Controversial Brazil law curbing Indigenous rights comes into force

Indigenous protesters demonstrate against a railway planned to run through their lands in Novo Progresso, Pará state, Brazil, on 15 December. Photograph: Well Kumaruwara/Reuters

A controversial law curtailing Indigenous rights in Brazil has come into force, marking a victory for the powerful agribusiness caucus in congress.

The new legislation upholds the so-called “time marker” theory (marco temporal), which establishes that Indigenous peoples can only lay claim to land they physically occupied as of October 1988, when the current constitution was promulgated.