The Amazon: a guide to the issues - The Rough Guide to Brazil - page 656

FURTHER INFORMATION ON AMAZONIAN ISSUES
For more information on issues involving the Amazon contact Survival, 6 Charterhouse
Buildings, London EC1M 7ET, UK T 020 7687 8700, W survival-international.org. Also check out
W socioambiental.org for information and news on the Amazon, environmental issues, NGOs
working in the region, maps and other more general travel and political links.
Within Brazil indigenous peoples have always had defenders, notably in the Catholic
Church, in the universities, and even in more liberal circles in the Brazilian military
and FUNAI (the federal agency overseeing indigenous issues), where some individuals
were able to make a difference. The best examples were the brothers Claudio and
Orlando Vilas-Boas , who were able to create the Parque Indígena do Xingu in southern
Mato Grosso in the 1960s, which turned out to be crucial in assuring the eventual
survival of many indigenous groups of the southern Amazon. But these were isolated
actions in the midst of what is best described as genocide by negligence.
The beginnings of change came in the darkest days of military repression and
unrestrained road building in the late 1960s, when a combination of embarrassing
international media coverage, foreign pressure and lobbying by the Catholic Church
forced the military to curb the worst excesses of development in indigenous areas, and
provide emergency medical assistance - too late in many cases. With the fall of the
military regime the situation gradually improved; the 1988 Constitution guaranteed
indigenous land rights and protection of indigenous languages and culture. Although
enforcing it has been problematic, it at least provided a legal basis for effective
protection of indigenous lands.
The situation now is incomparably better than it was a generation ago. The
presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula were quite sound on indigenous
issues. During the 1990s most of the outstanding issues to do with the demarcation
and full legalization of indigenous areas were resolved. A remarkable 22 percent of the
Brazilian Amazon is now o cially indigenous land - an area more than twice the size
of France (thirteen percent of the whole country).
The indigenous movement
Perhaps the greatest grounds for hope in the future lies in the strength of the
indigenous movement . Born out of the patient organizational and educational work
of the Catholic Church from the 1960s, the movement rapidly outgrew its religious
roots to become an important secular force, founding local associations and regional
confederations, and learning from their non-indigenous colleagues in the rural-union
and rubber-tapper movements. Prominent national leaders like Mário Juruna , elected
federal deputy for Rio in the 1980s despite being from Mato Grosso, were important
in getting the movement off the ground. Juruna died in 2002, but an able new
generation of younger indigenous leaders - Daví Yanomami , Escrawen Sompre , Ailton
Krenak , Sonia Guajajara , Kayapó leader Chief Raoni Metuktire , the late Jorge Terena
and others - have taken up the torch.