Brazil tribes back manifesto to save Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from the “genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide” planned by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro
By Ricardo Moraes
18 January 2020
XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the “genocide, ethnocide and ecocide” planned by the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
A manifesto signed on Friday at the end of a four-day meeting in the Xingu reservation said Bolsonaro was threatening the survival of indigenous people with plans to allow commercial mining and ranching on their protected lands.
“The government is attacking us and wants to grab our lands,” the document said, calling for a year of demonstrations and the support of foreign organizations and environmental activists.
This is a very grave moment in our history. It looks like a war scenario.
Sonia Guajajara, coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB)
Bolsonaro has vowed to encourage economic development in the Amazon to lift the tribes from poverty and improve the lives of 30 million Brazilians who live there. Environmentalists fear his plans will speed up destruction of the rainforest, which is a bulwark against global climate change.
“We do not accept mining, agribusiness and the renting of our lands, nor logging, illegal fishing, hydroelectric dams or other projects that will impact us directly and irreversibly,” the four-page document said.
The meeting in the village of Piaraçu on the Xingu river was called by Raoni Metuktire, the 90-year-old Kayapó chief who became an environmental campaigner in the 1980s with British rock singer Sting at his side.
The tribes said the Brazilian state under Bolsonaro had failed to fulfill its constitutional duty to protect indigenous lands and the surrounding environment by stopping illegal activity and punishing invaders.
They also held the government responsible for the poisoning of the “air, soil and rivers” by the uncontrolled use of chemicals in agriculture adjacent to their reservations.
“We were convened by Chief Raoni with the goal of coming together and denouncing that a political project by the Brazilian government of genocide, ethnocide and ecocide is underway,” the manifesto said.
Bolsonaro’s office declined to comment. [more]
Brazilian tribes back manifesto to save Amazon habitat from Bolsonaro
Brazilian tribes and forest tappers unite against Bolsonaro
By Leonardo Benassatto
18 January 2020
XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian indigenous tribes and rubber tappers joined forces on Wednesday to oppose steps by Brazilian far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that they say are destroying the Amazon forest they depend on.
Some 450 members of 47 tribes met for a second day to discuss how to resist Bolsonaro’s moves to weaken public agencies that are meant to protect the environment and native land rights. Bolsonaro has said tribes have too much land and he wants to open up the reservations to commercial mining and agriculture to develop the Amazon and lift indigenous people from poverty.
Kayapó chief Raoni Metuktire, who called the meeting in his village on the Xingu river, called on Brazil’s Congress to block the president’s policies.
“We are here to defend our land and to tell him to stop talking badly about us,” said Raoni, who became a global reference for his environmental campaigning in the 1980s with musician Sting at his side. He said he would never accept mining on his ancestral lands.
Among those attending the meeting was Angela Mendes, daughter of rubber tapper, trade union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes who was killed by a rancher in 1988 for his efforts to protect the rainforest.
“United we can resist. They have the power of the state, but we have the force of the waters, the flowers and ancestral land,” she said at a news conference.
The existence of non-indigenous extractivist communities that live off rubber tapping and selling the fruits of the forest is being endangered by deforestation, she warned.
Mendes struck an alliance with Sonia Guajajara, head on the APIB umbrella, Brazil’s largest organization of tribes.
“This is a very grave moment in our history. It looks like a war scenario,” Guajajara said, accusing Bolsonaro of serving the interests of Brazil’s powerful agribusiness and farming sectors that have advanced into the Amazon region.
The rise in violence against Brazil’s 850,000 indigenous people due to land conflicts with farmers and illegal mining and logging on reservations threaten the tribes’ future, she said. [more]
