My good friend, a man I taught with in the mid-90s in the depths of South America has been fighting the good fight against the power structure of Bahia, Brasil. This is a story of the indigenous peoples' fight for land...one that should be familiar to people in the United States. And it's happening right now in Brasil...
I will quote his letter in its entirety on the jump...
You can also look here for a translated website documenting the plight of the people and what you can do to help.
To the editor:
Born and educated in Austria, I left in my mid-twenties for Asia and eventually for the Caribbean-South American culture area. The last 13 years I have been in the Brazilian Northeast for the most part.
Here I got "adopted" by families of four Native American peoples: the Kiriri, the Pankararu, the Pataxó-HãHãHãe and the Kariri-Xocó. With some other nations like the Tupinambá who are neighbours of the Pataxó-HãHãHãe I am in friendly contact.
The Tupinambá are in two ways special within the rainbow universe of the aboriginal peoples on Brazilian ground. They were the first to be befallen by the tragedy of "discovery" as objects when Cabral ordered to drop anchor off the coast what is Bahia today. And they have been surviving, against all odds, until today.
...
What remains of the indigenous peoples are treated like unwanted guests in their very own house. Anachronistic weed, obstacles that stand in the bulldozer way of progress as the big land-robber-owner and agro-business lobbies have it in for forests and their people and wildlife. Unspoiled Nature, an imperative for the Natives’ physical and spiritual survival, is to the other side unexploited potential to be capitalized. Their great vision is overall cleared land with soy beans for export, sugar cane for fuel and cattle on it and thus: ever fatter predator bank accounts.
All the official talk of forest protection in Brazil is exactly that: waffle. The destroying, burning and killing in the name of evermore profit euphemistically titled "progress" goes on in the Amazonian North, in the vast Cerrado of Brazil’s central areas as well as in our miserable Northeast with its vanishing Caatinga (thorn bush) and Atlantic Rainforest remnants.
An anthropological commission of FUNAI (Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs) has – very surprisingly, remember Darwin , indeed! – affirmed these days that the Tupinambá have historical and legal rights to a much bigger territory than their tiny and fractured actual reserve. Namely a joined 47 thousand hectare area which reaches into the counties of Ilhéus (well-known from Jorge Amado’s best-seller Gabriela), Una, Buerarema and São José da Vitória.
The commission’s report shall become a draft bill and the already tense and violent atmosphere has since turned very explosive. Tupinambás who participated in – pacifist – reoccupations of illegal farms within their old demarcated territory were threatened with murder. That was "reason" enough for the Federal Police to move in last June and abduct four Tupinambá men and one woman. All five were consequently tortured through hours at the regional headquarters of the Feds. Even by means of electroshock sessions thought to have become obsolete since the end of military dictatorship. (See the enclosed certificate of the CIMI lawyer. CIMI = Indian Missionary Council)
The alliance of illegal land owners and local politicians of the four mentioned counties (who are to lose parts of "their" power zones) have declared war on the new territory. "Antropological" counter reports have been ordered, hand-tailored by academics on the strongmen’s payroll and published, motto: there are no Tupinambá Natives at all but for a bunch of idles acting like Indians. With such "intellectual" and more openly blatant racist slander they additionally stir up fear, anger and hatred especially among the impoverished non-Natives, (otherwise) natural allies of the Natives because just as exploited and suppressed. Some "entrepreneurs" on occupied Tupinambá territory already brag about acquiring more arms. (...)
For August 12th this anti-Native and anti-environment power coalition has pushed through a hearing at the agricultural commission of the Congress in Brasília on the "negative consequences" of the bigger territory (to come). With the Ilhéus city councillor Alcides Kruschewsky as their spearhead. The mayor of Ilhéus, Newton Lima, has already met "secretly" with Federal Justice Minister Tarso Genro to whip up (even more) support against the region’s enemies of progress. Claiming that land in Indian hands is fallow land which hits poor country folk without land hardest. The very same ole diametral distortion of unjust land concentration facts. The very same ole well-known pattern of occidental government sincerity whenever it comes to "deal with Indians". (See Dee Brown’s Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee)
In our country, though, nobody knows anything of what’s going on at all. Since the media is in the very same hands which already hold illegally taken Native land and are – always – eager to get some more. And also because Brazilian people’s general cognitive range ends abruptly alongside the lines of the last telenovela (national soap opera) and/or last weekend’s first division football game respectively. Exactly the way the first mates from dom Pedro to sun king Lula want it. Not one Tupinambá was invited to the hearing in Congress. Not one representative of "the other side". Nobody knows, nobody cares...
Widespread embitterment predominates among the Natives. Quite a few of the younger generations are literally seething in rage. Most of those I spoke with are sure, that only buy support from abroad a new massacre against them may be avoided. Some are calling for a broad Native American Coalition and want to organize a Native Nations Caravan to the Congress as a counter move. What speaks against it is lack of time (to do it before D-day 12th of August) and lack of money. Others, more radical, speak of "counteroffensive" (whatever that might stand for individually).
This is just a short and succinct glance at the critical moment of a very complex and problematic situation in the deep south of Bahia . So near and yet so far from mass tourism flowing steadily through Salvador’s old town and the "eco-tourist wonderland" Chapada Diamantina, as well as over various dream beaches, some within the Tupinambá territory.
The Tupinambá – and through them all our aboriginal peoples – need support. Like, for example, the attention of the world. You need stories. And maybe/hopefully you are interested in this conflict before its hot phase breaks out. (International) Media do have the power to avert such a hot conflict and further inflationary loss of human life. Plus: it’s the right thing to do (instead of waiting for a catastrophe to gain a little more).
So why not joining hands? In the name of the right to truthful information? And in the name of human rights also for "progress hampering red skins"?
We – I speak in the name of the Tupinambá people – can offer first hand-, live-, background- and eyewitness coverage. It is our win-win solidarity proposition.
Now we wait for your response.
arDaga (C.Widor)
Bahia, Brazil
ardaga_c_widor@yahoo.com.br
SUMMARY OF TORTURE
Ailza Silva Barbosa, woman, 49 years (nasc. 22/10/1959) - It was played on the floor, hit the ribs with his cable gun, threatened to cut her hair, threw the pepper spray in his eyes and beat in your head several times on the wall.
Osmario de Oliveira Barbosa, man, 46 years (nasc. 16/04/1963) - It was played on the floor, gave kick, use of pepper spray in his eyes, suffered electric shock in his back, ribs and genital organ.