Today, 10^th of May, Cardinal Don Paulo Evaristo Arns has handed over a letter of the indigenous movement to pope Benedict XVI, who is visiting Brazil since yesterday. Don Paulo followed the request of Edilson Martins Melgueiro, of the Baniwa indigenous people, to give a document of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib) to the leader of the Catholic church. The other two times when a pope visited Brazil, he met the Indians himself. This time Benedict XVI was not willing to do that.

 

The letter speaks about the resistance of the indigenous peoples, the prosecutions, invasions, assassinations, epidemics and sterilizing indigenous women, “a real process of genocide”. But in spite of all this, the indigenous peoples have increased in the last years, due to their strength and resistance: “We have always chosen for a pacifist way to fight for our historical rights and thereby we always found the solidarity of the church, with uncountable missionaries in the whole country, on our side.”

 

Furthermore the document asks to hurry up to recognize the indigenous areas. At this moment still 61.7% has to be regularized. It also questions the new Accelerated Grow Plan (PAC) of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: “We are not against economic growth of the country, but we do not accept that it happens in a manner where our communities are not heard, and our areas, our rivers and our florest, our integrity and our cultures are not respected.”

 

Apib exist of Coiab (Cooperating Organizations of Indigenous Peoples from the Brazilian Amazon, counting more than 100 organizations as members), Apoinme (Cooperation of Indigenous Peoples from the North East, the state Minas Gerais and the state Espírito Santo) and Arpin-Sul (Cooperation of Indigenous Peoples from the South).

 

For further information or direct contact:

Edilson Melgueiro – Coiab – + 55.61.8167 6331

Priscila Carvalho – Cimi (also English) – + 55.61.9979.6912

 

 

See here the letter of the Indigenous movement (in Portuguese)