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September 10, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
IN THE CHURCH
Catholics Denounce Attacks Against Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples in Amazon
By Eduardo Campos Lima
Catholic News Service
SAO PAULO (CNS) -- After denounc-
ing the record number of wildfires in
the Amazon in August and the growing
deforestation of the region, the Brazil-
ian Catholic Church is pressuring the
government to guarantee the safety of
several Amazonian indigenous peoples,
alerting the authorities of the imminent
risk of genocide in northern Brazil.
“No indigenous people feels safe
in Brazil right now. But the situation is
particularly serious in the Amazonian
state of Rondonia, where the peoples
Uru-eu-wau-wau and Karipuna had
their lands invaded, and in the state of
Para, where the people Xikrin lives,”
said Archbishop Roque Paloschi of
Porto Velho, president of the Indigenous
Missionary Council, or CIMI, a com-
mittee of Brazilian bishops’ conference.
On Aug. 27, CIMI released a state-
ment condemning President Jair Bolso-
naro’s verbal attacks on the indigenous
peoples of the Amazon.
“Amid the environmental destruc-
tion caused by deforestation and
criminal wildfires, especially in the
Amazonian region, he maintains an
incendiary attitude, with a repugnant
aggressiveness directed to the native
peoples and their right to a dignified
existence,” said CIMI’s statement.
Since his campaign in 2018, Bol-
sonaro has criticized environmental
legislation and the “excessive number”
of indigenous reservations, promising
to loosen restrictions on activities that
affect the environment and to stop
recognizing indigenous territories. On
Aug.30, he again told journalists that “no
new indigenous land” would be granted
by the government, only the ones that
he is “obliged” to demarcate.
Cleanton Curioso, a lay missionary
and CIMI’s coordinator in Altamira,
said Bolsonaro’s comments have cre-
ated a “feeling of impunity” among
indigenous land invaders.
“Hundreds of illegal miners, illegal
loggers, and land-grabbers invaded
the indigenous reservation Trincheira
Bacaja in 2016. They destroyed the for-
ests, started wildfires and even built
a village, but the authorities didn’t do
anything. So now the Xikrin people
decided to expel the invaders with
their own hands,” Curioso told Catholic
News Service.
In late August, dozens of Xikrin men
walked several miles in the reservation
and reached the invaders’ camp. They
told the men to leave the area and took
the invaders’ guns and the equipment
used to destroy the rainforest.
A fire burns a tract of Amazon jungle Sept. 2, 2019, as it is cleared by a farmer in Machadinho
do Oeste, Brazil. The Brazilian Catholic bishops are pressuring the government to guarantee
the safety of several Amazonian indigenous peoples. (CNS photo/Ricardo Moraes, Reuters) Shanenawa people dance during a festival
to celebrate nature and ask for an end to the
burning of the Amazon, in the indigenous
village of Morada Nova near Feijo, Brazil.
(CNS photo/Ueslei Marcelino, Reuters)
“Now they’re being threatened by
the invaders. There’s a big risk of violent
conflict in the area, especially if the au-
thorities fail to act,” said Curioso.
About 1,200 indigenous people live
in 16 villages in the reservation, which
is shared by the Xikrin and two other
nations.
In Rondonia, the reservation of the
Karipuna people was invaded in 2015,
but invaders have intensified their il-
legal activities -- mining, logging and
land-grabbing -- since Bolsonaro’s elec-
tion, said Sister Laura Vicuna Manso, a
missionary in the region. “The invaders
use the social media to threaten the
Karipuna, saying they will set fire to
their villages and kill them all. As I was
sleeping there, several times I could hear
their machines operating and gunshots
during the night.”
Sister Manso said at least 30 wildfires
inside the Karipuna reservation could he did not believe big business was
involved.
“I don’t believe that farmers who
operate within the law and big mining
companies would engage in violence
against indigenous peoples,” he said.
“I think illegal miners are behind such
acts.”
He added that agribusiness also has
had losses with the deforestation and
the wildfires in the Amazon. “Many
times the fires reach their properties.”
Archbishop Paloschi said he believes
the interests of large-scale landowners
in the Amazon are behind the defor-
estation and the attacks against the
indigenous peoples.
“Many people don’t get their hands
dirty, but obtain profits from such acts.
The Brazilian history shows us who are
the most privileged people throughout
the decades of destruction of the Ama-
zon,” he said.
be spotted in satellite images.
“The invaders are certainly the per-
petrators of the fires. They said on the
internet they would do it after Aug. 20.
It’s an orchestrated criminal action,” she
said. She said more than 27,000 acres
of rainforest on the reservation were
destroyed in recent years.
On Aug. 25, the Brazilian magazine
Globo Rural published a story on the
wildfires criminally provoked in the
city of Altamira by miners and farmers.
According to the article, a group of 70
people organized the biggest wildfire in
the history of the state of Pará Aug. 10,
an event they called “day of fire.”
Environmentalists and religious,
like Sister Manso, believe this kind
of operation was reproduced in other
regions as well.
But Jesus Sergio, a Brazilian congress-
man and a member of the parliamentary
bloc that represents agribusiness, said
Florida Catholic Charities Officials Closely Watching Dorian’s Path
MIAMI (CNS) -- While it appeared
September 3 that Hurricane Dorian
would skirt Florida’s east coast, the
widespread catastrophic damage to the
Bahamas associated with the histori-
cally large and powerful storm is not
going unnoticed. Residents along the
southeast U.S. coast from Florida to
North Carolina were concerned about
where the storm goes next after raking
the northwestern Bahamas for more
than 24 hours. “I think we are going to
be OK, but it remains to be seen what
the northern coast of Florida will have
to endure, as well as the coast of Geor-
gia and the Carolinas; and it remains to
be seen what can be done for the Baha-
mas,” Peter Routsis-Arroyo, director of
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of
An emergency shelter sign points to the
Pedro Menendez High School ahead of the
arrival of Hurricane Dorian in St. Augustine,
Fla., Sept. 2, 2019. (CNS photo/Marco
Bello, Reuters)
Miami, said September 2. To the north,
officials in the Florida dioceses of Palm
Beach, Orlando and St. Augustine were
monitoring the storm’s path and were
prepared to close offices and schools if
necessary. Catholic Charities agencies
in all three dioceses were also mak-
ing emergency preparations. Routsis-
Arroyo told the Florida Catholic, the
Miami archdiocesan newspaper, that
he spent much of Labor Day morning
in conference calls with Catholic Chari-
ties USA staff and separately with the
seven Florida diocesan directors of
Catholic Charities agencies and with
his own program directors and senior
staff around the Miami Archdiocese.
Catholic Charities Miami is part of a
statewide and national network moni-
toring the slow-moving Dorian both
in the Bahamas and its anticipated
impacts in U.S. coastal communities
in coming days.