PORTO SEGURO JOURNAL

          By LARRY ROHTER

          PORTO SEGURO, Brazil -- The history of the Brazilian nation
          began here when a Portuguese flotilla hoping to reach India spied a
          "mount, very high, round and wooded" after a grueling 43-day voyage.

          The seafarers found an anchorage, which they promptly named "safe
          port," and sent a delegation ashore to talk to astonished the locals, whom
          the mission's log described as "innocent" and "childlike."

          Now, with the 500th anniversary celebrations of the Portuguese arrival
          fast approaching, the descendants of those earlier inhabitants are trying to
          regain this historic piece of land.

          Since August more than 200 members of the Pataxo tribe (pronounced
          pot-a-SHOW) have been occupying Monte Pascoal National Park, site
          of the 1,742-foot hill that guided Pedro Alvares Cabral's men to that first
          landfall on the afternoon of April 23, 1500.

          In North American terms, it is as if the Wampanoag tribe were to seize
          Plymouth Rock and demand the return of the surrounding territory.

          "This park is still our house, even though someone else has been living in
          it," said Joel Braz, director of the tribal council representing more than a
          dozen nearby Pataxo villages. "The only way we can celebrate is by
          getting our land back. We are not going to be satisfied until we achieve
          that, and we will fight if we have to, because our survival as a people is at
          stake."

          The symbolism of the Pataxo takeover, which includes replacing the sign
          at the entrance of the park with one proclaiming a new identity as the
          "Pataxo Indigenous Park of Monte Pascoal," has reverberated
          profoundly among Brazil's 165 million people.

          Like the United States, Brazil has found it difficult to come to grips with
          the indigenous component of its past, beginning with the enslavement and
          extermination of the Tupi group of tribes who were ancestors of the
          Pataxo.

          For those reasons, "the struggle of the Pataxo has become emblematic of
          the whole indigenous movement in Brazil" and forced the government to
          tread lightly, said Sumario Santana of the Indigenous Missionary Council,
          a Roman Catholic Church organization that works closely with Indian
          groups.

          "The government is silent, but it doesn't have many options," he said.
          "Either it admits the Pataxo are the legitimate owners, or it kicks them
          out. I don't see a middle ground here."

          But the government tried to reach a middle ground during negotiations
          two decades ago, granting Pataxo villages in the area access to 21,000
          acres of the national park and leaving the remaining 36,000 acres under
          government control. Federal officials who have been talking with tribal
          leaders recently have indicated that they are willing to give the tribe more
          land, but only if the Pataxo move to another area and relinquish their
          claims to the park.

          The Pataxo distrust such promises, particularly older members of the
          tribe like Manoel Goncalves dos Santos, 74. "We helped the first
          surveyors who came to demarcate the national park, because they told
          us we would get this land," he recalled of the event in the early 1940s.
          "But when they were finished, we were driven away and told we had to
          stay out of the park."

          After that expulsion, and the dispersal that came after a clash with the
          Bahia state police in 1951, the Pataxo gradually lost their language and
          were reduced to selling handicrafts at the park's entrance.

          Since the 1960s some government documents have even referred to the
          tribe not as Indians, but as "caboclos," a term applied to people of mixed
          race and hillbillies.

          Nevertheless, the Pataxo continue to struggle to maintain their identity as
          a people and still regard Monte Pascoal as "sacred to us," said Oziel
          Santana Ferreira, a village chief. "It is our brother, and the forest is our
          mother," he said. "We know every cave and waterfall, our ancestors are
          buried here and this is where our old folks have always performed their
          songs and rituals, so we cannot leave here."

          What the Pataxo are demanding now is the entire 138,000 acres that
          was initially set aside for the park, most of which ended up in the hands
          of ranchers and other "private interests that had the political connections
          we have never had," Braz said.

          Pataxo leaders say they need more land because their population has
          exploded, from a few hundred in the early 1950s to more than 6,000
          today, but they are being resisted by local landowners.

          The Pataxo's seizure of the park has also created a quandary for Brazil's
          environmentalist groups. Though they normally support Indian causes, on
          the theory that indigenous people are proven stewards of nature, the park
          is a sanctuary that harbors one of the last stands of virgin Atlantic rain
          forest, including once plentiful but now rare species like the Brazilwood
          tree, which gave this country its name.

          "A significant portion of the depredations this park has suffered are due
          to the Indians," complained Silvio da Cruz Freire, the park's acting
          director, "so for them to suddenly present themselves as protectors of the
          environment flies in the face of reality. I can't remember a time when
          there haven't been Indians inside the park burning trees to plant their
          crops or cutting them down to use in making their handicrafts."

          Some environmentalists also worry that the Pataxo case could send the
          wrong signal to other groups, ranging from ranchers to miners, that covet
          the riches contained in other, more remote and less policed national
          parks.

          "The law clearly states that no one can form a residential community in a
          national park," Santana said, "and the fear among nongovernmental
          organizations is that this could set a dangerous precedent."

          But the Pataxo argue that they are taking better care of the park than the
          government ever did. "The park guards were always taking bribes to let
          hunters and wood gatherers come in," said Aliso Coelho, a member of
          the Pataxo security team that, armed with clubs and bows and arrows,
          now controls access to the park. "But we have captured them and turned
          them over to police."

          Disruption to normal activities within the park has been minimal, because
          it has been closed to the public since February. That step was taken,
          Freire said, "in order to carry out improvements to the visitor center and
          expansions of services like water and electricity, with the idea that we
          would reopen in time for the 500th anniversary commemorations."

          Tensions in the region rose in mid-November, though, when in violation
          of a law that limits Indian affairs to the federal police, a truckload of state
          police officers was dispatched to a Pataxo village about 100 miles north
          of here for reasons that are still unclear.

          After the troops stopped to remove a barrier from a road, two officers
          were shot and killed. The police accuse the Pataxo of the killings, but
          tribal leaders deny any involvement.

          "There is no danger of any violence in the park itself, because that is a
          different situation," said Cleto de Lima e Silva, an official of the local
          office of the National Indian Foundation, the Brazilian government agency
          that deals with indigenous peoples. "The government is directly involved,
          and the government wants to keep everyone calm so that we can resolve
          this in peace."