IN FEBRUARY, WHEN THE KAYAPO INDI-
ans of ParAi state hosted a meeting of native people
and environmentalists from around the world, a new
stage in indigenous resistance began-one of organized
“modern” political confrontation. At the same time, in
the Upper Envira river valley and the Jutaf, distant
groups refused any contact with whites and penetrated
ever deeper into the vast Amazon forest. Between these
two extremes lies a broad array of ways in which the
Indians of Brazil have opposed, with some success, the
government’s policy toward native peoples.
The 136,000 Indians who live in the Brazilian
Amazon-many in groups of 100 or less-are, as a for-
mer governor of Roraima state put it, “an obstacle” to
development. This is certainly true for the prospectors,
laborers, plantation owners, mining and lumber compa-
nies who must confront the Indians’ arrows, spears and
lobbying efforts. For the government it is also true, since
fighting native peoples is frequently a “joint venture”
of public and private capital, with the government ex-
propriating Indian lands, building highways and dams
and offering fiscal incentives to investors. In the south-
east of the state of Pari, for example, public infrastruc-
ture projects already occupy 72,000 hectares of Indian
lands, and should plans for damming the Xing6i River go
forward, 408,000 hectares more will be inundated.
Today, everything related to the Amazon-Indians
and ecology included-is considered an issue of na-
tional security: to the extreme that indigenous people are
perceived, implicitly or explicitly, as dangerous “for-
eigners.” (The most absurd example was the recent use
of the Law of Foreigners against two Kayap6 who pro-
tested the construction of the Xing6 River dam.) The
Calha Norte project, announced in the spring of 1987,
calls for a string of military outposts along a 4,000-mile
strip. Ostensibly intended to establish a state presence
on Brazil’s jungle borders, the posts are also an attempt
to control the “internal borders” of the Amazon, that is,
where Brazil meets the 50,000 Indians who live in the
lands affected by the plan. The threat of an independent
“Yanomami state” was expressly cited in the initial
Calha Norte plan.
VOLUME XXIII, NO. I (M 9)
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“They hunted us down as if we were savage beasts”
S4 “NDIAN PEOPLES DO NOT OPPOSE DEV-
“I elopment as such,” said Ailton Krenak, coordi-
nator of the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI), founded
in 1978. “We oppose the development model pursued to
date, which has been destructive, nefarious, stupid and
disastrous. We oppose monoculture, the grass and the
bull. What native peoples want is to adapt new tech-
nologies to the traditional practices of Indians, river
people and rubber tappers.”
Where native peoples have fought development, it
has been in order to preserve the forest on which their
survival depends. For example, in 1987 the Kampa,
Kulina and Jaminana peoples of the state of Acre de-
nounced the illegal operation of a sawmill on their lands.
When the Brazilian Institute of Forest Development
(IBDF) and the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI)
did nothing, the Indians stepped in and dismantled the
mill themselves. In the Upper Solimoes river valley, in
the state of Amazonas, the Tikuna faced an invasion of
lumberjacks in search of mahogany trees, currently
worth $10-12,000 each. On March 28 of last year, lum-
berjacks ambushed Tikuna families killing
eleven-including children-and wounding 22. “They
hunted us down as if we were savage beasts,” wrote a
Tikuna teacher. “They say they are civilized and the
Tikuna are like animals…. Even boys of 10 or 12 were
all armed with muskets. They were the ones who did
most of the killing.’ 2
Last October, a lumber magnate and sponsor of pri-
vate colonization projects announced that the territory of
the Zor6 people in Rond6nia state would be open for
occupation by settlers to spearhead the lumber compa-
nies’ attack. An expedition of nearly 150 Surui, Cinta-
Larga, Gavido and Arara warriors responded by expel-
ling more than 100 settler families-some new, some
old-from Zor6 lands. In retaliation, on October 16, an
old Suruf man named Jamin6 was ambushed inside Suruf
territory by 20 gunmen who shot him and, to cover up
the crime, mutilated his body, wrapped it in a net and
burned it. In the same state of Rond6nia a scandal ex-
ploded last year over lumber rights on Indian lands,
rights authorized by the past president of FUNAI and
current governor of Roraima, Romero Juci Filho. When
a government audit of Filho’s finances showed wrong-
doing, UNI coordinator Krenak commented that it is the
president of FUNAI, not the Indians, who should be a
ward of the state. FUNAI exercises legal guardianship
over all indigenous people.
IN ALL THESE CASES-AND THEY ARE ONLY
a sample of the conflicts that have occurred in the
Amazon-the defense of territory is linked to the de-
fense of natural resources. Some forms of tribal govern-
ment, such as the Tikuna Tribe General Council, grew
out of these struggles. So did supra-tribal organizations
such as the Indigenous Council of the Territory of Ro-
raima and the Coalition of Indians of Rond6nia.
Most innovative of all is the organization which
unites indigenous people and rubber tappers in the state
of Acre. Since the end of the nineteenth century, rubber
tappers have looked down on Indians who, for their part,
perceived the tappers as invaders of their lands. But in
recent years, the Indians’ old enemy have come to share
their plight. In 1985, the Indigenous Council of Acre and
the National Council of Rubber Tappers formed the
Alliance of Forest Peoples to defend the Amazon against
the big landowners and their hired gunmen, who turn the
forest into pasture for cattle.
