Barbara Arisi

Indigenous blood and European hypocrisy

Por Barbara Arisi Publicado em: 06/11/2019 às 15:22

Three in the afternoon of November 1st, under the rain, we met in the Dam Square in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to participate in the public act convened by leaders of the Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB).

Dinaman Tuxá shouts: “Indigenous Blood”. We, as in a Greek tragedy, in front of the Palace of the King of Holland, in chorus, we answer: “Not a single drop more”. To our immense sadness and enormous anger, we learn later that night that Paulo Paulino Guajajara had been murdered. Paulino worked as a guardian of Arariboia Indigenous Land, Maranhão. In other words, he was a member of the group “Guardians of the Forest”, made up of Guajajara people men and women who, without receiving any kind of help or salary, put their lives at risk in order to provide a service as forestry agent for the protection of the beings of the forest and of the indigenous territory. They do the work that the Federal Police have a duty to do. But, as we know, the Brazilian government had left the nature and the indigenous people’s to their own fate.

Paulo Paulino Guajajara (Photo: Survival International)

While we were shouting in the Dutch square, calling for attention to the extreme vulnerability to which indigenous peoples and the forests are subjected to in Brazil, Paulino had left to hunt. He would end up being murdered by a gunshot fired by one of five loggers who illegally were cutting and stealing Amazonian trees. CIMI issued a statement holding the government responsible for Brazilian for his death.

The feelingthat we were alone in a desert of European political hypocrisy got a hold on me. To make matters worse, the date was the eve of celebration of the Day of the dead. Still ignorant about Paulino’s murder, our banners and posters, written in English, Dutch and Portuguese, were exhibited by our culturally diverse group of activists in front of the obelisk in the Dam Square, towards Rokin Avenue and facing the Palace. Indigenous Blood: Not a Single Drop More.

Two women raise a banner of the environmental group Extinction Rebellion; another three young men hold another one written with letters in the colors of the rainbow: “No, there is no pride in a dead planet”. Some people bring banners asking for democracy in Brazil. A tall man hands me a pamphlet where it is writen: “Stop Ecocide”. He explains me in Dutch that the Stop Ecocide group is formed by lawyers trying to pass a law at the International Court in The Hague that considers ecocide as an atrocious crime, i.e., crimes against the environment committed by governments and/or companies could be punished by the international court, along those already tried at the International Court as the crimes of genocide, war crimes and and crimes against humanity. Although he does not understand Portuguese, the attorney seeks to follow what is being said by the indigenous leaders. I translate their speeches to him and to another lady. Kretã Kaingang tells the Dutch lawyer that the indigenous delegation was also this week filing a criminal complaint against the Brazilian government in the Hague tribunal.

Dinaman Tuxá distracts us from the cold weather, when he starts to call a ‘ciranda’: “Step quickly, step quickly, those who can not stand the ants…”. “Should not have woken them up”, answer us in one collective voice. Alberto Terena reports that the APIB delegation organized this Journey through Europe to denounce the increased deforestation and violence against indigenous peoples. They began it in Italy, where they participated in activities related to the Amazon Synod, responding to the call made by Pope Francis.

The increase of agribusiness and the destruction of the forest was already taking place during the mandates of Lula and Dilma in the Central-west, Northeast and South of the country, but it increased considerably during the current government, with its increased violence arriving in the Amazon region. “That’s what we came for to denounce in Europe”, Alberto explained. The delegation has been following a busy schedule of meetings with representatives of governments and business women and men in order to press them to stop buying products originates from socio-environmental conflict areas.

Leaders of the Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulatio (Photo: Mídia India)

The day before our protest, two members of the indigenous entourage had met with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte. Kretã Kaingang presented to Rutte the situation of genocide that the indigenous people are suffering in Brazil. The indigenous leader informed the Prime Minister that the indigenous peoples repudiate the Mercosur-EU agreement that is being discussed in the European Parliament. Kreta went straight to the point and said to Rutte: “If you touch my hand, you will be helping to save the the planet, but if you touch the hand of Bolsonaro, you will destroy the planet”, according to the report published by APIB. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands would then have said that to sign any agreement with Bolsonaro would be very risky.

In addition to this, Kretã Kaingang and Alberto Terena had meetings with entrepreneurs from Friesland Campina, the largest Dutch dairy producer and one of the largest consumers of Brazilian soy in Europe. After all, the Netherlands is the second largest global importer of Brazilian soybeans, it is just behind China.

As stated in a report published in September by the newspaper Volkskrant as part of the major international repercussion on the forest fires in Setember, around two-thirds of the Brazilian soybeans and its derivatives imported and consumed in Europe enter the continent via Dutch harbours and they will be transported from here to other European Union countries. The Netherlands is also the fifth-largest market for soybeans and its derivative products, also according to the newspaper’s article, whose title is: Are the junkie for soybeans Netherlands co-responsible for the forest fires in the Amazon?

