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News-Letter Nr. 636 |
Expansion of eucalyptus monoculture in indigenous land leads to protests
At the time when Brazil was a Portuguese colony, monoculture for export was one of the driving forces behind the development of the domestic economy. Five hundred and four years later, the development project for the country is still based on production for export. Sugarcane has mainly been substituted by soy, which is the main agribusiness product glorified by the government as the solution for the national economy, and by eucalyptus, which is the raw material for the industrial production of pulp and paper.
The advance of monoculture into the indigenous lands continues to be a matter of dispute between these peoples and those who have invaded their lands. Even today, it is rare for monoculture expansion to take place without seriously affecting indigenous people, their traditional lands, and the environment.
In the deep south of Bahia, very close to where the first Portuguese colonizers landed, around 300 indigenous people who took part in a seminar about the impact of monocultures on their communities blocked a stretch of the BR-101 highway. The objective of the protest was to pressure the company Veracel Celulose to stop planting eucalyptus in lands traditionally occupied by the Pataxó.
The highway was opened to cars yesterday morning (October 20), but the eucalyptus trucks remain there. A commission of indigenous people arrives in Brasília today for meetings that have already been set up with the Ministry of Environment, the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the Office of the Federal Attorney General. The commission received the information that a meeting had been set up with the president of the official indigenous people’s agency, Funai, but Gomes’s advisors had not confirmed this meeting. “Whilst this situation continues, Funai will not meet with the indigenous people. Funai no longer accepts this kind of pressure,” the advisor said, referring to the blockade on the highway.
Part of the land claimed by the Pataxó people in the deep south of Bahia is being used by the company Veracel Celulose for planting eucalyptus. Veracel Celulose is one of the companies in the Aracruz Celulose group, world leader in the production of bleached eucalyptus pulp. The third Aracruz factory in Brazil is being built in Eunápolis, in the south region of the state of Bahia. The company has plantations in the states of Espírito Santo, Bahia, Minas Gerais, and Rio Grande do Sul, with approximately 247,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations, and exports the greater part of what it produces in Brazil.
According to the indigenous people, the companies are violating the environmental law by planting eucalyptus within the boundaries of conservation units, destroying native plants and coconut palm plantations, changing the relief of the land, and affecting water springs.
It is precisely this delay in the demarcation of indigenous lands that makes it possible for eucalyptus plantations to exist in traditional lands and leads to land grabs and situations of tension and violence.
For this reason, the indigenous commission that is coming to Brasília has requested the authorities to suspend the planting of eucalyptus in lands traditionally occupied and claimed by the Pataxó, to proceed with the demarcation process for this land, and to suspend the almost 30 court orders for the removal of the Pataxó and Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe from the reoccupied farms in the south of Bahia.
Federal Court sentences CIR to a daily fine of r$ 10,000.00. Communities declare that they will not leave their ancestral land
The deadline (October 21) set by the Federal Court for the spontaneous withdrawal of the Homologação, Jawarizinho and São Francisco indigenous communities from the Raposa/Serra do Sol indigenous land is up today. If the sentence is not complied with, the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR) must pay a daily fine of R$ 10,000.00 and the indigenous people may be compelled to leave, with the use of police force if necessary.
Concerned about the imminent possibility of conflict in the region, Noberto Cruz da Silva, CIR vice-coordinator, sent, on October 19, a letter explaining the decision of Juiz Helder Girão Barreto to the tuxauas (the name given to tribal chiefs in the North of Brazil). He asked the indigenous people to accept the sentence, issued as a court order.
“CIR understands that this decision, even though it is contrary to the original rights of indigenous people and their interests, needs to be respected,” said the letter signed by the vice-coordinator. The document also says that CIR neither substitutes nor has any responsibility for the decisions and actions of the communities.
“We didn’t come from outside and we are not going to leave here,” said the leader Nelino Galé after receiving the letter from the hands of the CIR leader, Júlio José de Souza. Galé explained that the Homologação community is four kilometers from the headquarters and more than 100 meters from the fence of the Recife ranch, to which the Court granted land rights.
“The problem is that the Judge has never been here and does not understand the real situation, and he believes everything that the rice farmers say,” Nelino Galé protested. On receiving the document, the chiefs of the three communities unanimously declared that they were not going to leave the land that they have lived in since the times of their ancestors.
Júlio Macuxi insisted that the Indigenous Council of Roraima has already appealed against the decision, but until this appeal is judged, the court order must be obeyed. “The organization is also concerned for the safety of the communities, since the Federal Police may receive orders to forcibly remove them,” he warned.
Once again, the Indigenous Council of Roraima is drawing the attention of the authorities to the imminence of conflict in the Raposa/Serra do Sol indigenous land as a result of delays in ratification by president Lula da Silva. The organization holds the Federal Government responsible for any act of violence committed against the indigenous people who are threatened with eviction from their own lands.
Macuxi, Wapichana, Ingarikó, Taurepang and Patamona indigenous people from Raposa/Serra do Sol have been invited by the Homologação, Jawarizinho and São Francisco communities to resist the land rights order. As of today, the chiefs are expecting around two thousand indigenous people to arrive.
Brasília, 21 October 2004
Cimi – Indianist Missionary Council
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