistance. The study begins with the conditions of discourse production, following Courtine (2016), which link linguistic materiality to historical conditions, demonstrating how colonization and European capitalism shaped land ownership policies in Brazil. Law 601/1850 established purchase as the sole means of acquiring land, excluding Indigenous peoples, formerly enslaved individuals, and the poor, thereby consolidating land privatization and reinforcing colonial and capitalist logic. This discourse is revived in PL 490/2007, which imposes the "temporal framework" (marco temporal) of October 5, 1988, for Indigenous land demarcation, disregarding centuries of displacement and violence. The analysis reveals how legal discourse operates through silencing mechanisms and ideological interpellations, naturalizing the exclusion of Indigenous peoples and legitimizing the exploitation of their lands in the name of "progress" and "national security." In summary, the study demonstrates how legal discourse, throughout history, reproduces and updates colonial and capitalist domination, silencing Indigenous voices and justifying land dispossession. The analysis underscores the need to expose the ideological mechanisms embedded in legal discourse to understand the power relations that sustain the exclusion and marginalization of Indigenous peoples in Brazil.