They have long targeted Yanomami territory, which has rich mineral resources. The adventurous panners of yore are increasingly being replaced by criminal gangs, often experienced in narco-trafficking, who are heavily armed and equipped with dredgers and bulldozers. Wildcat gold prospectors, known as garimpeiros, have modernized faster than the state in recent years. Driving out the invaders will require political adroitness, considerable resources, and the backing of the army - none of which are guaranteed. That conflict has been fought for decades and appeared to have been all but lost under Brazil’s previous president, the far-right, pro-mining, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro. This is essentially a battle to reclaim forest land that the government had failed to protect from an onslaught by heavily armed gold mining gangs. Longer term, though, the solution will require a demonstration of force by the state to drive out the invaders and restore the environment. Lula visited the nearest major city, talked to Yanomami leaders, and declared an emergency. ![]() Thousands of doctors and nurses have volunteered to help the victims. The government has flown in food packages to this hilly region that spans the border with Venezuela and is home to almost 30,000 Indigenous people. She has vowed to make the crisis in Yanomami lands “an absolute priority.” The first response is humanitarian. Lula has created a new Indigenous ministry, the first in the country’s history, which is headed by Sonia Guajajara. Since the first European invaders arrived more than 500 years ago, Brazil’s place in the global economy has been defined by resource extraction and ever-deeper encroachments into biomes and Indigenous lands. Indigenous people are essential to Lula’s goals of zero deforestation, an end to the expansion of the agricultural frontier, and the protection of all of Brazil’s major biomes, which include not only the Amazon rainforest, but also the Cerrado savanna, the Pantanal wetlands, the Atlantic Forest, the Pampas grasslands, and the semi-arid Caatinga. We will repeal all injustices against Indigenous peoples.” In his inaugural address on January 1, he said, “Indigenous peoples … are not obstacles to development - they are guardians of our rivers and forests and a fundamental part of our greatness as a nation.” Earlier he had hinted to Congress that his government will expand Indigenous land: “Each demarcated land is a new area of environmental protection. Countless studies back this up, but it is only now, under the new Lula administration, that Brazil, the most biodiverse nation on Earth, is committed to putting this fully into practice by giving more land and power to Indigenous peoples and by promising to use the power of the state to protect them.įrom the first day of his presidency, Lula said he was prepared to take the necessary steps to defend the rainforest and its inhabitants. Indigenous peoples are part of its habitats, experts in managing resources sustainably, and best placed to defend against encroachment by extractive industries. ![]() ![]() We need them to leave.”Īt the heart of the matter is a long-overdue understanding among environmentalists that the best way to protect the forest is to protect its traditional inhabitants. The worst in my lifetime,” Junior Hekurari Yanomami, head of the Yanomami and Ye’kuana Indigenous Health District Council told us. “This is a very severe humanitarian crisis. The primary cause is an invasion of illegal gold miners, who have brought disease, violence, and environmental degradation. With little food and no medicine, diarrhea and pneumonia become fatal diseases. One starving three-year-old child weighed less than 8 pounds, about the size that would normally be expected of a healthy newborn. The humanitarian disaster in this forest region, however, was not caused by crop failure or war, but by illegal mining and genocidal neglect by the state.Īn investigation by our Amazon-based news platform Sumaúma found that 570 infants under the age of five died of preventable diseases in the past four years, a 29 percent increase over the previous four years. ![]() Emaciated chests, distended bellies, limbs like sticks - the images of malnourished infants and elderly that have emerged in recent weeks from the Yanomami Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon resemble the worst of the famines in Ethiopia, Sudan, or North Korea.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |