Newsletter No. 633
LAND, HEALTH, EDUCATION AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION DISCUSSED BY THE PATAXÓ HÃ-HÃ-HÃE
“Our Seminar was notable for the large-scale presence of people from the community and an enormous will to find solutions to the problems facing us in our daily life. The main objective was to discuss the various public and government policies that affect our people and the kinsmen present at the Seminar. We want to put together actions and activities that result in concrete improvements for all the community,” said the final document from the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe seminar: discussing the present to protect our future, which brought together around 400 people in the Caramuru village, in the state of Bahia, from September 22 to 24.
The discussions were held in workshops separated according to the subjects of land, health, education and production, and brought together the three chiefs of the people.
The indigenous people have stuck to their main banner, which is the re-occupation of their territory and, during the Seminar, reasserted the responsibility and commitment of the communities to play a part in the struggle for their lands. They decided in favor of “coordination with the kinsmen from three regions in the South of Bahia for the development of actions with the aim of occupying and guaranteeing our territory” and for the creation of “a means of communication between the villages to improve relationships between communities.”
The indigenous land of this people has already been demarcated, but the ranchers who live there have still not been removed. For the indigenous land to be ratified, the indigenous people are waiting for the legal proceedings involving land ownership rights granted by the state of Bahia to the ranchers who are currently in the area, which is yet to be concluded. The Federal Supreme Court has been dealing with these proceedings for 22 years.
The discussions about food production are more recent. “The Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe have managed to recover 16,000 hectares of their lands. They are now thinking about how they can be better used for sustaining the group,” says Eduardo de Oliveira, a member of the Cimi team in Itabuna, in the south of Bahia.
The group that debated education sought to deepen the relationship between the community and school life. Margarida Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe, from the Organizing Committee of the Seminar, says that they have tried “to show that school is an extension of life. The community needs to participate in the life of the school. And parents need to participate directly in the education of their children.” In the Caramuru / Catarina Paraguassú indigenous land, there is a school with six classrooms and six other rooms. All the teachers are indigenous.
It was also decided to “realize the potential of the use of communication means available in the villages, such as the internet, community radio and others” and for “a greater participation of the school in the struggle for land.”
In the health workshop, the main subject was to give value to the traditional Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe medicine. “Here, the National Health Foundation (Funasa) has worked against the wishes of the indigenous people. Community members are taking a lot of drugstore medicines. We would have liked Funasa to support our work, but they were only present on one of the days,” says Margarida, who believes that the absence of invited representatives from the authorities “diminished the Seminar”.
As well as the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe, Cimi, other indianist organizations and representatives of the Tupinambá de Serra do Padeiro people were at the Seminar.
The Minister of Environment, Marina Silva, and the Minister of National Integration, Ciro Gomes, presented last night (September 29) the São Francisco River Basin Integration Plan to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB).
The federal government has set aside around R$1 billion for the project in the budget for 2005. This amount has still to be approved by the National Congress. For it to be carried out, the project also depends on an environmental license, which needs to be approved by the Ministry for Environment. In October, there will be nine public hearings called by the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) in the states that are affected by the project.
The ministers have confirmed that the project involves not only the transposition of the São Francisco River, as in the plans presented by previous governments, but is a concerted attempt to provide hydric security in the semi-arid region, and would include plans to revitalize the river, combat desertification, supply the population with water and a program to integrate the hydrographic basins.
In a short period given over to questions, the bishops raised issues concerning how much large projects really did to meet the needs of the people in the Northeast and challenged the need to repeat a large project model which, in Brazil, has historically been in the interests of large estate owners and not those of the deprived populations. The CNBB has worked to support water shortage solutions such as rainwater retention projects, which are considered cheap and feasible, with the logic of allowing the population to coexist in harmony with the environment in which they live, the semi-arid.
With respect to the indigenous people, the Environmental Impact Report (RIMA) for the “Project to Integrate the São Francisco River with Hydrographic Basins in the North of the Northeastern Region” expects there to be intervention in the lands of the Truká, Pipipã and Kambiwá indigenous peoples, all of which are in the state of Pernambuco.
Studies carried out by Cimi have shown, however, that at least 18 peoples who live along the banks of the São Francisco River in the states of Bahia, Alagoas, Sergipe and Pernambuco could be affected by the project.
There are two large islands in the river – Assunção, in Cabrobó, Pernambuco, and São Pedro, in Sergipe – and around 65 small islands that are inhabited or occupied by indigenous people, as well as by the descendants of runaway slaves.
