Terrorist Use of Biological Weapons - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 286

timately the SPI was disbanded and a new organization (the National In-
dian Foundation, or FUNAI) formed, integrating the functions of the SPI
and several other departments.
By exterminating the indigenes, landowners hoped to free the land for
sale. Most of the attacks were on tribes living in the Matto Grosso, a vast
savanna and scrubland south of the Amazon River, which was prized
grazing land. There were also attacks alleged in the more heavily forested
northern slope of the Amazon basin. The alleged attacks involved the in-
troduction of smallpox, measles, influenza, and tuberculosis into tribes of
the Matto Grosso from 1957 to 1963, and tuberculosis into tribes of the
northern part of the Amazonian basin in 1964-65. Smallpox was alleged
to have been introduced by variolation (the deliberate inoculation with
smallpox virus): “a doctor—now alleged to have been sent by the Indian
Protection Service of those days—instead of vaccinating them, inoculated
them with the virus of smallpox. This operation was totally successful in
its aim, and the vacant land was immediately absorbed into the neigh-
bouring white estates.” 3 Tuberculosis, and probably the other diseases as
well, were said to have been introduced by deliberate exposure of Native
Americans to outsiders with active, symptomatic disease. The results of
these attempts are not documented, but are claimed to have been devas-
tating.
The motivation for these alleged attacks was clearly greed, and they are
thus examples of biocriminality. We include them here as bioterrorism
because of their overtly and explicitly genocidal intent. Of course disease
has for centuries been responsible for enormous mortality in the indi-
genes of the New World and the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans,
with massive genocidal effect. However, most of this mortality was the
result of inadvertent disease introductions; only rarely were there delib-
erate attempts to use disease as a weapon. 4 The Brazilian case is the only
instance recorded in the 20th century, and is thus of considerable impor-
tance. Unfortunately, it has yet to receive the scholarly study that it de-
serves.
The 1984 Rajneesh Attacks
The only bioterrorist attack known to have caused an actual outbreak of
disease was perpetrated by a religious commune in the US in 1984. In