In 1975, the RadamBrasil military dictatorship project identified the possibility of mineral exploration in Yanomami territory. At the time, Colonel Fernando Ramos Pereira, from the Territory of Roraima, stated that the presence of indigenous people hindered the region's development. The current governor of the state, Antonio Denarium, made a similar statement in a recent interview. Missionary Corrado Dalmonego has worked with the Yanomami for 15 years and analyzes a period in their history of violation of the rights of original peoples.
Dalmonego is a member of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), an entity that supports indigenous people and has systematically denounced violations of their rights. He worked at Missão Catrimani for 14 years. Since the 1960s, members of the mission, located in the center of Yanomami territory, have worked alongside indigenous people on issues of health, education, defense of the territory and culture.
For a year now, the priest has been working in collaboration with the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY), producing studies on the impacts of mining on the Indigenous Land (TI). The materials map the situation in the territory and support complaints. According to Dalmonego, “the situation we see now has been going on for a few years and has been reported in every possible instance, with documents and letters forwarded.”
For the missionary, Jair Bolsonaro's previous government was not only silent, as it was widely notified of the situation. Negligence can be understood as an “intentional and intentional action”. On April 11, 2022, indigenous representations delivered the report Yanomami under attack to the Three Powers. “Afterwards, [the document] reached international human rights bodies, in addition to the Federal Public Ministry and the Sixth Chamber of the Attorney General, which requested responses from the federal government.”
Even with very serious reports of violence and lack of assistance documented, responses are insignificant or non-existent. Dalmonego recalls that the MPF classified the actions of the previous federal government administration as limited. “More than one-off actions are needed, but continuous action on the part of BAPE, the Ethno-environmental Protection Bases of the Funai Ethno-environmental Protection Front”, he emphasizes.
Breach History
The first miners arrived in Yanomami territory a few months after the identification of minerals in the territory in the 1970s, according to findings by journalist Rubens Valente, recorded in the book Rifles and arrows: history of blood and indigenous resistance in the dictatorship.
At the time, indigenous people were already facing health crises due to contact with non-indigenous people. Perimetral Norte, a project from the period of the military dictatorship, which would cross the region (and would later be abandoned, without completion), was responsible for a disastrous rapprochement with the original peoples. Outbreaks of measles, flu, tuberculosis and malaria and deaths due to illnesses were recurrent.
In 1973, for example, indigenous man Porfírio Carvalho found around 30 indigenous people dead from measles in a village, as Valente reports. “Next to the corpse of an Indian woman already decomposing, Carvalho found a child of around four years old who was still trying to suckle on her dead mother's breasts”, writes the journalist. He also describes having found a survivor of an epidemic that same year: Davi Kopenawa, who became the main Yanomami leader years later.
The situation worsened with the massive entry of miners into the territory. In the 1980s, around 20% of the Yanomami population died as a result of disease and violence. Even in the face of a serious situation, those who provided assistance and supported the indigenous people in defending the territory, including CIMI missionaries, were expelled from the area by the then president of the Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai), Romero Jucá, during the government of José Sarney .
“In 1987, when Romero Jucá promoted the expulsion of anthropologists, health teams and missionaries from the Catrimani mission, where I had worked for the last 14 years, we were left with a void of information about what was happening in the territory”, says Dalmonego.
Anthropologists and health teams also had to leave the territory as ordered by the then president of Funai. The little information they received was from indigenous people who went to the city. The mining progressed, and Jucá, a great supporter of the activity, even suggested a 75% reduction in the Yanomami TI, which had not yet been demarcated.
Davi Kopenawa led an international campaign, which resulted in pressure for the demarcation of the TI, in 1992, and for the beginning of operations to combat mining, already under the Collor government. There were retaliations, such as the 1993 massacre. That year, miners murdered members of the Haximu group and killed 12 people in an attack that followed other murders, including that of a baby. The killers were convicted of genocide, the same crime for which the Bolsonaro government is being investigated.
Recent worsening
In addition to the responsibility of the federal government, which, under Bolsonaro, retracted indigenous and environmental policies, the priest points out that there is an international chain linked to crimes in the IT, as mining products are exported. With the 2008 crisis, there was also an increase in the price of gold and an intensification of greed for indigenous lands.
“If we read the global context, what affects the Yanomami territory are also global and international issues, thinking about the price of gold and the lack of transparency in the marketing chain. After 2008, with the financial and economic crisis, there was a great incentive for mineral exploration in the Amazon and Yanomami land, as well as in Munduruku land and other indigenous lands”, he analyzes.
Ironically, he recalls, in 2019, Roraima declared gold as the second main export product, even without legal mining in the state. In the following years, mysteriously, the gold trade disappeared from the Federal Revenue records, returning to its real status: clandestinity.
For the missionary, this shows that “there is a lack of transparency regarding gold, which would require regulation, which does not exist in Brazil.”In addition to the expansion of mining, there was the disruption of the health system and environmental protection and inspection bodies. “There was a strong increase [in the humanitarian crisis and sanitary collapse] in the last four years under the last government, due to criminal incentive and the dismantling of institutions responsible for protecting the population in Yanomami territory, such as Funai, ICMBio and Ibama, in addition to the dismantling of health activities that, although still with resources, and increased resources for actions, were not applied in order to improve the health conditions of the population.”
Next Steps
Corrado Dalmonego says that, together with the indigenous people, CIMI and several other environmental and indigenous entities constantly demanded a response to the situation of the Yanomami. “We no longer knew who to appeal to. We reached the highest levels of the federal government, but the responses were: 'everything is fine there'. Even today, there are people who deny the reality that is being experienced. This needs to be debunked by the media, because there are still those who say it is an invention.”
The declaration of emergency in the Yanomami TI by the current federal government, for him, is correct, but long-term policies are necessary. “We expect a restructuring after the scrapping of indigenous policy, environmental policy and public policies aimed at indigenous territories and peoples”.
Containing the genocide involves removing the miners, who also impede the logistics of health care, says Dalmonego. Furthermore, he says, it is necessary to prevent ethnocide, which is the cultural destruction of a people. “[We need] public policies aimed at health, food sovereignty, but also the cultural appreciation of knowledge, appreciation of language… a series of policies that, in recent years, have been dismantled, ignored or hostile.”
This Tuesday (31), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree that allows air control of the Yanomami TI by the Air Force. The objective is to interrupt the flow of planes linked to mining. A working group to propose measures to combat criminal activities on indigenous lands was also created by the government on Monday (30).
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Situation of the Yanomami exposes the abandonment of indigenous people by the State
