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Today's Top News
Amazon Indians Lead Battle Against Power Giant's Plan to Flood Rainforest
The Amazonian city of Altamira played host to one of the more uneven contests in recent Brazilian history this week, as a colourful alliance of indigenous leaders gathered to take on the might of the state power corporation and stop the construction of an immense hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the Amazon.
At stake are plans to flood large areas of rainforest to make way for the huge Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu river. The government is pushing the project as a sustainable energy solution, but critics complain the environmental and social costs are too high.
For people living beside the river, the dam will bring an end to their way of life. Thousands of homes will be submerged and changes in the local ecology will wipe out the livelihoods of many more, killing their main food sources and destroying their raw materials.
For the 10,000 tribal indians of the Xingu, whose lives have changed little since the arrival of Europeans five centuries ago, this will be a devastating blow.
"This is the second time we are fighting this battle," says Chief Bocaire, a young leader of the Kayapo, one of more than 600 Indians from 35 ethnic groups who gathered in record numbers in Altamira. The Indians had travelled hundreds of miles to get there in an area with hardly any roads. The roads that do exist are mostly dirt tracks, impassable in bad weather and difficult and dangerous at the best of times. For most it has been an odyssey of several weeks, travelling in small boats to reach the roads.
"In 1989, our parents defeated a similar proposal with the help of the international media. Now it is back. But we are ready to fight again. This time we speak their language, and we are more determined than ever," says Chief Bocaire.
With so much at stake, tensions spilled over into violence this week when an engineer from the power company Eletrobras was caught up in a melee with Indians wielding machetes. Paulo Fernando Rezende had his shirt ripped from him and was left with a deep cut to his shoulder.
Nineteen years ago, the Indians called on the support of the rock star Sting and the late Body Shop founder Anita Roddick. Pictures of the pair alongside Chief Raoni, with his lower lip distended by a traditional lip plate, sent their message to the outside world.
The reservoir will flood up to 6,140 square kilometres (2,371 square miles). Scientists say it will cause a dramatic increase in greenhouse-gas emissions. from the decomposition of organic matter in the stagnant water of the reservoir.
"Hydroelectric dams have severe social impacts," Philip Fearnside, one of the world's leading rainforest scientists explains, "including flooding the lands of indigenous peoples, displacing non-indigenous residents and destroying fisheries."
Dr Fearnside said the project helps aluminium plants looking to cash in on exports but does little for local needs, and in fact increases the health risks to local populations, including malaria.
For three months in the dry season, the flow of the Xingu reduces to a trickle and the dam's turbines will stop working, unable to maintain the supply of power and necessitating the use of inefficient fossil-fuel power stations.
Last November, Chief Bocaire delivered a letter to President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Signed by 78 leaders, the letter demanded that all dam be halted.
But Glenn Switkes, of International Rivers, says: "The Lula government and its political allies are closing ranks to ensure it goes ahead no matter what the cost. The construction cost could be more than £5bn, and Belo Monte will not be feasible without building other dams upstream to regulate the flow of the Xingu - and that means facing off with the Kayapo."
© 2008 The Independent
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14 Comments so far
Show AllGO KAYAPO! This project must be stopped--This land and these people need support, and if this is allowed to go thru, we will all pay dearly, far more than we are now....
Boycott aluminium and don't mess with the natives.
Lula, who is on the wrong side of history in Latin America, might want to take a lesson from Morales. Lula is still too mesmerized by the ching-ching of globalism.
This makes me tear up...These indigenous people deserve to live their lives they way they choose, unharassed by the greed of corporations or the so called progress that will ruin their habitat. And besides that, the rape of the beautiful forest and the disrespect for Nature is overlooked in favor of short sighted gains.
It's an old movie now, but rent John Boorman's "Emerald Forest".
Insanity!
At a time when the biological balance of the planet is at a critical point, we have this type of greedy lunacy. There is a Virus upon the planet. Those who promote the generation of wealth without regard to the consequences, are the Virus. They may look Human, but aren't.
I'm simply aghast that there are still those who promote these utterly idiotic notions. At first blush I thought this story to be a put-on. Almost incredible.
This is not at all a new issue. I had my eyes open when I saw a movie back in the 80's by John Boorman called "The Emerald Forest". It concerned the kidnapping of the young son of an engineer working on a large dam project on the Amazon. The father spends his vacations trying to locate the son. The son is adopted by the tribe who believe he is better off with them than with the "termite people" who devour the forest to create the dam. A memorable line is by the tribal leader who when looking at the dam site says something like "The last time I came to the edge of the world, it seemed like it was much further away than it is now". I urge all of you who care about our world and global warming and other environmental impacts of mankind to seek out this movie. It will change your outlook I am sure.
What can we do? How can we support the native people??
"Dr Fearnside said the project helps aluminium plants looking to cash in on exports but does little for local needs, and in fact increases the health risks to local populations, including malaria."
One small thing you can do is not buy aluninium products or products that come in alum. containers.
It would appear that the cost of alum. is far in excess of what we once thought.
This is a tragedy on a massive scale, especially for the indigenous people, who do not deserve this fate. How many times does this story have to be repeated before we begin to understand?
The reality of the matter is that corporations and governments are one, and together they destroy the people by destroying their environment. Can there be any clearer example of this process than this example?
The Columbia River of the US Pacific Northwest has been decimated by dams, driving the salmon to brink of extinction. The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest never drove the salmon to extinction. That was entirely due to European colonialists and their progeny. Yet the Brazilian government refuses to learn from this clear example. Instead, they bow to the fleeting desires of their corporate masters, who have only their own interests in mind.
If this is permitted to happen, the world will be one step closer to complete and total oblivion. And some people will be more responsible than others. A cut requiring stitches should be the least of their worries, because if this keeps going on, there will be street after street lined with pikes - with government and corporate CEO heads upon them.
When Lula was first elected the capitalist pigs worried he would be another Castro. What a joke! His first term was bad enough, but since he won re-election, he made no attempt to gloss over his shift in sympathies.
Kind of like voting for the Clintons 'cuz they are "Liberals"!
Damnation to the destroyers of life on earth. Watch the Amazon disappear bit by bit. Some will burn, some will turn to desert. The rains will fail. Another blow in the dying of Gaia by thousands of cuts and blows, from the unquenchable human thirst for power.
Here is a link to a posting regarding the Belo Monte dam
http://www.mabnacional.org.br/english/noticias/230508_xingu.htm
We need cultural diversity in this world. This alone should give the Xingu people protected status along with their homeland along the Xingu River. They don't have the freedom to pack up and move just anywhere. The elites deserve to have this understanding kicked though their skulls with my steel toed boot. All elite-driven development should be halted this minute. We know that most of elite resource allocation is unsustainable. That alone should be enough. But there's more - how about all of these unnecessary wars? Wanna add up the wasted energy in those? What about the calculated expansion of the meat supply - ten times the energy in, and who benefits? So, it's very easy for leftist activists to join together, and instead of fight individual fires, start capturing elites and throwing them in cages. As for this label "indians", can we have the press start calling Americans Americans? Can you call a spade a spade, Europe? There seems to remain pathologies in the bodies, brains and hides of Europeans - will they ever shed them? Darwin - survival of the purest, please!