The map speaks for itself.
Where indigenous territories and lands have been legally assigned, environmental and forest protection have been assured. This is because of the rapid ‘economic development’ that has been happening in this region of the Eastern Amazon, and especially in the regions of Amazonas, Para’, and Maranhao. But this ‘development’, has been strongly endorsed by the Brazilian Labor Party, and environmental protection plans and policies completely abandoned.
To make matters worse, the legal rights of the indigenous groups – of which only a few indigenous peoples of the Amazon are recognized – are in the process of being changed, debilitated, and erased by the Brazilian government. These rights, which are now in the constitution of Brazil, are being downgraded to judicial rights in that they will be evaluated – look into ‘PEC 215’.
In a world governed evermore by lobbies, rent-seeking, corruption, human rights abuse, land extortion, we need the evermore presence of resistant voices. We need people that will fight for what is right, and keep in check the ever-expanding, self-destructive power of the state.
If the Brazilian state, with 70% of the Amazon forests in its hands, sees in this ‘green paradise’ only raw material for extraction, rivers to extract energy, and fields to grow soy and cattle… then we have a state that knows nothing of what it ‘owns’. The situation in Brazil is precarious. Now that the Brazilian state, alongside the Peruvian state, is eliminating the rights of indigenous peoples, and devaluing environmental protection… It is up to us to chose our future, and the future of the next generations.
SOURCES:
Survival International: Indigenous Reserves remain Environmental Zones
Anthropologists by Nature 