12/11/2009 – 10:24 – Police persecution of the Quilombolas in Espirito Santo

 

One more sad episode to indicate and confirm the rubber-stamp approval of violence being exercised against the historical struggle of the Quilombolas (Afro Brazilian descendants of slaves who have lived in the region for hundreds of years) in the state of Espirito Santo.

 

On November 11 a commando team of approximately 100 soldiers arrived in the morning in the community of São Domingos (Conceição da Barra/ES) literally calling the Quilobolas from their homes, saying they were carrying out search and seizure orders, in which no court order was presented to the Quilombola families.

 

The illegal, abusive and authoritarian military operation resulted in the detention of 30 Quilombola workers who, handcuffed and thrown into trucks, were taken to the local police station where they spent the entire day, thirsty and hungry, being interrogated about supposed theft of logs (eucalyptus tree remainders) consonant with in investigation initiated at the request of FIBRIA (ex- Aracruz Celulose).

 

Protesting, being indignant over the truculent operation, an adolescent daughter of one of the Quilombolas was physically attacked by a soldier, being struck in the mouth, under threat of being taken to the police station for not giving due respect to authority.

 

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11/09/2009 – 10:50 – With approval of Racial Statute, the black movement celebrates partial victory

 

After nearly ten years in legislative process, the Brazilian House of Representatives approved, on Wednesday, Nov. 9, the Statute of Racial Equality. However, it was necessary to make an agreement with the ruralist bloc in the House. In order to move the proposal, representative Antônio Roberto (PV-MG), reporter on the bill, accepted exclusion of the article on regulation of the Quilombola lands. In spite of this, the black movement assessed as important the passage of the bill by the House.

 

Coordinator of the National Center of Africanness and Afro-Brazilian Resistance (Cenarab), Macota Gonçalves, commented on the significance of the approval.

 

“It is the Brazilian state recognizing the consequences of slavery, of exploitation of the black people, of the denial of access of the black people to education, to health. It is important to assent to these negotiations conducted with the conservative sector so that we are [later] able to seek to change this more moving forward.”

 

Candidacies, health and employment

Through the rules of the Racial Statute the parties will be obliged to designate to blacks 10% of their seats to candidacies in proportional elections. Also being made obligatory is inclusion of the general history Africa and blacks in Brazil in elementary education history curricula.

 

In the area of health, the statute introduces the demand that the public health system specialize in treatment of disease characteristically occurring among blacks, such as sickle-cell anemia.

 

Another point is the fiscal incentive by the government, which can be granted to companies with more than 20 people hiring at least 20% blacks among employees.

 

Desirée Luíse

 

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Adital 13/11/2009

Bahia Declaration:

Racial equality is won with autonomy, and struggle of the black people

 

 

Struggle and resistance have always been characteristics of the black population in Brazil. The black movement is the oldest Brazilian social movement, in more than four hundred years of struggle, from the Quilombolas to the contemporary black movement, becoming the diverse organizations, entities and articulations of anti-racist groups today.

 

This long experience of accumulated struggle since colonial times for Africans and their descendants is our most valuable cultural heritage, inexhaustible source of resistance that opposes continued dehumanizing oppression of racism. To renounce the struggle to eliminate racism is to renounce our humanity.

 

The goal in combating racism and overcoming racial inequality is at the base of the tireless effort over many generations to construct reunited and articulated public policies in the Statute of Racial Equality. The approved bill, however, given the costs in collective work and results of a negotiated arrangement between the government base and conservative forces.

 

What it seeks to achieve is a political-electoral effect with a document merely authoritative, emptied of any initiative that effectively might bring change to the current picture of inequalities. What could have been an historic victory in favor of a society effectively democratic and pluralistic was transformed into a rhetorical piece, from which results in no concrete obligations of the State to the benefit of the black population.

 

The conditions imposed by elite racists effected with the removal of the text of the fundamental proposals in the following areas:

 

Health: The identification of race/color in documents of the SUS, which would serve as a basis for tracking specific public policies; Education: Creation of quotas in all Brazilian public universities and in the Fies contracts; Quilombolas: Quilombola descendents have definitive property of occupied lands; Labor market: the State will be able to realize preferential contracting of Afro-Brazilians in the public sector and to incentivize similar measures in private companies. In contract bidding, the criteria for breaking deadlocks could be the fact of companies having affirmative action or not; Communications media: Films, publicity pieces and TV programs are to have a minimum Afro-Brazilian presence of 20%.

 

The declarations of some black leaders is a cause for indignation, greeting together with government parliamentarians and the conservative opposition, the approval of the statute, when the victory in this process of the reactionary and racists forces is evident. Representative of black entities used (pseudo) powers to “negotiate”, without mandate and without respecting forums or ample collective spaces for deliberation by the movement proper. They dragged representative entities to a process of subordination to conciliatory policies, of contention from social pressures for concrete victories for the affirmation of black citizenship.

 

We, Organizations and activists of the Black Movement, repudiate the exacerbated conciliation that resulted in creation of this innocuous instrument that does not assure the rights of black people.

 

We reaffirm the defense of the autonomy of the black movement in relation to the State, to the governments and to the political parties. The strategic struggle of the black people for racial equality does not subordinate our political project.

 

We move toward social and political emancipation of black people and the construction of a multi-ethnic and egalitarian society in Brazil. The self-organization of the black people is the base of sustaining of our political project.

 

We repudiate the racial pact that preserves elite privilege of whites and racists.

 

We reaffirm our struggle for affirmative actions and against discrimination of race, gender and sexual orientation.

 

We repudiate the systematic extermination of black youth in the urban peripheries, perpetrated by a racist police [force] and in service of dominant elites in the State and its segregation in the urban and rural spaces, configuring a systematic ethnic divide.

 

For the approval of the system of quotas, promoting the access of black men and women to the Universities, to post-graduate courses and to the Federal Technical Schools.

 

For the definitive and titled possession of the lands for traditional and quilombola communities.

 

Salvador, 20 November of 2009

 

Signed:

Edson Cardoso – Presidente do Ìrohìn
Hamilton Assis – Coordenação Nacional do Circulo Palmarino
Hamilton Borges – Coordenação da Campanha Reaja ou Será Morta, Reaja ou Será Morto e ASFAP-BA – Associação de Familiares e Amigos de Presas e Presos da Bahia)
Luciene Lacerda – Fórum Estadual de Mulheres Negras / RJ
Reginaldo Bispo – Coordenação Nacional do MNU – Movimento Negro Unificado
Valdisio Fernandes – Coordenação do Instituto Búzios
Walter Altino – Coordenação do Atitude Quilombola
Marisa Feffermann – Comitê Contra a Criminalização de Crianças e adolescetentes / SP
Heloisa Greco – Instituto Helena Greco de Direitos Humanos e Cidadania / MG
Tiago paixão – Coordenação do Campo Étnico e Popular
Fabiano Santos – JUNA / Alagoinhas – Ba
Simone Magalhães – Ylê Axé Oyá Deji
Demerson Cardoso – Coordenação do GAEEC
Valdo Lumumba – Fórum de Entidades do Subúrbio de Salvador
Ana Maria Felippe – Memorial Lélia Gonzalez – Rio de Janeiro-RJTexto

 

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