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The purpose of the commission created last week, as part of the Week of the Environment, to coordinate Brazil's National Strategic Plan for Protected Areas is to formulate strategies aimed at protecting lands belonging to Indians and descendants of runaway slaves ("quilombolas").
The idea is to organize an integrated action involving the three branches of government, together with environmentalists, social movements, and entrepreneurs, the Ministry of Environment's secretary of Forest Biodiversity, João Capobianco, told the TV Nacional yesterday, June 13. Capobianco affirmed that the commission plans to launch a collective effort in Brazil to get the protected areas - national parks, ecological stations, indigenous territories, and quilombola areas - to play their role in protecting biodiversity. "This integrated effort is the way for us to advance most quickly." According to the secretary, the creation of the plan represents an innovation, because previous debates concerning the protection of biodiversity were focused exclusively on environmental reserves. The new initiative is permanent, he says, and determines goals to be achieved by the 188 signatory countries by 2010. "By 2010 Brazil hopes to offer the world not a solution to the problem, which cannot be resolved all at once, but a demonstration of concrete steps that diminish the enormous loss of biodiversity in the country." ABr
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Just look at your society : slavery has been abolished in your constitution over 100 years ago.....but you still have slavery in...2006 !
No one ever got a jail sentence for having used slaves workers.
Look at your Ethanol industry that you are so proud of and want to develop much further : 40 % of your sugar cane is manually harvested.
Therfeore the more you produce sugar and ethanol, the more you will have slaves...by simple definition.
And you are so proud that you request many countries to buy your sugar and ethanol.
Simple demonstration that YESSSSSSSS you enjoy having millions of slaves....EVEN TODAY...paid at the Brazilian minimum wage OF COURSE !
Brazil is truly a country of the future for a minority of citizens AND A DISASTER FOR THE VAST MAJORTY OF THE POPULATION who will continue to struggle by not getting education to be able to choose their job !
Afterall why should a slave descendant get a good education for the job that is already reserved for him since his birth ?????
A shame to humanity !