Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received almost 100% of the vote in many local communities In the elections that ended the Jair Bolsonaro era. “It was a request for help, not a scam,” said geographer and activist Aiala Colares. Lula has just joined the 52nd General Assembly of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon state of Roraima. There she heard desperate calls for help again. “We will deport the (illegal) miners forever Brazil’s president assured that these lands,” he assured. No head of state had ever made such a commitment at such a meeting, let alone in front of 2,500 representatives of nine ethnic groups, including the Yanomami, Macuxi and Wapichana. Roraima has gold, he “The gold doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s there because nature put it there. No one has the right to touch it without the permission of the locals.”
Maria Betânia Mota of the Macuxi ethnic group pleaded to “keep your word” and demanded compensation for the towns damaged by the mine invasion on behalf of the indigenous women of Roraima. “My Yanomami never starved to death. I’m here, I’m 66 years old, and no one experienced these situations when I was younger. Now mining is killing my people and also to my relatives Munduruku and Kayapo. When the locals get sick they can’t work or hunt (in the fields),” complained Davi Kopenawa, the shaman and spokesman for this community. Their lands were occupied by more than 20,000 ‘garimpeiro’ known as this miner. The government launched an Operation Liberation that could take a year to get the expected results. “They keep hiding there‘, Kopenawa warned. In fact, the presence of gold prospectors going to the mines on the Guyana border was confirmed the day Lula set foot on Raposa Serra do Sol.
narcoecology
Raposa Serra do Sol is a Yanomami country whose borders were drawn in 2005, during the first term of Lula. The President admitted that this community had been “slaughtered”. On January 20, the Government declared a public health emergency in Yanomami territory as a result of the explosion of deadly malaria and diseases associated with hunger, such as severe malnutrition, acute diarrhea, pneumonia and respiratory infections. These diseases especially affected the little ones. The suffering stems in part from the fragility faced by communities. compulsory promised to build field hospitals and improve health in all regions. Kopenawa: “We have to save the remaining children. ‘There is still a lot of malnutrition in the areas of Garimpos where planes that don’t belong to them have landed,’ the shaman insisted.
Experts believe that the original communities were sacrificed by expanding the mining economic frontier, a task of destruction that could only be done by collusion between the State and the ‘garimpeiros’. Rivers are contaminated with mercury. This reduction biodiversity It affected artisanal fishing, which was vital to the survival of these peoples. Colares talks about “narcoecology,” a new phenomenon that connects gold mining, smuggling of cut wood, manganese, and biopiracy. “Things got worse with Bolsonaro.”
emergency borders
Non-demarcation of indigenous territories and illegal mining were the two sides of the coin that circulated relentlessly during the four years of the far right’s reign. Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara said a demarcated and protected area is the first step towards protecting the rights of indigenous women. She took the presidential mandate to expedite the pending processes affecting other ethnic groups. “We need to draw boundaries soon, before humans take over.Joenia Wapichana, president of Funai (National Indigenous Peoples Foundation), said she “invents false documents.”
Indigenous communities do not want the government to persecute the garimperia alone. They demand that their lands stop being occupied by farmers, especially those who take care of soybean plantations. Lula assured him that he was aware of the “need to take care of the climate”, otherwise “humanity would perish through irresponsibility.” Then he had to listen again to the rejection of hydroelectric dams on Amazonian territory promoted by him and his failed heir, Dilma Rousseff, in the middle of the Xingu river in the state of Pará. The “old” Lula and its current version don’t seem to have the same environmental values.