[News] Gold Miners Kill Indigenous Leader in Brazilian Amazon

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/brazil-indigenous-wajapi-gold-miners-invade-village-social-leader-killed-20190728-0003.html 



  Gold Miners Kill Indigenous Leader in Brazilian Amazon

Published 28 July 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A remote Indigenous reserve in the Brazilian Amazon was invaded by gold 
miners Saturday after they murdered Emyra Wajapi, a community 
leader whose body was found Wednesday.

Around 50 miners invaded the 600,000-hectare Mariri village as the 
Wajapi Indigenous community fled in fear to the bigger village of 
Aramira. The village chief Viseni Wajapi said they were attacked by the 
miners. “They killed a Wajapi leader. They are at the center of our 
land, armed with heavy guards.”

"Our warriors are there," continued the chief. “They are checking 
everywhere, how many people are there. We know there are more than 10, 
many have already fled.”

Viseni said the miners were assaulting Wajapi women and children and 
they have contacted Fundacao Nacional do Indio (FUNAI), the organization 
to protect the Indigenous people of Brazil. The authorities have not yet 
taken any action to protect the Wajapis and their land from the invaders.

“The garimpeiros (miners) invaded the Indigenous village and are there 
until today. They are heavily armed, they have machine guns. That is why 
we are asking for help from the federal police,” said Kureni Wajapi, 26, 
a member of the tribe.

Randolfe Rodrigues, a senator from Amapa state, first spoke about the 
invasion Saturday after he received audio messages pleading for police 
and army’s help from a local leader.

For Kureni Wajapi, the invasion is a result of far-right President Jair 
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolsonaros-Phone-Hacked-Brazil-Police-Make-Arrests-20190725-0027.html>Bolsonaro 
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolsonaros-Phone-Hacked-Brazil-Police-Make-Arrests-20190725-0027.html>’s 
anti-Indigenous attitude. “It is because he, the president, is 
threatening the Indigenous peoples of Brazil,” he said.

“The Jair Bolsonaro government is encouraging this conflict, encouraging 
garimpeiros to enter. Their hands are dirty,” Senator Rodrigues said.

The Wajapi tribe was almost wiped out in the 1970s due to disease after 
their land was invaded by gold miners. Last week’s invasion was the 
first one after the ’70s. Senator Rodrigues said the invasion was 
possible due to Bolsonaro’s repeated promise to allow mining in 
protected lands.

“I’m looking for the ‘first world’ to explore these areas in partnership 
and add value. That’s the reason for my approximation with the United 
States,” Bolsonaro said Saturday.
________________________________________________________

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/07/yanomami-amazon-reserve-invaded-by-20000-miners-bolsonaro-fails-to-act/?fbclid=IwAR02hhtQz1zibnVjRKem9WX9E6afiw6vuIIy_tOuRD6GelcEK8HEOfzR1bQ 



  Yanomami Amazon reserve invaded by 20,000 miners; Bolsonaro fails to act

by Sue Branford <https://news.mongabay.com/by/sue-branford/> on 12 July 
2019
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  * /An estimated 20,000 illegal goldminers (garimpeiros) have entered
    Yanomami Park, one of Brazil’s biggest indigenous reserves, located
    in Roraima and Amazonas states, near the border with Venezuela./
  * /The miners are well funded, likely by entrepreneurs, who pay
    workers and provide them with earthmoving equipment, supplies and
    airplanes. Three illegal air strips and three open-pit goldmines are
    in operation within the Yanomami indigenous territory./
  * /Indigenous leaders blame President Bolsonaro, with his incendiary
    anti-indigenous language, and his administration, with its policies
    that have defunded and gutted agencies responsible for law
    enforcement in the Amazon./
  * /Bolsonaro claims indigenous people want mining and industrial
    agribusiness on their lands, but the Yanomami vehemently deny such
    desires. They say they want self-determination over the types of
    businesses on their lands. One such new, sustainable business is a
    chocolate concession that would preserve the rainforest and offer
    income./

Thousands of goldminers (/garimpeiros/) have illegally invaded Yanomami 
Park, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous territories, officially 
demarcated by the Brazilian government in 1992, and covering 96,650 
square kilometres (37,320 square miles) of rainforest 
<https://rainforests.mongabay.com/> in the states of Roraima and 
Amazonas, near the border with Venezuela.

