By Pilar Olivares, Aline Massuca and Andre Romani
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Almost 200 Indigenous candidates, a record, are running for public office in Brazil's general elections next month, official data showed, campaigning on environmental protection in an increasingly conservative political landscape where agribusiness interests wield significant influence.
"We Indigenous women need to have a voice, and we need to occupy decision-making spaces. We have to be in those decision-making spaces as part of our struggle for our territories, for Mother Earth, and for the environment," said Tereza Arapium, who is running for a seat in the state congress in Rio de Janeiro, using actual leaves as campaign leaflets.
The record comes as Indigenous groups push the government for faster official recognition of their territories, a status that grants these lands legal protection against invasions, while seeking to shield their interests in legislative houses from agribusiness, as well as energy and infrastructure projects.
Brazil's electoral authorities have registered 191 Indigenous candidates, the highest number since ethnicity data on candidates started being published in 2014, data gathered by Indigenous umbrella group APIB showed, but still a tiny fraction of the almost 21,000 candidates registered with electoral authorities.
APIB has publicly supported the reelection of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who opinion polls show is neck and neck with the main opposition candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of far-right firebrand and former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The group welcomed Lula's creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs and the resumption of official recognitions of Indigenous lands, but criticized the pace of such recognitions and the government's push for oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.
Lula has claimed the drilling would be done in the safest way possible.
(Reporting by Pilar Olivares, Aline Massuca in Rio de Janeiro and Bruno Kelly in Manaus; additional reporting and writing by Andre Romani in Sao Paulo; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
