|
 As Brazil celebrates its national Day of the Indian on April 19, a new wave of dam building in the Brazilian Amazon is threatening the lives of remote Indian tribes. Six tribes, including the isolated Enawenę Nawę, face the prospect of up to 11 dams being built along the Juruena river which runs through their territory.
At the same time, an old plan to build five major dams along the Xingu river has been resurrected and will threaten the livelihoods of the 18 tribes of the region. The original plan was shelved in 1989 following massive international outcry.
The remote Enawenę Nawę number just 420 and live largely by fishing. They are protesting against plans by soy companies led by the world's largest soy producers, the Maggi family, to dam the Juruena river for hydroelectric power for the industry.
The Enawenę Nawę, unlike most Amazon tribes, eat no red meat. The dams would severely disrupt the breeding cycles of the fish they rely on, and destroy their livelihood and unique rituals associated with the fishing cycle.
The Enawenę Nawę have said, "The dams will bring our death, as they will raise the uncontrollable anger of the spirits." They have written an open letter expressing their anger.
The Xingu dams project was abandoned in 1989 after the Kayapó tribe staged huge protests and captured the attention of the world's media. The Kayapó are now seeking support for another campaign against the Xingu dams.
"Damming the Enawenę Nawę's river," said Survival's director, Stephen Corry, "would spell disaster for this unique tribe. The dams must not go ahead. As for the Xingu river, it's hard to believe that the Brazilian government is even contemplating this disgraced project again."
Survival is an international group dedicated to help tribal people to keep their lands and maintain their lifestyle.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from Joăo 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 Săo 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 Săo 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.