The A’uwẽ-Xavante people's denunciation of megaprojects in Brazil

A’uwẽ-Xavante leaders launched an international campaign at the UN in Geneva demanding protection from megaprojects fragmenting their territory in Brazil's Centre-West, chiefly the 1,641-kilometer Center-West Integration Railway known as FICO. The Brazilian government presents the rail line as a strategic freight corridor for soybeans and corn; the campaign argues it advanced without adequate free, prior, and informed consultation.

The A’uwẽ-Xavante, numbering around 25,300, describe their territory, Ró, as a living network of hunting grounds, rivers, ceremonial sites, and ancestral presences that cannot be reduced to administrative boundaries. A 2025 technical note from the Brazilian Anthropological Association warned that fragmenting this territory compromises ceremonies, knowledge transmission, and the social relationships that sustain the people as a people.

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