The World Bank and the redefinition of indigenous rights: notes on the Piauí: Pillars of Growth and Social Inclusion Project

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of international organizations, particularly the World Bank, in shaping multicultural policies directed at Indigenous peoples in Brazil, with a focus on the state of Piauí. It draws on the concept of neoliberal multiculturalism to understand how discourses of cultural and ethnic recognition are instrumentalized within a market-oriented logic of territorial governance. The study investigates how the Piauí: Pillars of Growth and Social Inclusion project, aligned with the World Bank’s guidelines, has contributed to the reconfiguration of notions of ethnicity and Indigenous territory. The specific objectives are: (a) to analyze how neoliberal multiculturalism manifests in territorial policies aimed at Indigenous peoples in Brazil, especially in Piauí; (b) to examine the legal and institutional mechanisms employed in the Piauí: Pillars of Growth and Social Inclusion project for the regularization of Indigenous territories; and (c) to assess the impacts of the World Bank’s involvement on Indigenous territorial rights. The methodology is based on a qualitative case study, anchored in the ethnographic analysis of administrative and legal documents. The article concludes that these policies, although framed as inclusive, operate through a rationality of containment, control, and financialization of territories, ultimately restricting original rights and legitimizing forms of ethnic governance aligned with the expansion of transnational capital. In this context, recognition emerges as a contested field between protection, exclusion, and the commodification of difference.