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 Since the beginning of the year, the 65 families of Brazil's Maxakali people who live in the Verde village in the municipality of Ladainha, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, have been facing serious health problems due to the lack of sanitation facilities in the area.
The community and organizations that support the Maxakali people will request a federal court to come up with solutions, because, among other problems, doctors are needed and there are virtually no sewage systems in the village.
These families from the Maxakali people have been living in this area since January 2007, when the National Foundation for Indigenous People (Funai) bought the land to settle the indigenous group in it.
There are water springs inside the indigenous area, but they are located up in the hills and there are no rivers flowing through the land to distribute this water. One of the main problems faced by them is their difficult access to water.
Most families have no running water near them and the quality of the impounded water they use is not good. At the headquarters of the village, water is pumped from a well by an electric pump (in precarious conditions) to two tanks connected to a hose which should distribute it to the whole village, but this system is not operational so far.
In January, almost the entire community became sick. People felt abdominal pains, were vomiting, had fever, were fainting, bleeding through the nose, and were feeling weak, among other symptoms.
"At the village, everybody was just lying down, feeling exhausted. Not even the children had enough energy to play," stressed the missionary Gilce Freire, from Cimi's (Indianist Missionary Council) team in the region, who visited the indigenous area two weeks ago.
According to a note issued by the National Health Foundation (Funasa) on January 31, the Indians were affected by a virosis and they are already receiving medical treatment.
On January 16, leaders of the Maxakali people and organizations that support the indigenous community met with the coordinator of the Special Indigenous Sanitary District (DSEI) in the city of Valadares to demand solutions to the situation. They requested the presence of a doctor in the area, because there are only two nurses working there, but they have not received any answer so far.
The Maxakali indigenous community from the Verde Village, the Regional Mucuri Small Farmers' Association, Cimi, and the Federal University of the Jequitinhonha Valley (Teófilo Otoni campus) will report the situation faced by the indigenous people to the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
Besides requesting the presence of a doctor, they have been stressing that Funasa should urgently implement sanitation projects in the area to avoid intestinal diseases and diseases caused by parasites, among other measures.
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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.
A country governed by crooks and wana be !
They are quite proud to export agricultural products to the tune of over US$ 50 billions per year......but do nothing
to reduce hunger in their own country....where tens and tens of millions citizens are under nourrished and milllions and millions are nearly starving..
They pretend to be a developed country.....while everything they do is medieval and archaïc.
Even the goods they export are basic commodities only.
Ohhh but they also try to export their cheating, hiding and lyying....disinformation !
Such as the billion free condoms promised year after year....but not delivered...even close to the promised quantity.
But reading the government statements....they delivered their promises by lying openly and publicly without any shame on their face.
This is lying....Brazilian style...or said differently......the Brazilian truth.
Brazil is not a miracle but a mirage society.
Everyone trusts......what doesnt exist....but only promised year after year, decade after decade, century after century.
Reality being far bleaker, Brazil still harvest their sugarcane manually like they did 300 years ago.
What a great NONachievemnent knowing mechanical harvesters exist already for several decades.
May be this is what you should do with your grains industry. Go back to manual harvesting for soyabeans, corn, wheat, barley, oats.
No doubt you could create millions of new jobs.....for workers just counting the number of beans.
Shame to Brazil and Brazilians, the country and society with ALL wild excesses !!!!