The diminutive woman with a white feather headdress stood on the stage of the majestic colonial theater in Brazil’s Amazon on Monday and addressed the crowd.
The woman, Minister of Indigenous People Sonia Guajajara, declared the day “the milestone of indigenous participation,” then cited the national statistics institute’s freshly released census data that revealed the full scope of the nation’s indigenous population: 1,693,535 people.
While just 0.8 percent of Brazil’s population, the figure marks an 89 percent jump from the nation’s prior census, in 2010, due to greater willingness of people to recognize their roots and better survey methods, including access to previously unreachable villages, she said.
Photo: AFP
The latter largely explains why their numbers within indigenous territories grew 20 percent, to 622,066.
“This a historic moment with that picture that the statistics agency has made,” she said on the eve of the two-day Amazon Summit in Belem. “It’s a historic moment of the restart of social, popular participation, and of the dialogue of our civil society with government.”
The setting seemed symbolic: a theater displaying European decor — French chandeliers, Italian marble busts and a massive painting across the ceiling depicting Greek deities. It was built during the rubber boom, with fortunes amassed with raw material from deep in the Amazon, and little care for what its extraction implied for local communities. There is no trace of them in the so-called Theater of Peace — except on Monday when many of their descendants could be found from the floor seats up to the balcony boxes, wearing tribal vestments.
The gathering formed part of the events leading up to the Amazon Summit, during which presidents and representatives from the eight countries home to the world’s largest tropical rainforests converge in this city to discuss how best to face up to its myriad challenges.
In the so-called Amazon Dialogues during the days before the summit, there was surprisingly diverse participation of delegations from regions of the Amazon. Some boat trips to reach Belem took as long as five days.
In about 400 events, representatives of indigenous groups, riverine communities, fishermen and Afro-descendants discussed topics such as harassment from carbon credit companies, ending deforestation and illegal mining. One of their main demands was to cancel new oil projects in the region.
Though the large majority came from Brazil, which holds two-thirds of the Amazon, there were also representatives from all eight countries. Most events took place in the same convention center where the presidents were to start meeting yesterday.
There, indigenous Warao people from Venezuela sold crafts made of straw next to Kayapo indigenous people painting their bodies with traditional designs. Riverine community stalls sold native honey, Brazil nuts and cassava flour. There were also protests against oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon River.
“You can clearly see that Brazil has a significant social problem to solve, a social problem left by the previous government,” Colombian indigenous leader Anitalia Pijachi Kuyuedo said, referring to the administration of far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. “There are many grievances, much pain, much anger, and you can feel the emotions in the words of those you speak with.”
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Guajajara agreed that their anxiety has been palpable, but finally they have a forum.
“There were six years of the complete silencing of civil society, and spaces for social participation were extinguished. People became very afraid to express themselves,” Guajajara said. “This is the first moment when society is once again engaging in dialogue with the federal government.”
Brazil’s government had expected 10,000 attendees, but instead, 24,000 had arrived, Guajajara said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS