|
In the morning of October 11, Plácida de Oliveira and Teresa Murilha, two Indian women, left their village, Passo Piraju, in Porto Cambira, state of Mato Grosso do Sul, to go to the municipality of Dourados to request legal assistance from Funai (National Indian Foundation) to get a legal grant provided to dependants of people in jail who do not receive any remuneration from the social security system.
The husbands of both of them and seven other members of the Kaiowá Guarani people in Passo Piraju were arbitrarily arrested on April 4 of this year after reacting against a raid of police officers, dressed in plain clothes, in their community on April 1st without a warrant. The raid was carried out regardless of the fact that, in February of this year, a working group of the Public Safety Secretariat made up of representatives of public safety agencies of the state, of Funai, of Funasa, of the City Hall of Dourados, and of the Federal Prosecutor's Office, determined that any police actions inside conflict areas occupied by indigenous people should involve Funai officials through the Sucuri (Anaconda) Operation. The Passo Piraju community occupies a 60-hectare area, and although its members have been claiming their rights and protesting against acts of violence for years, no steps for identifying the land have been taken so far. On the day that Teresa and Plácida went to the city, basic sets of food products were distributed in their community under the hunger combat program. Because only the beneficiaries themselves can receive the basic food baskets after signing a receipt, nobody could receive them for Plácida and Teresa. Knowing how the two depend on this benefit, community members asked the government agents to give them the food baskets or wait until they arrived. However, inspectors of the Electoral Court who monitor the distribution of the food baskets during election periods did not authorize the delivery. The whole community was outraged when its members saw that the two women would be left without any food. But this is what the law determines, these are rules to avoid frauds or the use of these food baskets for electoral purposes or for buying votes. The two women were desperate when they returned to the city and were informed that the food baskets had been distributed while they were absent from the village. The situation is very difficult in Passo Piraju. After the arrests in April, the community felt pressured and scared with the way they were reported by newspapers of the region. Many community members left the village after being discriminated by people living in the city and because they were tired of being threatened constantly. People who used to buy the small crop surpluses of the community in the village have not been doing so any longer. Without money, the Indians have no means to buy basic hygiene products that are not included in the food baskets. Without men in the village to repair their huts, those that are falling apart as a result of the heavy rains that characterize this season, are not being rebuilt, and at least one-third of them collapsed. Plácida, a woman who is about 50 years old and is more used to facing so much suffering, decided simply to accept the situation. Teresa, a 22-year-old young woman, mother of four children, the oldest of whom is seven years old and the youngest one six months, refused to accept it. After knowing that she would not receive the food basket, Teresa didn't know what to do. She requested advice from the elders, but they did not bring her any hope in practice. Without food to give to her children and living in a hut without protection from the rain, she told Mrs. Plácida that she had decided to leave the village. Mrs. Plácida asked her to stay, but she had already made up her mind. In the morning of last Friday, the oldest son of Teresa ran through the community crying for help. Teresa was found by her relatives in what had been left of her hut hanging a little one meter above the ground from a rope tied to her neck and to a wood that supported the roof, without tiles, of her hut. According to the report called "Violence against indigenous peoples in Brazil", 68 members of the Guarani Kaiowá people committed suicide between 2003 and 2005 in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. The report mentions that the main cause of these deaths is the lack of land. According to studies carried out by the National Foundation for Indigenous People (Funai), over 100 Guarani Kaiowá traditional lands are still waiting their demarcation procedures to start.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
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.
And this from a leftist and populist President who will even be re-elected !
What a shame !