Action continue and Aracruz says “they are no Indians”
TUPINIKIM/GUARANI CONTINUE ACTIONS FOR LAND DEMARCATION
And Aracruz says they “are no Indians”
During 6 and 7 September, Tupinikim and Guarani Indians cut about 10 hectares of eucalyptus trees in an area that belongs to them traditionally, but has been invaded and explored by the Aracruz Celulose company since the 60ies. With this action, they demand from the FUNAI and the Ministry of Justice a maximum of agility in the publication of the demarcation decree of 11,009 hectares, solving this dispute for land with Aracruz that already lasts more than 35 years.
Reacting to the actions of the Indians of the past week, the Presidency of FUNAI, through the head of Office Mr. Raimundo José de Sousa Lopes, promised on the 6th of September to send today (September 11th) the land file of the Tupinikim/Guarani, including the FUNAI report about the challenge (defense) against the land claim presented by Aracruz Celulose, to the Ministry of Justice, so the Minister Márcio Thomaz Bastos issues, without further delay, the land demarcation decree.
The Tupinikim and Guarani decided to continue their actions today, continuing the “cleaning” of the eucalyptus trees from the area of 11,009 hectares, eucalyptus that caused so many problems to the indigenous communities. They continue affirming that they want to cut the trees without taking them away reaffirming that the struggle is for land, so that it can get reforested and once again serve for the well-being of the communities. They promise to maintain the protest actions until the demarcation decree becomes issued.
Aracruz Celulose reacted publicly to the actions, affirming as always that it is convinced that the lands belong to them. However, the company used a new argument that surprised all: the company affirmed on television (Jornal Capixaba, 06/09/2006) through its spokesman Gessé Marques that “the Indians are no Indians”, in other words, if they are no Indians, they do not have a right to occupy and demand an indigenous land. In its challenge presented on the 20th of July to FUNAI, the company suggests that the region was never inhabited by the Tupinikim Indians, what means that the Indians to whom FUNAI refers in their four land report studies would not be Indians. The company affirms that the “supposed” Tupinikim have lost their traditional culture, for example, they are active voters and do not speak any more their original language. And the company also affirms that the indigenous adornments and traditions they maintain are also not theirs. In relation to the Guarani, Aracruz affirms that they are not from the region, discarding a whole mythology and traditional way of living of the Guarani that moved them to walk until the region of the municipality of Aracruz, still before the invasion of the company in 1967. At that time, the Guarani got impressed by the quantity of native forest still present and its beauty, before the company started its devastation.
FUNAI, in its anthropological report about the challenge presented by Aracruz, refutes the affirmations, at least disrespectful, of the company. The official institution from the Brazilian Federal Government writes that “it are not external features, isolated among themselves, that allows to characterize a group as indigenous”. And even more, “tradition is not a ‘frozen piece’, and the indigenous populations with whom we are dealing here had to undertake a huge adaptive effort to persist as indigenous groups, while simultaneously they saw themselves being incorporated in local and regional contexts”. By the way, “who did not adapt was annihilated”. When Aracruz wants to submit the Tupinikim to a “romantic” vision of what would be an ‘Indian’, the company “denies the possibility that Brazilian Indigenous people become treated as citizens, and that the specific aspects of the their ways of social and political organization become respected”. In other words, we are dealing with a company that shows a total lack of commitment with a pluri-ethnical and multicultural society where rights of indigenous peoples and other traditional groups be fully respected. And this is exactly the spirit of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988.
It is important that all spread nationally and internationally this disrespect of Aracruz Celulose with the Tupinikim and Guarani, a view that the company is spreading among their workers and in the regional society, using all its political-financial power, trying once again to manipulate the imaginary of the regional population so that this society turns against the Tupinikim and Guarani and its just struggle. At the same time, we are talking about an act of despair of a company that already held meetings in the past and even signed agreements with the Commission of Tupinikim and Guarani Chiefs and Leaders, and also with the Indigenous Tupinikim and Guarani Association. So how Aracruz can affirm now that “the Indians are no Indians”?
ALERT AGAINST THE GREEN DESERT NETWORK-Espirito Santo
