Native Realpolitik

...As Ailton Krenak says, "The army knows the Amazon is green and wants to keep it that way...

...This is certainly true for the prospectors, laborers, plantation owners, mining and lumber companies who must confront the Indians' arrows, spears and lobbying efforts...

...After a two-month sit-in, the government relented...

...Between these two extremes lies a broad array of ways in which the Indians of Brazil have opposed, with some success, the government's policy toward native peoples...

...Despite legal mandate, the demarcation of all Indian lands had yet to be achieved...

...IN FEBRUARY, WHEN THE KAYAPO INDIans of ParAi state hosted a meeting of native people and environmentalists from around the world, a new stage in indigenous resistance began-one of organized "modern" political confrontation...

...In the same state of Rond6nia a scandal exploded last year over lumber rights on Indian lands, rights authorized by the past president of FUNAI and current governor of Roraima, Romero Juci Filho...

...the Kayap6 were only asking for the law to be enforced...

...An expedition of nearly 150 Surui, CintaLarga, Gavido and Arara warriors responded by expelling more than 100 settler families-some new, some old-from Zor6 lands...

...Due to the protests this decree generREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20ated, it was never put into effect...

...A virulent press campaign accused the defenders of Indian rights of conspiracy against Brazil's sovereignty-their crime, maintaining that mining on Indian reserves should be a last resort, pursued only for strategic minerals which cannot be obtained elsewhere in the country...

...In the Upper Solimoes river valley, in the state of Amazonas, the Tikuna faced an invasion of lumberjacks in search of mahogany trees, currently worth $10-12,000 each...

...They were the ones who did most of the killing.' 2 Last October, a lumber magnate and sponsor of private colonization projects announced that the territory of the Zor6 people in Rond6nia state would be open for occupation by settlers to spearhead the lumber companies' attack...

...Even boys of 10 or 12 were all armed with muskets...

...We oppose monoculture, the grass and the bull...

...In 1985, the Indigenous Council of Acre and the National Council of Rubber Tappers formed the Alliance of Forest Peoples to defend the Amazon against the big landowners and their hired gunmen, who turn the forest into pasture for cattle...

...At the National Constituent Assembly in 1987-88, mining was at the heart of the debate on Indian rights, one of the ten most controversial issues considered in the drafting of the new constitution...

...WHILE THESE BATTLES RAGED IN THE Assembly, the mining companies broached direct agreements with indigenous groups, or, in other cases, resorted to armed invasion, as in the Waiampi reserve in Amapd...

...In July of last year, the Brazilian Institute of Forest Development (IBDF) proposed an additional activity, unheard of in the annals of environmental protection: mining...

...T LEAST 22 INDIAN RESERVES HAVE BEEN invaded by prospectors seeking gold, silver and other minerals.' In 1987, some 560 corporate applications for prospecting rights in indigenous areas were approved and 1,685 more were pending...

...In the Upper Negro river valley, in the state of Amazonas near the Colombian border, the Tukano also faced an invasion of prospectors in 1983...

...We oppose the development model pursued to date, which has been destructive, nefarious, stupid and disastrous...

...Since the end of the nineteenth century, rubber tappers have looked down on Indians who, for their part, perceived the tappers as invaders of their lands...

...The edict, in effect, is an invitation to occupation by non-Indians, and a program for progressive expropriation...

...4. Empresas de Mineraqdo e terras indigenas na Amaz6nia, (Sao Paulo: Dossie CEDI/CONNAGE, 1988...

...Most innovative of all is the organization which unites indigenous people and rubber tappers in the state of Acre...

...Both approaches prompted the Indians to deal in the white man's Realpolitik...

...When the Brazilian Institute of Forest Development (IBDF) and the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) did nothing, the Indians stepped in and dismantled the mill themselves...

...5 The same trickery was used on the people of the Negro river valley who for 17 years had requested the demarcation of their territory...

...5. "Proposta de regulamento das Florestas Nacionais," July 1988...

...On March 28 of last year, lumberjacks ambushed Tikuna families killing eleven-including children-and wounding 22...

...In fact, these measures mock the constitution, which guarantees native peoples the lands they inhabit and the exclusive use of those lands "used for their productive activities, those [lands] indispensable to the preservation of environmental resources necessary to their well-being and to their physical and cultural reproduction, according to their uses, customs and traditions.'"6 In the national forests of the Yanomami territory, the Indians have only "preferential use," according to the November 18 edict, and no longer enjoy the exclusive rights guaranteed by the constitution...

...At the same time, in the Upper Envira river valley and the Jutaf, distant groups refused any contact with whites and penetrated ever deeper into the vast Amazon forest...

...None of the Kayap6 engages in prospecting but with the income they bought planes and radio equipment to unite their vast nation and control their borders, not to mention the fine homes some have purchased...

...IN ALL THESE CASES-AND THEY ARE ONLY a sample of the conflicts that have occurred in the Amazon-the defense of territory is linked to the defense of natural resources...

...So did supra-tribal organizations such as the Indigenous Council of the Territory of Roraima and the Coalition of Indians of Rond6nia...

...Despite the name, "national forests" are hardly botanical sanctuaries...

...The government is now attempting to impose a similar deal in Amapi on the Uaca, Galibi, Wayampi and Jumini peoples...

...In 1985, for example, 200 Kayap6 warriors from Gorotire, painted and armed with spears, occupied a gold mine which had attracted 5,000 men to invade their lands...

...6. National Constitution, Article 231, Paragraph 1...

