Political Report # 1421
'War for survival': Brazil's Amazon tribes despair as land raids surge under Bolsonaro
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Activists say onslaught has intensified as illegal loggers
and land-grabbers take the president’s verbal offensive against indigenous
communities as a green light to act.
More than 30 bullet holes told Awapu Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau a
sinister tale.
“Their message is that they’re going to finish us off, isn’t
it?” the village chieftan said as he examined the pockmarked sign warning
outsiders to stay off the giant Amazon reserve he calls home.
Brazil was only 11 days into Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency
when dozens of armed land-grabbers rolled up at the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory
and cut a trail into the forest, claiming Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous rhetoric
meant they would not be stopped.
Eventually the intruders were repelled – but not before
leaving their leaden response to the government notice cautioning trespassers
against straying on to supposedly protected land.
“We’re scared,” admitted Awapu, a 27-year-old cacique
(chief) who has received death threats for speaking out against the invaders.
“Nobody wants to die.”
The slow-burn assault on Brazil’s indigenous lands did not
begin in January with Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency.
But Awapu, and activists across the country, say they are
convinced the onslaught has intensified since Bolsonaro took power, as illegal
loggers, goldminers, poachers and land-grabbers take the president’s verbal
offensive against such communities as a green light to act.
Last week Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council rights
group denounced that 153 indigenous territories had been invaded since January
– more than double last year’s figure of 76 – partly blaming the surge on
Bolsonaro’s “aggressive” talk.
Nor does the threat come only from illegal actors such as
those behind the January raid on the Wales-sized Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau reserve in
Rondônia state. Increasingly, it is coming from the government itself.
In the coming days Bolsonaro is set to unveil draft
legislation that would allow commercial mining in indigenous territories,
something currently outlawed, despite overwhelming opposition from voters.
“Indians don’t want to be poor landowners living on rich
soils – especially the richest soils on Earth,” Bolsonaro told last month’s UN
general assembly, boasting of the gold, diamonds, uranium, niobium and rare
earths hidden beneath their reserves.
“Not since the dictatorship have Brazil’s indigenous peoples
felt as threatened as they do now,” said Randolfe Rodrigues, a progressive
senator from Amapá, another of the Amazon’s nine states.
“And it’s not just threats. It is concrete facts,” added
Rodrigues, highlighting attacks on Amapá’s Waiãpi indigenous community and the
recent murder of an activist fighting to protect the territory sheltering
Brazil’s largest concentration of uncontacted tribes.
Fátima Cleide, a prominent Workers’ party (PT) politician in
Rondônia, said indigenous communities stood at a historic and perilous
juncture. “This is a war for survival … What they want is for the indigenous
peoples to disappear.”
Bolsonaro allies celebrate his Amazonian blueprint and brand
critics foreign conspirators.
Marcos Rocha, Rondônia’s Bolsonarista governor, claimed
opening supposedly impoverished indigenous communities to mining would bring
“dignity”.
“Indians want to grow and to develop, just like any human
being. Most other countries have decimated their Indians. We want them to walk
alongside us – because they are Brazilians, just like us,” he said.
The Bolsonarian congressman João Chrisóstomo compared his
leader’s plans to the creation of casinos on Native American reservations in
the United States. “Today all the Indians there are super-millionaires,”
Chrisóstomo claimed, laughing.
But many fear Bolsonaro’s moves could prove catastrophic for
small and already fragile communities such as the 150-strong Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau – a
semi-nomadic, Tupi-speaking group which remained uncontacted until 1981 and
whose members were once called the Bocas Pretas (Black Mouths) for their
distinctive tattoos made with the juice of the genipap tree.
“The government’s attitude towards indigenous people is the
same attitude the Portuguese had when they first came to Brazil: to enslave, to
colonize and to acculturate – to destroy their cultures,” claimed Rodrigues.
“Bolsonaro is a president who governs with the mindset of a
Portuguese mercenary who arrived here in the 16th century.”
The head of the Indigenous Missionary Council, Roque
Paloschi, said his group was not opposed to progress, per se: “But what kind of
progress – and for whom?”
Brazil’s indigenous peoples – who numbered upwards of 3.5
million when Portuguese explorers arrived in 1500 – suffered a wretched start
to the 20th century. As outsiders pushed deeper into their traditional homes,
illness and violence reduced their total population to as little as 70,000.
During the 1970s they faced further pain as the dictatorship bulldozed roads
through the Amazon and lured migrants with the slogan “a land without men for
men without land”.
But the return of democracy brought hope. Brazil’s 1988
constitution gave indigenous communities the exclusive right to vast areas, and
protected reservations such as the 1.9m hectare Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory were
born. By the turn of the century Brazil’s indigenous population had rebounded
to some 350,000.
“Until Bolsonaro came along it was looking really very
good,” said John Hemming, a veteran chronicler of indigenous affairs whose
latest book remembers the Villas-Bôas brothers, storied Brazilian explorers and
champions of the indigenous cause.
“Brazil can be so, so proud of what it has done,” Hemming
added. “But that is all about to be undone by this creature.”
Hemming claimed the Villas-Bôas brothers – who helped create
Brazil’s most famous indigenous reserve in the Xingu – would be “turning in
their graves” at Bolsonaro’s “terrifying” plans. Claims Bolsonaro’s project
would make tycoons of the indigenous were “a Goebbels-type lie”.
“I’m in despair, like everyone else,” Hemming admitted.
On the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau reserve – and indigenous territories
across Brazil – despair is spurring action.
On a recent afternoon, two village leaders emerged from the
rainforest, carrying rifles and drenched in sweat after a day tracking illegal
loggers into the jungle.
“All we heard was the din of the chainsaw. We didn’t see
them,” said one of the pair, 33-year-old Ari Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, showing off a
smartphone video of the scene.
As he wolfed down a late lunch of peccary and pasta, the
second man, Clebeson Tenharim, said he was certain the invasions were
accelerating. “It wasn’t like this last year. It has got much worse. They’re
really coming into the reserve now,” he said.
Tenharim had no doubt who was to blame.
“This Bolsonaro … all he wants to do is destroy,” the 36-year-old
complained, arguing the president’s hostility to indigenous communities was
encouraging raiders. “They think the government’s on their side.”
But hardwood-looting loggers are no longer the only menace.
Tenharim feared Bolsonaro would “rent the indigenous land out to foreigners”
and wondered who would benefit, apart from mining goliaths from abroad.
“It’s difficult to understand our government,” Tenharim
sighed. “First they make a law giving us the right to the reserve. Then they
break it themselves.”
As he toured Aldeia Nova – one of six small settlements on
the reservation’s eastern flank – Awapu Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau said he was also
perplexed by the government’s designs.
“They should respect our culture,” the cacique insisted.
“When the Portuguese arrived we were already here. Everyone who has studied
history knows this.”
At the UN last week Brazil’s president posed as an ally of
the indigenous, donning a necklace from the Xingu as proof of his dedication.
“Brazil now has a president who cares about those who were here before the
arrival of the Portuguese in 1500,” claimed Bolsonaro, whose Italian
forefathers migrated to Brazil in the late 19th century.
Thousands of miles away in the Amazon few descendants of
Brazil’s original inhabitants are convinced by such claims.
“[If Bolsonaro came here] I’d tie him up … until he
abandoned this act he wants to pass,” Tenharim joked.
Awapu was more downbeat as he pondered the future of his
ancestral home. “We feel sad,” he said. “We don’t know where this will end.”
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