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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS