|
 The Brazilian government has discovered signs of some of the world's last uncontacted tribes living near the border with Peru. The Indians are believed to have fled illegal mahogany logging sweeping through Peru's rainforests, destroying the Indians' homelands and forcing them out of their traditional territory.
During an aerial inspection of the area, Brazilian government officials spotted a village and various hunting camps. They also found felled mahogany trees and drums of chainsaw oil floating down the Envira River.
The Brazilian government estimates that there are already three different uncontacted groups living in this region. Officials fear that as more uncontacted Indians seek refuge from Peru, fatal conflicts may break out between them.
José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior, head of a Brazilian government post on the Envira River, said, "The most important thing is not to know who they are or to which group they belong, but to protect them, guarantee their territory and let them live how they wish."
Commenting on the story, Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, said, "Unless the Peruvian government acts now to stop logging in the lands of these uncontacted Indians, they may well be consigned to history as the first peoples to disappear this century."
Last month, it was reported that two children from Brazil's Guarani Kaiowá tribe had died of starvation, and several dozen were being treated in hospital for severe malnutrition.
Within days of the children's deaths, Valdinez Souza, a Guarani health worker and father of two children, hanged himself. He left a note by his body saying he had killed himself because children in his community are suffering from acute hunger.
Despite this alarming situation, the Mato Grosso do Sul state government has cut food aid to the Guarani.
Brazil's health foundation, FUNASA, says it will distribute food baskets to needy families, but many fear this will only be a temporary measure.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
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.