A seven thousand pages document reveals the history of Brazilian territorial expansion in the twentieth century by the taking of indigenous territories. The rediscovery of the hitherto missing Figueiredo Report in 2012 rekindles this memory. The appalling denunciations cited in the lawsuit, which at the time were broadcast in the national and international press, apparently fell by the wayside. What happened to these characters? Who survived? What is the ethnicity today? What problems do they face?

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Episodes' synopsis

First episode - The Cinta Larga - In 1963 Brazil was, for the first time, denounced internationally for genocide. This was what became known as the Massacre Of The Eleventh Parallel in Mato Grosso, where 3,500 Cinta Larga Indians were killed. By order of the rubber tappers, whole villages were machine-gunned and bombs and dynamites were thrown from airplanes. The testimonies and denunciations of the case will be used to trace the history of the ethnic group up to the current situation.

Second episode - The Bororo - Based on the case of Rosa Bororo in Mato Grosso, given as payment by an SPI employee in exchange for a stove, this episode will deal with the exploitation of Indian girls and women by ranchers and SPI officials. Women forced to work on the day after delivery, children removed from their mothers and abducted from schools to be delivered to slave laborers. The testimonies and denunciations of the case will be used to trace the history of the ethnic group up to the current situation.

Third episode - The Umutina - The case of the boy Lalico, who, for selling 5kg of poia-ipecacunha on his own to help his mother, was removed from home, beaten and tortured by an SPI employee, will be the guiding thread to tell the story of the Umutina, in Mato Grosso. In this episode will be portrayed the near extermination of this people, by means of the exploitation of their lands, slave labor and abuses of their natural resources by the SPI, and will be sought through its descendants the consequences of this process for the ethnicity.

Fourth episode - The Munduruku - One of the most numerous ethnic groups in Brazil, the Munduruku, living on the banks of the Tapajós River in Pará, lived the different cycles of exploration of the forest and the river by the white man. This episode will have as a guiding thread the action of a rubber tree as a civilizing agent of the Munduruku people in search for transforming them into rubber workers. The interviews with the descendants will trace the different industrial cycles in which this people resisted until the present days when they face the construction of a hydroelectric in their territory.

Fifth episode - The Canela - After more than 150 years of peaceful coexistence with the rest of the population of Maranhão, the Canela were liquidated and their lands taken in the late 1920s by local farmers. The massacre was widely disseminated to the responsible bodies and the local media. The 400 Canela survivors were sent to a neighboring post without their lands. Fifty years later the struggle remains, as well as the cruelty against the indigenous people. This episode will revisit the history of the Canela to understand the conflict and the cruel deaths of the Indians in these lands during the last years.

Sixth episode - The New Pacaas - The contact of Pacaas Novos with the white man in the twentieth century, in Roraima, resulted in the mass death of this people by epidemics and diseases. This episode will reflect on the lack of assistance in the process of approaching indigenous people. In addition to being exposed to infectious diseases that their bodies had no defense to fight, the lack of SPI assistance and ill-treatment, such as hunger caused by the exploitation of the natural resources of their lands, almost exterminated the New Pacaas. They await today the demarcation of their lands.

Seventh episode - The Kadiwéu - Presented by the Emperor Dom Pedro II with 1 million hectares of land after the Paraguayan War, the Kadiwéu became the owners of one of the largest Brazilian indigenous reserves. However, they live in a small village and struggle to regain their own land, sparked 30 years ago, illegally occupied by ranchers. Prejudice, abuse of power, relations established there and visible in the testimonies and denunciations of the case will be used to trace the history of the ethnic group to the current situation.

Eighth Episode - The Guarani-Kaiowá - The Guarani-Kaiowá landslide, in Mato Grosso do Sul, is a portrait of the state's indigenous issue. Between illegal leases, illegitimate sale of land demarcated in the 1960s and murders of indigenous leaders, this ethnic group represents the indigenous battle against agricultural power. A recent case of massacre on Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous land will be presented in parallel with the information provided by Jaime Figueiredo. The testimonies and denunciations of the case will be used to trace the history of the ethnic group up to the current situation.

Ninth episode - The Pataxó - The criminal contamination of the Pataxó Indians in Bahia by means of the smallpox virus is one of the most serious denunciations of the processes investigated by the Report against the ethnicity. The reintegration of squatter lands, occupied by ranchers and descendants of politicians since the 1930s, has been in the courts for more than 30 years. The search for the ancients, in this episode, in the small reserve located in the south of Bahia intends to work with this memory and to unravel the process of extinction of the ethnicity.

Tenth episode - The Guarani - The Guarani people are known as the Great People, made up of different nomadic peoples. This episode will show the flow of migration of the ethnic group and also the destruction of their identity over the years through some stories such as the Indian Manuelzinho, sent to different indigenous posts across the country. The testimonies and denunciations of the case will be used to trace the history of the ethnic group up to the current situation.

Eleventh episode - The Kaingang: The division - The rivalry and hierarchy of the Kaingang peoples, located in Rio Grande do Sul, was explored during the twentieth century by SPI officials and farmers to enable territorial expansion in the interior of the country and to explore the lands of Indigenous peoples. The case reports the abuses and lack of assistance of the Indians, as well as presenting the methods of torture and ethnic warfare that were later used against them. Current indigenous leaders, interviewed for the documentary, publicly defend new strategies of struggle and question the historical internal divisions.

Twelfth episode - Prisons and migrations: loss of identity - The map of the indigenous posts in the Kaingang territory shows the process of genocide in favor of "national progress." In this episode, such a "civilizing" process will be addressed through the data provided by the report on the indigenous prison system in the policy conducted by the SPI. In this episode we will address the migrations through the prisons created by the SPI.

From the Figueiredo Report and the facts narrated in this document, that was created in 1967/68, this series wants to work with memory. In the course of writing the script, we discovered the impactful testimonies of indigenous people, the SPI (Service of Protection to the Indians) and even participants in the violence described in the case files. In these testimonies, one can perceive the trivialization of violence, prejudices against the indians, the view that indigenous land must be exploited in the mold of white society, and with a very great force. As the intention is not to do sociological work, and we consider that today the border between documentary and fiction is less and less clear, we defined what actors can "represent" these testimonies, as we do in the attached video demo. In addition to the testimonies collected, we will work with all the research undertaken, which allied with the broad archive material found, will serve as the theoretical and narrative basis of each episode.