- The critically acclaimed film ‘I’m Still Here’ focuses on the personal and political history of Eunice Paiva but offers glimpses of her Indigenous rights work as a lawyer — a rarity in Brazil’s 1980s.
- Paiva is a famed lawyer who went into the field in her 40s after the kidnapping and killing of her husband by Brazil’s military dictatorship.
- Eunice Paiva’s role was critical to the acknowledgement of Indigenous rights in the Constitution of 1988 and the demarcation of Yanomami land in the Amazon Rainforest.
- Mongabay speaks to sources who were close to Eunice Paiva, including a family friend, Indigenous leaders and lawyers, to document her impact on Indigenous rights and the environmental movement in Brazil’s history.
PORTO ALEGRE — On the set of I’m Still Here (2024), the acclaimed Brazilian film by Walter Salles Jr., supporting actress Angela Ribeiro was approached by a woman with red hair and thin-rimmed glasses. “I came to meet my namesake,” the visitor joked in a light Portuguese accent.
The presence of Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, a distinguished Luso-Brazilian scholar specializing in Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, behind the scenes of the production, moved the actress portraying her on the big screen, she said. In a social media post, Ribeiro shared, “I met her on set! We hugged. We looked at each other, and I was able to express my profound admiration.”
Carneiro da Cunha is a secondary character in the critically acclaimed film I’m Still Here, which is nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best International Picture and Best Actress. The movie focuses on the personal and political story of its protagonist, lawyer Eunice Paiva (1929–2018) whose husband, former Congressman Rubens Paiva, was kidnapped and killed by agents of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971.
The relationship between Eunice Paiva (played by Fernanda Torres) and Carneiro da Cunha is briefly touched upon in the film, sources close to her tell Mongabay, but it encapsulates a crucial aspect of Paiva’s career: her influence in the Indigenous rights and environmental movement.
Although I’m Still Here does not delve deeply into Indigenous issues, Indigenous leaders have seen the film’s international success as a tribute to a champion of their cause.
Paiva’s advocacy for Indigenous peoples gained national recognition through an article co-authored with Carneiro da Cunha titled “Defend the Pataxós,” published in Folha de S.Paulo in 1983. Before this, she was primarily known as Rubens Paiva’s widow and a human rights activist. This time, in 1983, she and Carneiro da Cunha sought to expose the harassment of the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hæ people by large landowners in southern Bahia, where the Portuguese first landed in 1500.
“It’s impossible to talk about the Indigenous movement during the dictatorship without mentioning Eunice Paiva,” summarizes Ailton Krenak, a philosopher, writer and prominent Indigenous leader. “You can’t discuss today’s Indigenous movement without her,” adds Eliesio Marubo, a Marubo Indigenous lawyer and legal adviser for the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley.
Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara acknowledged Paiva’s legacy. On Jan. 6, after the film’s lead actress won her most significant award to date, Guajajara wrote on social media: “Fernanda Torres won the Golden Globe for brilliantly portraying Eunice Paiva, a woman who deserves to be remembered for her fight for rights — not just for her family but for those most in need. Eunice stood with Indigenous peoples in their fight for land demarcation.”
A new path
Paiva’s path to legal advocacy was unexpected. She led a quiet life as a middle-class homemaker until her husband was killed and the military regime denied her rights as a widow and mother of five. Left without means of support, she enrolled in law school in 1972 at the age of 41 and graduated five years later.
“In the 1970s, few Indigenous people had the opportunity to attend or complete a university education. The defense of Indigenous rights fell to human rights lawyers,” says Marubo, who himself became a lawyer in the 2000s.
Paiva’s motivation to defend Indigenous rights as a non-Indigenous person is difficult to pinpoint, according to anthropologist Betty Mindlin, a longtime family friend. She says Indigenous activism is deeply tied to resistance against the violence of Brazil’s development model — a model that often ignores both Indigenous peoples and the environment.
“Even the most progressive economists took a long time to realize how large-scale energy projects, like hydroelectric dams, impact Indigenous lands and the environment,” Mindlin tells Mongabay. “Eunice bridged that gap. It became one of the defining causes of her life.”