The Volkskrant newspaper also informs that, since 2015, the Netherlands wish to import soybeans that are produced according to the standards of Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), but it still didn’t happen. Only soybeans and their derivatives that are consumed in the domestic market in the Netherlands meet this standard, but soybeans that enter the European market via Dutch harbours do not meet the same standards.

According to APIB, in the meetings held in the Netherlands, the indigenous representatives presented to those responsible for the company [Campina] the consequences of agribusiness for the communities and for the environment: illegal deforestation in thousands of hectares and the exacerbation of conflicts”, in addition to the poisoning of rivers and soils due to the pesticides use.

From November 4th to 6th, the delegation will participate in Brussels, Belgium, of hearings in the European Parliament, with the Vice-President of the European Commission, Franciscus Timmermans, and with the Director of International Affairs, Agriculture and Rural Development Organisation of the European Union, John Clarke. The intention, as Dinaman Tuxá explains, is to ask the members of the European Parliament if “they will actually fund this process furthering genocide that the Brazilian state is promoting, because this agreement will promote even more violence against us, indigenous peoples”.

In 2017, I wrote to Amazonia Real an article about another event held in the European Parliament in which representatives of the Guarani Kaiowá people denounced how in Mato Grosso do Sul the violence of agribusiness was already unbearable. They had then asked the Members of the European Parliament to put pressure on the European Commission in order to take action, so that the laws would ensure that the economic bloc does not import products from the Brazilian regions where there is socio-environmental conflict.

In Brussels, at the same European Parliament, on November 4, Angela Kaxuyana said that the wood that consumers in Europe buy is the wood that has been stolen and that causes murder, like Paulino’s. She said that the trade agreements negotiated between Europe and the Mercosur are negotiations that involve “our indigenous blood”.

Angela warned the European leaders about their responsibility to avoid that the the products from Brazil can be imported without the guarantee of not being originated from regions where crime are being committed. The way the economic agreement draft is written does not guarantee that the imported products will not be from conflict areas, indigenous territories, and areas of environment preservation, “where our women and our young people are being murdered”, stated Angela. “It is a direct responsibility of those who consume these products. You are trading our souls, our spirits and our blood, when you negotiate the import of soybeans and timber. (…) We have come to make you a warning so that, when you look back, to the past and int history, it will not be written there that you participated in the decimation of the indigenous peoples in Brazil”, Angela explained to Members of Parliament.

As Sonia Guajajara emphasized well, at the square event in Amsterdam, if the Europeans are worried about clean air, quality food, and climate change, they should listen to what indigenous people are saying, because our goal is the same: to avoid devastation and pollution.

Translated (with the help from) www.DeepL.com/Translator

A photograph that opens this article and says “No More Drops” with brazilian indigenous leaders (Photo: Media India).

Barbara Arisi is a journalist (BA in Social Communication, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and an anthropologist (MSc and PhD, Federal University Santa Catarina, with an internship in the University of Oxford). As a reporter, she worked in Zero Hora newspaper. She was born in Porto Alegre (RS) and she lived in Foz do Iguaçu (PR), Florianópolis (SC), Sao Paulo (SP) and Manaus (AM), Amsterdam, Maastricht and Hoorn (The Netherlands) and in London (United Kingdom). She is associate professor in the Federal University for Latin American Integration, in Foz do Iguazu. Currently she is a visiting researcher in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she studies solid residue management (plastics and organic). She lives with her daughter in Hoorn. In Brazil, she had worked for theGreenpeace campaign for the creation of Extractive Reserves Porto de Moz and Verde para Sempre, in Pará in 2003. For 14 years, she researches in the Indigenous Territory Vale do Javari, in Amazonas, in 2006 and 2009 she was financed by CAPES and CNPq. In 2011, she produced a health diagnosis for the Vale do Javari, for Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and Centro de Trabalho Indigenista (CTI).

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Barbara Arisi

É jornalista formada em Comunicação Social pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRS) e antropóloga com mestrado e doutorado pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Como repórter trabalhou no jornal Zero Hora. Fez estágio doutoral como antropóloga pela Universidade de Oxford, no Reino Unido. Nasceu em Porto Alegre (RS) e morou em Foz do Iguaçu (PR), Florianópolis (SC), São Paulo (SP) e Manaus (AM), em Londres, Amsterdam, Maastricht, Hoorn e vive agora em Groningen (Holanda). Foi professora concursada pela Universidade Federal da Integração-Latino Americana, em Foz do Iguaçu (PR) e pesquisadora visitante na Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, onde estudou manejo de resíduos sólidos (plásticos e orgânicos). No Brasil, trabalhou na campanha do Greenpeace Amazônia pela criação da Reserva Extrativista de Porto de Moz e da Verde para Sempre, no Pará, em 2003. Há 21 anos faz pesquisas na Terra Indígena Vale do Javari, no Amazonas; em 2006 e 2009 com financiamento da Capes e do CNPq. Atualmente, escreve um livro sobre os povos Matis e Korubo e colabora para o site de jornalismo independente Amazônia Real.