...2. A Ldgrima Ticuna d uma so, (Benjamin Constant, Amazonas: Maguta, 1988), p. 5. 3. According to the report "Terras Indigenas," (Sao Paulo: CEDI and Museu Nacional, 1988...

...As hidrelrtricas do Xinga e os Povos Indigenas, (Sao Paulo: Comissio Pr6-Indio de Sho Paulo, 1988...

...What native peoples want is to adapt new technologies to the traditional practices of Indians, river people and rubber tappers...

...Where native peoples have fought development, it has been in order to preserve the forest on which their survival depends...

...Notwithstanding, between 1983 and 1987, when the government tried once again to enforce the decree, 356 prospecting permits were authorized...

...Indian rights spokesmen called for a case-by-case review by Congress, and for limiting the mining to state enterprises...

...Ecological trappings are now required by multilateral banks for the release of energy sector loans...

...The most absurd example was the recent use of the Law of Foreigners against two Kayap6 who protested the construction of the Xing6 River dam...

...But in recent years, the Indians' old enemy have come to share their plight...

...The tribe and the company reached Indians are considered wards of the State, in the same legal category as the mentally retarded w cWRetAMAZON th AMAZON an accord and Paranapanema proceeded in 1986 to hire a private army from a security company to expel the prospectors from the Traira mountains...

...In 1983, the mining companies obtained a decree-law from then President Jo.o Figueiredo, authorizing state companies and, "in exceptional cases," private domestic companies, to prospect and mine in indigenous areas...

...The threat of an independent "Yanomami state" was expressly cited in the initial Calha Norte plan...

...I (M 9) I r r r r I r I I t 19Report oN t. Amer4iCa AMAZON "They hunted us down as if we were savage beasts" S4 "NDIAN PEOPLES DO NOT OPPOSE DEV"I elopment as such," said Ailton Krenak, coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI), founded in 1978...

...In the southeast of the state of Pari, for example, public infrastructure projects already occupy 72,000 hectares of Indian lands, and should plans for damming the Xing6i River go forward, 408,000 hectares more will be inundated...

...Tensions escalated until January of 1986, when rumors circulated that 60 native people had been massacred...

...A DECREE ISSUED ON NOVEMBER 18 SET up "national forests" in the state of Roraima...

...For example, in 1987 the Kampa, Kulina and Jaminana peoples of the state of Acre denounced the illegal operation of a sawmill on their lands...

...The Calha Norte project, announced in the spring of 1987, calls for a string of military outposts along a 4,000-mile strip...

...Native Realpolitik 1. L. dos Santos and L. Andrade (eds...

...Couched in ecological fervor, the decree formed part of Brazil's response to widespread criticism of the destruction of the Amazon...

...VOLUME XXIII, NO...

...But the green they see is that of the dollar...

...The Kayap6 gained control of gold mining on their land and now charge the prospectors 5% of gross sales...

...They say they are civilized and the Tikuna are like animals...

...4 Pressure for such legal authorization has been building since the early 1980s...

...FUNAI exercises legal guardianship over all indigenous people...

...The mineral riches of the topsoil, such as surface gold, continue to be regulated by previous legislation which reserves them exclusively for indigenous peoples...

...Ironically, the same security company, Sacopa, was used by cattle ranchers against the Macuxi people in Rond6nia...

...Some forms of tribal government, such as the Tikuna Tribe General Council, grew out of these struggles...

...For the government it is also true, since fighting native peoples is frequently a "joint venture" of public and private capital, with the government expropriating Indian lands, building highways and dams and offering fiscal incentives to investors...

...Of all these conditions, only one was approved: Congress was given the task of authorizing, case by case, prospecting and mining in the subsoil of Indian lands...

...the rational exploitation of forest products and by-products is allowed...

...At that moment, a large private Brazilian mining firm, Paranapanema, proposed a deal: The company would control the prospectors, in exchange for the Indians allowing the company to use the prospecting permit it had already obtained from the government...

...Today, everything related to the Amazon-Indians and ecology included-is considered an issue of national security: to the extreme that indigenous people are perceived, implicitly or explicitly, as dangerous "foreigners...

...In retaliation, on October 16, an old Suruf man named Jamin6 was ambushed inside Suruf territory by 20 gunmen who shot him and, to cover up the crime, mutilated his body, wrapped it in a net and burned it...

...The 136,000 Indians who live in the Brazilian Amazon-many in groups of 100 or less-are, as a former governor of Roraima state put it, "an obstacle" to development...

...It is not a machiavellian impulse that drives politicians to use ecological rhetoric and environmentalist legal formulations to impose the de facto expropriation of Indian lands...

...In effect, the decree expropriated half of the lands of the Yanomami people- South America's largest forest group-turning them into "national forests" and legalizing an invasion by some 35,000 prospectors which had already taken place...

...Ostensibly intended to establish a state presence on Brazil's jungle borders, the posts are also an attempt to control the "internal borders" of the Amazon, that is, where Brazil meets the 50,000 Indians who live in the lands affected by the plan...

...In return for allowing the mine to reopen, the Kayap6 demanded the demarcation of their territory...

...When a government audit of Filho's finances showed wrongdoing, UNI coordinator Krenak commented that it is the president of FUNAI, not the Indians, who should be a ward of the state...

...They hunted us down as if we were savage beasts," wrote a Tikuna teacher...

...They finally accepted a proposal made in 1987 by the National Security Council to establish three separate "indigenous colonies," each surrounded by national forests...