An incursion of this scale has not occurred for many years, bringing 
back memories among indigenous elders of the terrible period in the late 
1980s, when some 40,000 goldminers moved onto their land and about a 
fifth of the indigenous population died in just seven years due to 
violence, malaria, malnutrition, mercury poisoning and other causes.

Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader, estimates that some 20,000 miners are 
now on indigenous land. While the public perception of such operations 
is that they are artisanal or small-scale, they are typically 
sophisticated operations. The current crop of miners are likely 
underlings, well-funded and backed by well-to-do entrepreneurs who pay 
the miners or give them a share of production, while also supplying the 
workers with leased dredges, earth movers, and other heavy equipment, 
along with airplanes to fly in supplies and fly out the gold.

The miners are polluting the reserve’s rivers with mercury and silt, 
eroding the river banks, cutting down forest, scaring away the animals 
that the Indians hunt, and destroying fisheries, while inciting 
indigenous women into prostitution. Both the Mucajaí and Uraricoera 
rivers have become so polluted that people living in Boa Vista, the 
capital of Roraima state, located 570 kilometers (354 miles) downstream, 
have complained about the deteriorating water quality in their river, 
the Rio Branco, which is formed by the confluence of these two tributaries.

“They are only bringing problems. Malaria is increasing. It’s already 
killed four children in the Marari region,” Kopenawa said 
<https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2019/05/invasao-em-terra-indigena-chega-a-20-mil-garimpeiros-diz-lider-ianomami.shtml>. 
Malaria is spread by mosquitoes, and mining creates large stagnant pools 
of water, perfect for breeding the insects.

The reserve’s isolated, sometimes uncontacted, indigenous peoples are 
also threatened with potential devastating impacts, as the miners might 
infect them with Western diseases for which they have no resistance, and 
that are often fatal. Three illegal landing strips and three open-pit 
mines have been cut out of the rainforest where isolated indigenous 
groups have been seen.

“There are a lot of isolated Indians. I haven’t met them but I know they 
will be suffering.” Kopenawa said 
<https://www.survivalbrasil.org/povos/yanomami>. “I want to help my 
relatives. It is very important that they are left unmolested to live on 
their land.”

Júlio Ye’kuhana, from the Seduume Association and a representative of 
the Ye’kwana, a smaller indigenous group that lives alongside the 
Yanomami, told how one of the indigenous leaders had asked the miners to 
leave. But, said Ye’kuhana, the invaders responded angrily: “They’ve 
been making violent threats against him ever since. So now his community 
is keeping its head down. The miners are all armed with pistols and 
shotguns.”


      *The army departs, enter the miners*

Until recently, the Brazilian army had two monitoring bases along the 
Park’s largest rivers, the Mucajaí and Uraricoera, both used by miners 
as entry routes. Although the Yanomami complained that the army did not 
do enough to keep miners out, the very existence of these bases deterred 
some invaders. But at the end of last year, the army closed these bases, 
saying that its resources were overstretched by the tens-of-thousands 
<https://www.csis.org/analysis/venezuelan-refugee-crisis-view-brazil> of 
refugees flooding into Brazil from Venezuela.

With the army gone, the miners took advantage, swarming unimpeded into 
Yanomami Park.

Possibly emboldened by Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous policies 
<https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/brazils-bolsonaro-presses-anti-indigenous-agenda-resistance-surges/> 
and the administration’s major budget reductions for Amazon law 
enforcement operations 
<https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/brazil-guts-environmental-agencies-clears-way-for-unchecked-deforestation/>, 
the miners have even dared to set up a village within the Park in a 
region called Tatuzão do Mutum.

