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The Guarani, which now number roughly 85,000 in Brazil, were among the Indigenous peoples first encountered by Portuguese colonizers in the 1500s. Before the borders of modern South American countries existed, they lived across a vast territory in what is now Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay.

In 2015, the Justice Ministry recognized the community’s right to a larger territory. Two years later, however, conservative President Michel Temer’s government overturned the declaration, in a decision some experts have called unconstitutional. Eloy Terena, Brazil’s current minister for Indigenous peoples, said it set the process back “by at least 10 years.”

Lula’s administration revived the process of formally recognizing the Guarani ancestral territory in 2024. But political obstacles remain.