Survival International
A shocking report detailing horrific atrocities committed against Brazilian Indians in the 1940s, 50s and 60s has resurfaced – 45 years after it was mysteriously ‘destroyed’ in a fire.

The Figueiredo report was commissioned by the Minister of the Interior in 1967 and caused an international outcry after it revealed crimes against Brazil’s indigenous population at the hands of powerful landowners and the government’s own Indian Protection Service (SPI). The report led to the foundation of tribal rights organization Survival International two years later.

The 7,000-page document, compiled by public prosecutor Jader de Figueiredo Correia, detailed mass murder, torture, enslavement, bacteriological warfare, sexual abuse, land theft and neglect waged against Brazil’s indigenous population. Some tribes were completely wiped out as a result and many more were decimated. Continue reading →

Children at the MST’s Frei Henri des Roziers Camp in Pará, Brazil. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabiola Ortiz

The landless peasant farmers occupying large landholdings in Pará, the Brazilian state where the land conflict is most violent, face threats ranging from intimidation by armed private guards to the spraying of toxic agrochemicals over their homes and crops.

MARABÁ, Brazil, Apr 16 2013 (IPS) – Toiling beneath a blazing sun in the humid heat of the Amazon, Waldemar dos Santos, 60, tends the community garden he shares with other landless peasant farmers in the Brazilian state of Pará, as they wait for agrarian reform to provide them with the opportunity for a better life.
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© Reuters

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For years, Pierre Rabhi has been recognized as a pioneer in agro-ecology. Currently, he is farming agro-ecology in France and he shared his knowledge of farming practices at a conference last February.

These days, the dictatorship of money dominates the world and this is irreconcilable with the balance between man and nature. Seen through the eyes of money, the earth is like a field brimming over with riches that must at all costs be bled dry in the name of profit.  This view is in contradiction to the idea of making good use of natural resources that is at the heart of aggro-ecology whereas industrial agriculture exhausts the land for us and for future generations. The worst thing is that this production model devastates the water, the soil and the climate.  We are talking about a model, laid down by agribusiness, which makes intensive use of chemical fertilizers, destroys ecosystems and annihilates small farmers. If we do not manage to balance our farming methods Continue reading →

A sign put up by activists in Marabá, Brazil demands justice for the murders of Amazon activists José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabiola Ortiz

MARABÁ, Brazil , Apr 5 2013 (IPS) – Peasants and human rights defenders in Brazil are indignant over the acquittal of the man accused of ordering the May 2011 murders of two prominent Amazon activists, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo.

The trial ended Thursday Apr. 4 with the sentencing of two men paid to kill the couple in the Amazon jungle state of Pará. But the third man held for the crime, the landowner accused by the prosecutors of hiring the other two, was absolved on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

The trial was one of the six slated to take place this year in Brazil involving land conflicts, one of the main causes of violence in South America’s giant.
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Latin America Press

Natives confiscated truckloads of illegally extracted timber from their territory.

Tired of the logging of their forests, members of the indigenous community Pukobjê-Gavião, from the Brazilian northeastern state of Maranhão, decided at the end of January to seize four trucks and one tractor with some 20 cubic meters (700 cubic feet) of illegally logged timber from their territory.

The indigenous reserve Governador, in the southwest of Maranhão, is the boundary of the eastern Amazon region with the Cerrado savanna. It is an area with many trees, such as the trumpet tree, supucaia, aroeira, copaiba, and cerejeira tree.

“We got tired of reporting so we decided to take our own measures,” said the cacique Evandro Gavião to the International Press Service. “We would see the trucks in the reserve. What would have happened if we did not do anything?”. Continue reading →