The Yanomami believe that, even before his election, Bolsonaro 
encouraged the invasion by talking about his father’s experience as a 
goldminer and repeatedly saying that indigenous groups had too much 
land. Then on 17 April, in a live interview 
<https://www.facebook.com/jairmessias.bolsonaro/videos/965431323847896/> 
on Facebook the President, accompanied by a few Yanomami Indians, 
announced that large-scale mining and extensive monoculture — meaning 
industrial agribusiness — should be allowed on indigenous territory, 
including Yanomami Park.

“Indians should not continue to be poor living above rich land. In 
Roraima, there are trillions of reais [Brazilian currency] under their 
land, [in the form of mineral wealth],” Bolsonaro said.

The Yanomami leadership, clearly alarmed by the President’s statement, 
reacted quickly. On 18 April a group of Yanomami leaders posted a video 
<https://www.facebook.com/yanomamihutukara/videos/454823555257886/?t=6> 
in which they vehemently asserted, in both Yanomami and Portuguese, that 
the Yanomami that had appeared at Bolsonaro’s side were not 
representative of any community within their reserve, and had no 
authority to speak for them.

One after another the leaders declared their total opposition to mining 
or commercial farming on their land. “You [Bolsonaro] say that we are 
going hungry,” said Kopenawa. “But it is a lie. None of us, Yanomami, 
are going hungry.”

“Gold should remain under the ground,” declared Roberval, a member of 
Ayrca, Maturacá Terra Yanomami, an indigenous organization. “We want a 
better income, but with our own projects.” The leaders sent a letter to 
Bolsonaro, expressing their outrage.


      *The sweet promise of help*

Though the government has not responded to that letter, the federal 
indigenous agency, FUNAI, has said that it will be re-opening bases in 
Yanomami territory closed because of budget cuts. It stated 
<http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/5451-funai-anuncia-reabertura-de-bases-de-protecao-na-terra-indigena-yanomami?start=1> 
in May: “One of the bases will be reopened in three months’ time and by 
2020 all of them will be fully functioning again, employing Indians and 
FUNAI staff and collaborating with employees from other state institutions.”

But indigenous communities haven’t stood idle waiting for government 
assistance. One innovative economic initiative is very new — chocolate 
making. The enterprise got underway in an indigenous village located 
just a few miles away from Tatuzão do Mutum, so-called because the big 
open-pit mine created there by about a thousand miners resembles the 
shell of a tatuzão, a giant armadillo.

Some Ye’kwana leaders realized that the standing forest offered another 
form of “gold” —cacao. Although cacao is endemic to the region, 
indigenous people have traditionally consumed the sweet flesh in the 
large orange cacao pods and thrown away the seeds, from which chocolate 
is made. Once they became aware of the market potential of high-quality 
connoisseur chocolate, they set about developing their own delectable brand.

In July 2018, Ye’kwana and Yanomami leaders organized a workshop, 
involving one Ye’kwana and 13 Yanomami communities. With the support of 
the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), an NGO, they brought in 
chocolate makers to advise on how best to collect the seeds, process 
them and make chocolate. One visitor was César de Mendes, a small-scale 
manufacturer who specializes in Amazon chocolates. He was delighted to 
discover two varieties of cacao in the Park, one of which was completely 
new to him. He believes that the Indians may be able to launch a novel 
brand, with its own distinctive flavor. At the end of the 10-day 
workshop, indigenous participants produced their first ever bar of 
chocolate, and celebrated with a triumphant, intercommunity party. 
Regular production is expected to begin this year.

The additional income their high-end chocolate provides will be very 
welcome in indigenous villages. Because the miners have polluted local 
rivers, many people are now being forced to develop artesian wells, 
which can cost money to construct. Also, young Indians are keen to buy 
mobile phones and trainers, so are tempted away by the money offered by 
miners. For those and other reasons, chocolate-making may well prove a 
lifeline for indigenous communities while also giving consumers across 
Brazil, and elsewhere, a chance to buy a delicious product that helps 
conserve the Amazon forest <https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/>.

But the threat of encroaching mining operations still looms, and if not 
curtailed by law enforcement, will remain a dark shadow hanging over 
Yanomami lands and hopes.


-- 
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863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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