ABANDONMENT

Lula’s visit to the Yanomami people had repercussions face the abandonment situation

The presidential visit won over social networks and drew attention to the tragedy experienced by the indigenous people

Translated by: Ana Paula Rocha

Brasil de Fato | São Paulo (SP, Brasil) |
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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during his visit to an Indigenous hospital and Boa Vista's Support House for Indigenous Health - Ricardo Stuckert/Palácio do Planalto

The humanitarian tragedy Indigenous peoples have been facing was in the public spotlight in recent days, especially after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s visit to the Yanomami Indigenous Land in Roraima state. Along with him were the ministers of Social Development (Wellington Dias), Health (Nísia Trindade) and Indigenous Peoples (Sônia Guajajara). The visit marked a drastic change from its predecessor in the way the federal government intends to approach illegal mining on Indigenous lands and its consequences.

 “There will be no more illegal mining. I'm aware of the difficulties of ending it. I know some have tried and failed. But we will end it,” said Lula after his visit to an Indigenous hospital and Boa Vista's Support House for Indigenous Health in Roraima's capital city this Saturday (21). 

“If someone had told me that here in Roraima there were people being treated in the inhumane way that I saw the Yanomami people being treated, I wouldn't believe it. It's impossible to understand a country with such potential as Brazil abandoning its Indigenous peoples the way the Yanomami people were abandoned,” stated the president.

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The presidential visit had more online repercussions than any of the topics the far right tried to disseminate in the last 24h, according to Pedro Barciela, a social media analyst who focuses on politics.

“A presidential visit is never just a visit. It is also a way to guide the debate. With the visit to the Yanomami people, Lula set the agenda and surpassed any far-right agenda: in 24 hours, the topic had five times more mentions than the fake news about aid to imprisoned people in a 7-day period,” Barciela posted on his Twitter account. 

Tweet: “What is happening to the Yanomami people isn’t a humanitarian tragedy. It is a crime against humanity. It’s genocide. The perpetrator of this genocide is the Bolsonaro administration.”

It happened the same way with the abortion topic. According to the researcher, “Yanomamis were 1.5 times more mentioned in 24h than abortion during the last week. It's worth mentioning the intense engagement of Bolsonaro supporters that tried to guide the government's agenda, but to no avail.”

The far right even tried to associate the Yanomami's condition with a supposed “farce by the left”, such as Bolsonaro himself had made. However, they failed in the face of appalling images of child malnutrition, food insecurity and negligence. 

State of emergency

On Friday (20), Brazil's Minister of Health declared a state of emergency in order to “plan, organize, coordinate and control the measures to be implemented” to reverse the current lack of medical assistance in the Yanomami land. 

“Health staff will be called; temporary professionals will be hired” and “there will be the acquisition of goods and hiring of the necessary services to work” in this emergency scenario. 

The National Coordination Committee to Combat Sanitary Lack of Assistance for Populations in Yanomami Territory was set up “to deal with the urgent issues of malnutrition, hunger and health in that region,” according to Minister Wellington Dias. The committee will last for 90 days and will be supported by the Armed Forces and Funai.

Illegal mining

In recent years, the situation of the Yanomami people has become even more precarious. According to the Ministry of Health, “malnutrition cases and food insecurity were recorded mainly among over 5,000 children in that region. Health professionals report a lack of security to continue providing care, which makes it even more difficult to provide medical assistance to the [Yanomami] Indigenous people.”

One of the main causes of these difficulties was the connivance of the government of former President Bolsonaro with the expansion of illegal mining in the region. Macuxi Indigenous Ivo Cípio Aureliano, a legal adviser to the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR, in Portuguese), says that “all the mining sites in the state of Roraima are illegal and located inside Indigenous lands. The promise made by the Bolsonaro government of legalizing this activity via the 191/2021 bill, which is being discussed in Congress, encouraged invasions and increased the number of Indigenous co-opted, causing many kinds of violence.”

According to a survey by CIR, in the Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous land alone, also in the state of Roraima, about 2,000 illegal miners were exploiting the soil in 2021. In the Yanomami Indigenous land, estimates rise to 20,000 illegal miners.

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“In one of the areas of Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous land – the Raposa region – a mining site (Garimpo do Atola or Tarame) emerged in 2018. Many illegal miners arrived in the nearby communities of Raposa I and Raposa II, mainly in the Napoleão community, and began to co-opt Indigenous leaders to support them with the promise that the Indigenous people would receive a percentage,” says Aureliano.

Indigenous communities are directly affected. “Currently, there are many machines dubbed 'moinho' [mills] at this mining site. They crush the stones and extract gold. Then, miners wash the crushed material and dump the residues, including mercury, in nearby streams and lakes,” says Aureliano.

Tweet: “A genocide announced by Bolsonaro led the Yanomami lands to a state of calamity! 21 requests for help were ignored by the misgovernment – which allowed illegal gold miners to exploit Indigenous lands.”

Also in 2020, the Court of Appeals for the 1st Region (also known in Brazil as TRF1) determined the reactivation of Ethno-environmental Protection Bases (BAPEs, in Portuguese) in the Yanomami Indigenous Land and measures to control and combat illegal mining.

The federal government’s inertia “shows that extra attention is needed to prevent the spread of viral epidemics and other diseases resulting from the contamination of rivers and fauna with mercury, (…) a situation that was aggravated by the current pandemic the country is facing,” said, at the time, federal judge Daniele Maranhão. 

In that same year, the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA, in Portuguese) pointed out that the monthly degradation caused by illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous land increased significantly in June 2020 – 179 percent compared to the previous month. That month, 109 hectares were destroyed, compared to 39.1 hectares destroyed in the previous month.

Edited by: Nicolau Soares e Flávia Chacon