Political Report # 1366 Tribes in deep water: gold, guns and the Amazon's last frontier

by Dom Phillips, The Guardian

Francisco Lima sits in the wooden watchtower, flicking a searchlight on and off as he surveys the dark river for the commercial fishermen who pillage the rivers of the Javari Valley, a remote indigenous reserve on Brazil’s Peruvian border. His watchtower guards rivers leading into this reserve, home to 6,000 people from eight tribes, each with its own languages and customs, and the world’s highest concentration of “non-contacted” indigenous groups. Only authorised visitors and indigenous locals are allowed to enter. But the 12-volt light that Lima, 55, is operating is unlikely to stop intruders. “There’s a shortcut,” he says, pointing into the gloom to show how a waterway bypasses the base, which belongs to the Brazilian government’s indigenous agency, Funai. He explains how fishermen flood their canoes, immerse themselves in water, and float silently under the searchlight’s beam. “There’s a shortcut,” he says, pointing into the gloom to show how a waterway bypasses the base, which belongs to the Brazilian government’s indigenous agency, Funai. He explains how fishermen flood their canoes, immerse themselves in water, and float silently under the searchlight’s beam. This gaggle of wooden huts perched on stilts above the river is one of four Funai bases in the Javari Valley, a wilderness of thick forest, steep ravines and corkscrewing rivers with no roads or cellphone networks - or police. Anacondas and alligators lurk in Javari’s rivers; snakes, jaguars and scorpions roam its forests; monkeys screech in its trees; and it has a lush, tangled beauty mankind has yet to spoil. For more than a decade after the reserve was set up in 1998, its 16 uncontacted indigenous tribes were among the best protected in Brazil. Yet today it is invaded on multiple fronts, leaving its isolated groups - who hunt with bows and arrows or blow-pipes, and avoid contact with modern society - at risk. Contact with outsiders can be deadly for these groups, who lack immunity to diseases like flu. “The vulnerability of these peoples is growing,” Beto Marubo, a Javari indigenous leader, told the United Nations permanent forum on indigenous issues in New York in April. “There is no effective protection.”

Abstract, "Toward the Worker State, or Working for the State? Reorganization of Political Antagonisms in the Brazilian Amazon" by Brenda Baletti

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Toward the Worker State, or Working for the State? Reorganization of Political Antagonisms in the Brazilian Amazon 
by Brenda Baletti

The institutionalization of the Brazilian Workers’ Party has given rise to new tensions among emerging political actors, historic social movement mediator organizations, and the state. An analysis of the differences in strategies and practices between the Movement in Defense of Renascer and the Prainha Rural Worker’s Movement that emerged during the creation of the Renascer Extractive Reserve in the Lower Amazon highlights the fact that the movement’s emancipatory impulses indicate a break with the politics-as-usual of the union and the Workers’ Party more broadly. An examination of union political discourses and practices that seek to fold these emancipatory impulses back into the dominant logic indicates that the union continues to perform the work of the state—albeit a reconstituted one—both institutionally and effectively.