Mindlin’s ties to Paiva go back to her teens. Her uncle, prominent architect Henrique Mindlin, was the brother-in-law of Baby Bocayuva, a close friend of the couple and himself a former representative proscribed by the military dictatorship. Bocayuva is portrayed in I’m Still Here by actor Dan Stulbach. The two women became closer after Mindlin left a successful career as an economist and university professor to become an anthropologist. Her mentor in this transition was the renowned sociologist and ethnologist Carmen Junqueira, who worked alongside Paiva at the Pro-Indian Commission of São Paulo, an NGO founded in 1978.
“I met Ailton Krenak at Eunice’s house,” Mindlin recalls.
In his memoir, which inspired the film, Eunice’s son, writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva, notes that his mother’s dedication to Indigenous law emerged after an initially promising career in family and civil law, thanks to support from friends and relatives. “Gradually, she allowed herself to focus on a field that wasn’t financially lucrative but that she inexplicably fell in love with: Indigenous law. She began representing Indigenous nations whose demarcated lands were being violated,” he writes.
In 1985, Paiva co-authored The State Against the Indians, a 42-page booklet with Junqueira, published by the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo’s Graduate Program in Social Sciences. The book highlights the connections between economic growth, political regimes and Indigenous rights violations in Brazil.
One example is the Tucuruí Dam project on the Tocantins River in the Amazon Basin, which flooded lands inhabited by the Parakanã people. “In their new settlements, the Parakanã found themselves deprived of fishing, a vital food source, as nearby streams were not rich in fish,” the authors warn. Of the estimated 1,000 Parakanã in 1970, only about 170 remained by 1982.
Paiva also played a key role in advocating for the Yanomami Indigenous Park along the Brazil-Venezuela border. She led a major campaign for the demarcation of Yanomami territory (achieved in 1982) and later fought against mining exploitation in the area, which the military regime approved the following year.
In her activism, she also opposed policies aiming to divide Indigenous peoples into the two categories “traditional” (isolated with no contact with white people) and “emancipated” (inclined to acculturation). This would have led to the latter group’s dispossession of land, she said.
Her activism culminated in contributions to Brazil’s 1988 Constituent Congress, where she served as a consultant. At the Constitution’s promulgation, House Speaker Ulysses Guimarães declared the new constitutional text the “Rubens Paiva Constitution.”
He failed to credit Eunice Paiva. The document, for the first time in Brazilian history, included a chapter dedicated to Indigenous peoples, affirming their rights to traditionally occupied lands and their exclusive use of natural resources.
“Constitution’s eighth chapter, named On Indians, is one of Eunice’s great legacies to Indigenous peoples and to the country as a whole,” says Kleber Karipuna, executive coordinator of Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil by Brazilian Amazon.
About a year later, in 1990, Paiva was once again in Brasília as part of a delegation pushing President José Sarney to demarcate Kayapó Mekranotí land. Security guards initially barred them from the presidential palace, but the group pushed forward, forcing their way in. Witnessing the scene, Mindlin recalls, “Security staff, stunned by the sight of famous artists respectfully but insistently pressing against the glass doors, eventually relented and let us in.” The land was officially demarcated in 1993.
Paiva’s work only diminished in 2008 when Alzheimer’s forced her into retirement. She died a decade later, surrounded by family.
When I’m Still Here premiered at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, it received a nearly 10-minute standing ovation. Ironically, just days before, Indigenous groups had announced they would withdraw from negotiations over the controversial marco temporal, a legal theory that threatens constitutional protections for Indigenous lands.
Banner image: Eunice Paiva (L, on the sofa) and Rubens Paiva (on her left) surrounded by their children and an unknown person. Exact date unknown, probably mid-60s. Image from personal archives via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
Q&A with Sydney Possuelo, the most prominent specialist in isolated indigenous peoples in Brazil
Listen to the latest Mongabay podcast episode: Bobcats benefit both human and ecological health, but their growing populations are often misunderstood. Listen here:
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Credits
