While the attention of millions of Brazilians is focused on the Brazilian soccer team, Aracruz Celulose has come up with a new national-wide propaganda, which is being shown on television  during the break of the soccer matches. The propaganda shows national celebrities, like Pelé, playing a soccer ball to each other,  while a voice is affirming the following: “Aracruz: fazendo um papel bonito lá fora”, meaning in English “Aracruz: playing a nice role abroad” (‘role’ is the translation of the Portuguese word ‘papel’ which means literally ‘paper’, the end product of the cellulose produced by Aracruz). So this is clearly a message that the company wants the public to see, taking advantage of incredible audiences assisting the world cup matches, in spite of all the violations that the company has committed over the past 30 years against indigenous communities, quilombola communities, peasant communities and so on.

What the company definitely does not want the public to see is what has been done on Friday 16th in the Jacutinga community, municipality of Linhares, state of Espirito Santo. This day, besides being a Friday, was a day after a national holiday, which means that in Brazil only very few public institutions are functioning, besides the impact of the World Cup matches! It was exactly that day that Aracruz Celulose ordered to deforest a native forest area close to the riverside in this community of peasants.

This forest area is under preservation for 20 years and the local peasants, members of the Movement of Small Peasants (MPA), are protecting the area in order to protect the water resources and biodiversity. Aracruz, according to community members, entered with 7 machines and deforested quickly an area of at least 3 hectares. They could not go further because the community mobilized itself and stopped the machines with their bodies; even a pregnant woman participated. The police was called to ‘protect’ the machines and the workers, but the community succeeded in stopping the deforestation.

Yesterday, a team of the Federal Environmental Agency IBAMA confirmed at the spot that in fact Aracruz deforested native forest, and ordered officially the immediate stop of deforestation activities while it will analyze the permit of 2001, presented by Aracruz, that according to the company would justify the deforestation. Even so, it is important to stress that present legislation does not permit any intervention in this type of permanent preservation area.

While the publicity of Aracruz hides the deforestation, as one of its aggressions against the environment in Brazil over the past 30 years, the company tries to convince our society and especially the european community – main consumer of its raw material, the celullose – that it is a socially and environmentally responsible company.

Alert against the Green Desert Movement
June 20th 2006