"The Xingu is stronghold of centuries-old cultures, a stronghold of salvation to a diversity of peoples and an entire diversity of animals that is unique and only found here", states UFPA researcher, Dr. Janice Muriel Cunha.

According to Dr. Cunha, the people must decide if what they want is the form of development proposed by the Brazilian government – a distinctly European model – or a clean and just development. "The development model adopted by Europe destroyed circa 99.2% of natural vegetation and environmental resources on that continent. Is this what we want?”, Janice inquired.

For researcher Rodolfo, also from UFPA, Belo Monte is just an electionist adventure, because Brazil does not need this project to develop and be happy. "It is a maneuver by [presidential candidate] Dilma Roussef to promote herself and other ‘rogues’ of the Brazilian energy system."

Janice believes that Belo Monte is just one of the struggles that the Brazilian people have to face. "This dam project is only one more that we scientists, riverine, indigenous and urban populations must learn to combat. Like these, many others will come, all unviable in social, economic, environmental and cultural terms."

Where will the people of the Xingu go?
This is the question posed by the population of Altamira, which remains unanswered. "What will be done with the approximately 30,000 persons who will be affected by the construction of the hydroelectric dam and plant? Where will they go, where and how will they live?" Asks Dom Erwin Kräutler, bishop of the Xingu Prelature and president of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI).

Dom Erwin has accompanied the struggles against Belo Monte since 1975, the period of the dictatorial regime in Brazil, when the government submitted a proposal to construct six dams on the Xingu river and one on the Iriri river. After political and social pressure, the people and social movements succeeded in barring the project, which they believed to be abandoned, forgotten.

However, the Lula administration surprised the Brazilian population by  again introducing the same project, formerly called Kararaô. "Only the name was changed, but the intention remains the same: to destroy the environment and the peoples of the Xingu. It was a great surprise to us that this government in particular, in whom we always believed, disinterred this project and brought it in office again", he declared.

”These people who are accustomed to living through the labor of their own hands, hunting, fishing, agriculture, how will they live in good homes with furniture, electricity, piped water, household appliances, but without their primary source of survival? How will they live? How will they raise their children and grandchildren?", asks Dom Erwin.

Even now, the population of Altamira does not know the actual size of the reservoir. Dimensions of the work are changed on a daily basis and people are not even informed. For Dom Erwin and the numerous experts who conducted feasibility studies on the enterprise, the reservoir will be a putrid, dead lake, a breeding ground for pests and endemic diseases on the banks of which many families will remain, left to their own devices.

 "The same government that banned capture and marketing of ornamental fish in the region released the Belo Monte project. What a contradiction! Income generation and survival via the waters of the old Xingu are prohibited, but the extinction of animals, invasion and flooding of rural lands, the expulsion of diverse families in the region, misery and hunger, violence and disease are not", challenged Dr. Cunha.