T LEAST 22 INDIAN RESERVES HAVE BEEN
invaded by prospectors seeking gold, silver and
other minerals.’ In 1987, some 560 corporate applica-
tions for prospecting rights in indigenous areas were
approved and 1,685 more were pending. 4 Pressure for
such legal authorization has been building since the
early 1980s. In 1983, the mining companies obtained a
decree-law from then President Jo.o Figueiredo, author-
izing state companies and, “in exceptional cases,” pri-
vate domestic companies, to prospect and mine in in-
digenous areas. Due to the protests this decree gener-
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20ated, it was never put into effect. Notwithstanding, be-
tween 1983 and 1987, when the government tried once
again to enforce the decree, 356 prospecting permits
were authorized.
At the National Constituent Assembly in 1987-88,
mining was at the heart of the debate on Indian rights,
one of the ten most controversial issues considered in
the drafting of the new constitution. A virulent press
campaign accused the defenders of Indian rights of con-
spiracy against Brazil’s sovereignty-their crime, main-
taining that mining on Indian reserves should be a last
resort, pursued only for strategic minerals which cannot
be obtained elsewhere in the country. Indian rights
spokesmen called for a case-by-case review by Con-
gress, and for limiting the mining to state enterprises.
Of all these conditions, only one was approved: Con-
gress was given the task of authorizing, case by case,
prospecting and mining in the subsoil of Indian lands.
The mineral riches of the topsoil, such as surface gold,
continue to be regulated by previous legislation which
reserves them exclusively for indigenous peoples.
WHILE THESE BATTLES RAGED IN THE
Assembly, the mining companies broached direct
agreements with indigenous groups, or, in other cases,
resorted to armed invasion, as in the Waiampi reserve in
Amapd. Both approaches prompted the Indians to deal
in the white man’s Realpolitik. In 1985, for example,
200 Kayap6 warriors from Gorotire, painted and armed
with spears, occupied a gold mine which had attracted
5,000 men to invade their lands. In return for allowing
the mine to reopen, the Kayap6 demanded the demarca-
tion of their territory. Despite legal mandate, the demar-
cation of all Indian lands had yet to be achieved; the
Kayap6 were only asking for the law to be enforced.
After a two-month sit-in, the government relented. The
Kayap6 gained control of gold mining on their land and
now charge the prospectors 5% of gross sales. None of
the Kayap6 engages in prospecting but with the income
they bought planes and radio equipment to unite their
vast nation and control their borders, not to mention the
fine homes some have purchased.
In the Upper Negro river valley, in the state of Ama-
zonas near the Colombian border, the Tukano also faced
an invasion of prospectors in 1983. Tensions escalated
until January of 1986, when rumors circulated that 60
native people had been massacred. At that moment, a
large private Brazilian mining firm, Paranapanema, pro-
posed a deal: The company would control the prospec-
tors, in exchange for the Indians allowing the company
to use the prospecting permit it had already obtained
from the government. The tribe and the company reached
Indians are considered wards of the State, in the same legal category as the mentally retarded
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an accord and Paranapanema proceeded in 1986 to hire a
private army from a security company to expel the pros-
pectors from the Traira mountains. Ironically, the same
security company, Sacopa, was used by cattle ranchers
against the Macuxi people in Rond6nia.
A DECREE ISSUED ON NOVEMBER 18 SET
up “national forests” in the state of Roraima.
Couched in ecological fervor, the decree formed part of
Brazil’s response to widespread criticism of the destruc-
tion of the Amazon. In effect, the decree expropriated
half of the lands of the Yanomami people- South Amer-
ica’s largest forest group-turning them into “national
forests” and legalizing an invasion by some 35,000
prospectors which had already taken place.
Despite the name, “national forests” are hardly bo-
tanical sanctuaries; the rational exploitation of forest
products and by-products is allowed. In July of last year,
the Brazilian Institute of Forest Development (IBDF)
proposed an additional activity, unheard of in the annals
of environmental protection: mining. 5
The same trickery was used on the people of the
Negro river valley who for 17 years had requested the
demarcation of their territory. They finally accepted a
proposal made in 1987 by the National Security Council
to establish three separate “indigenous colonies,” each
surrounded by national forests. The government is now
attempting to impose a similar deal in Amapi on the
Uaca, Galibi, Wayampi and Jumini peoples.
In fact, these measures mock the constitution, which
guarantees native peoples the lands they inhabit and the
exclusive use of those lands “used for their productive
activities, those [lands] indispensable to the preservation
of environmental resources necessary to their well-being
and to their physical and cultural reproduction, accord-
ing to their uses, customs and traditions.'”6 In the na-
tional forests of the Yanomami territory, the Indians
have only “preferential use,” according to the Novem-
ber 18 edict, and no longer enjoy the exclusive rights
guaranteed by the constitution. The edict, in effect, is an
invitation to occupation by non-Indians, and a program
for progressive expropriation.
It is not a machiavellian impulse that drives politi-
cians to use ecological rhetoric and environmentalist
legal formulations to impose the de facto expropriation
of Indian lands. Ecological trappings are now required
by multilateral banks for the release of energy sector
loans. As Ailton Krenak says, “The army knows the
Amazon is green and wants to keep it that way. But the
green they see is that of the dollar.”
Native Realpolitik
1. L. dos Santos and L. Andrade (eds.), As hidrelrtricas do
Xinga e os Povos Indigenas, (Sao Paulo: Comissio Pr6-Indio de
Sho Paulo, 1988).
2. A Ldgrima Ticuna d uma so, (Benjamin Constant, Amazo-
nas: Maguta, 1988), p. 5.
3. According to the report “Terras Indigenas,” (Sao Paulo:
CEDI and Museu Nacional, 1988).
4. Empresas de Mineraqdo e terras indigenas na Amaz6nia,
(Sao Paulo: Dossie CEDI/CONNAGE, 1988).
5. “Proposta de regulamento das Florestas Nacionais,” July
1988.
6. National Constitution, Article 231, Paragraph 1.
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