Text originally published on the Mídia Ninja website, on 2/8/2023
In the cosmology taught by Davi Kopenawa, gold and other ores, when removed from their underground deposits, exude energies that force the rupture and fall of the sky. That’s why the Yanomami shamans have to work all the time to hold the sky. If the invaders kill the Yanomami, heaven will fall to Earth.
David’s thinking has a striking similarity with climate science and excessive greenhouse gas emissions, which heat the atmosphere and cause severe droughts and violent storms, threatening all forms of life. It is also a living metaphor of the interdependence between peoples and between them and nature.
Davi has been denouncing this for 40 years, since the first gold prospector invasions of the Yanomami Indigenous Land (AM-RR), still during the military dictatorship. There were then 40,000 garimpeiros, a large part coming from the exhausted mining of Serra Pelada, in Pará. There were thousands, but it is not even possible to specify how many Yanomami died, victims of firearms, malaria and other diseases. Almost all the invaders were removed and the land was demarcated, but small pockets remained, bouncing back and forth on the border with Venezuela.
Now, there’s another mass invasion. The garimpeiros are fewer in number, but cause greater destruction. Maybe 20,000 or less. But they use dredgers, excavators and other much larger equipment with a high capacity to destroy entire streams. The contamination of soil, water and organisms is much greater.
Some of them provide support, maintenance, food and leisure services, while others operate in the extraction of gold or cassiterite. Among these, there are professional gold miners, who tend to cross the border in search of other mines, and seasonal miners, who follow this path to try to raise money to buy real estate or cars, among others. Our motives are simple. For this reason, the Yanomami say that whites have no memory.
Shocking
There was no shortage of complaints. Several formal communications and alerts were made to the authorities. The Hutukara Associação Yanomami led campaigns and the media published extensively on the subject. The case reached the International Criminal Court. But it was only after the government changed that official information from the Ministry of Health revealed the (underreported) deaths of 570 indigenous children from malnutrition and other preventable causes, and appalling images of hungry old people and children surfaced.
But what really raised the dust was President Lula’s decision to visit Roraima, all of a sudden, with ministers and journalists, highlighting the chaotic situation at the Casa de Saúde Indígena in Boa Vista. Lula did not go to the territory, but he put the shocking scenes in each of our homes, making urgent solutions to that unacceptable situation. And he determined emergency actions for the agencies involved, such as the ministries of Justice, Defense and Indigenous Peoples, while the withdrawal of the invaders is being planned.
In the midst of this planetary scandal, the re-elected governor of Roraima, Antônio Denarium, was even able to make things worse, declaring himself in favor of the forced acculturation of the indigenous people, contrary to their constitutional rights to live according to their cultures, as is being was the solution to the genocide in his state. He had already enacted a state law legalizing predatory mining, declared unconstitutional by the STF. He showed himself to the world as one of the accomplices in this situation.
Representatives of the former genocidal government try to minimize the repercussions of the tragedy. Bolsonaro said that the problem has always existed and does not account for the growth of more than 300% in mining during his tenure in Yanomami lands. He personally visited illegal mines and tried to harass Yanomami leaders to extend predation across the territory. The genocide was the result of deliberate policies.
Solidarity
Many people, shocked, are helping with emergency actions with donations of money, food and medicine. Hutukara and the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR) mobilize partners in civil society, such as the Central Única das Favelas (CUFA), Doctors Without Borders, the Diocese of Roraima and the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA) to support government initiatives to assist health, food distribution and communication.
Certainly, among the donations, there are contributions from companies and entrepreneurs outraged by the situation. The Brazilian Mining Institute (Ibram) reiterated its opposition to illegal mining. But so far, there has not been a large-scale business movement to bar predatory production from accessing markets and to make investments in a sustainable economic model in the Amazon feasible. International cooperation is offering resources to help on the emergency front and in the restructuring of socio-environmental policies, dismantled in the previous mandate. But it can also do more to stop illegal products and resources from accessing markets. The commotion generated by the genocide needs to go beyond righteous indignation to support the definitive reversal of the current situation.