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friends of Peoples close to Nature

This time, however, the Indians are determined. Traditionally warriors, they are willing to fight to prevent their lands from being invaded once more by miners in search of diamonds. The Cinta-Larga are fed up. During the visit of the Human Rights Congressional Commission to Roosevelt village, in the State of Rondônia, this past October 9, they complained to the representatives of the harassment they have been subjected to for more than 20 years and of the violence to which they are exposed every day. That's why they are willing to fight to prevent garimpeiros (diggers) from invading their lands once again to extract diamonds.

Written by: ISA, Inês Zanchetta Reduced to some 1,300 individuals dispersed in 34 villages in four Indigenous Lands (Roosevelt, Parque Aripuanã, Aripuanã and Serra Morena), the Cinta-Larga Indians, who in 1968 were approximately 5,000, are now struggling to ensure their own security and their lands', located in western Mato Grosso and northeastern Rondônia. The garimpeiros, on the other hand, have started an intimidation campaign for which they have the help of the Rondônia press, which publishes untrue information, always with the intention of frightening the Indians.

For example: last week (October 13 to 17), much fuss was made about more than 1,000 garimpeiros that were said to be camping in the vicinity of the Indian lands, ready to invade them. However, Walter Blós, advisor to the presidency of the Fundação Nacional do Índio - National Foundation for the Indian - (Funai) and coordinator of the Grupo Tarefa (Task Force) created in the end of 2002 to implement an emergency plan for the Cinta-Larga (see box below), informed the ISA that, after flying over the region with a few Cinta-Larga chiefs on October 17, he assessed that there were no more than 100 garimpeiros camped near the indigenous areas. Until then, a few Funai employees and the Indians themselves were in charge of the roadblocks set up to prevent the invasion. On Saturday, October 18, the environmental police, which had been removed from the area in September by order of Rondônia State governor Ivo Cassol, was at last sent back by the governor to reinforce the roadblocks.

Garimpeiros union will investigate

While visiting the roadblocks on Sunday, October 19, Blós ran into a group of delegates from Rondônia's garimpeiros union. They wanted to know who had given permission for the return of the environmental police to the area. "When they learned that the order had come from the governor, they began to determine what the police should and should not do," recalls Blós. "That it should not allow vehicles that belong to Indians to pass, that it should not allow the entrance of food, etc." The chief of the environmental police told them that he would not do so because the lands belong to the Indians and that they had the right to come and go.

According to Blós, the union members filmed, made recordings and left. He then got in touch with the district chief of the Federal Police in the city of Pimenta Bueno and requested ostensive policing for the local roads around the Indigenous Lands. For that, the Federal Police is expected to contribute with vehicles and the Funai with fuel. Blós believes that the joint work of the Funai, the Federal Police, the environmental police and the Indians will eventually drive the garimpeiros away.

In the beginning of the year, after the many goings and comings of 2002, the Indians were able to expel the garimpeiros. From January until August, the lands and the garimpo (mining fields) remained under the control of the Cinta-Larga. But with the approach of the rainy season the garimpeiros threaten to come back.

Environmental degradation, violation, prostitution

"Today the garimpeiros are 100, but if there is a chance within 24 hours there could be 1,000, 10,000, because there are many jobless people in the cities, sort of erring," warns the anthropologist João Dal Poz, of the Federal University of Mato Grosso, who works with the Cinta-Larga. Dal Poz explains that the beginning of the rains is the propitious season for the garimpo. "It's like a planned robbery. They come to the garimpo, stay for two months, take R$ 2 million and go."

They leave behind destruction and environmental degradation. In addition, diamond extraction attracts to the region drug traffickers, smugglers and prostitutes, thus generating a situation of tension and violence the Indians no longer are willing to be subjected to. "It's a crime of genocide that is being carried out through the violence of the economic exploitation of diamond mining," analyzes the expert in Indian affairs Maria Inês Hargreaves, who has followed the case of the Cinta-Larga closely for many years.

Every year the same

The serious situation of the Cinta-Larga is not new. Theirs is an emblematic case, one that is always denounced by Indian leaders in national and international forums. When the Relatório Brasileiro sobre Direitos Humanos, Econômicos, Sociais e Culturais - Brazilian Report on Human, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - (DhESC) was launched in June of 2003, one of the denounced cases was precisely that of the Cinta-Larga. The titular rapporteur for the environment, Jean-Pierre LeRoy, concerned with the recent threats, sent to the minister of Justice Márcio Thomaz Bastos, a letter dated of September 29 in which he requested that the Ministry took steps to prevent what he feared to be an imminent armed conflict.

The following day (September 30), Rondônia State governor Ivo Cassol also sent to the minister of Justice an official letter asking for measures to prevent "a new bloody conflict." In addition, he said his State was ready for a partnership, and enclosed a proposal "for the economic utilization of the diamonds of the Roosevelt River, to be explored by the Companhia de Mineração de Rondônia, CMR...". On October 3, the governor was received by minister Bastos. According to the Ministry of Justice's advisor for Indian affairs, Claudio Beirão, the governor's official letter was not taken into consideration. "It is an attempt to legalize an illegal situation", he said.

Mining is forbidden in Indigenous Lands; garimpagem (small scale prospecting), on the other hand, is allowed only if carried out by the Indians themselves and in a very different way from that practiced by the garimpeiros. In any case, the illegal extraction of diamonds contributes to corruption, money laundering and drug and arms trafficking in the region.

On October 9 was promulgated the Law nr. 10,743, by which Brazil has become legally accredited to obtain the Certificate of the Kimberley Process, an international mechanism of certification of origin of rough diamonds for export and import. However, the law's Article 2 determines that the Kimberley Process, when it comes to exports, is aimed at preventing the shipment of rough diamonds extracted from areas of conflict or from any area not legalized in the Departamento Nacional de Produção Mineral - National Department of Mineral Production - DNPM. A situation that fits with perfection in the case of the Cinta-Larga.

Contradictory versions

As if all this were not enough, yesterday afternoon (October 20) a small aircraft landed on the Roosevelt garimpo. It carried Mr. José Roberto Gonzalez, who presented himself as an employee of the Companhia de Mineração de Rondônia - Rondônia Mining Company -(CMR) and a member of the Minas Gerais NGO Centro Mineiro para Conservação da Natureza - Minas Gerais Center for Nature Conservancy - (CMCN). Funai officials from the city of Cacoal, in the State of Rondônia, were called by the Indians and Gonzalez was taken by the environmental police to the Federal Police office in Pimenta Bueno.

There, according to chief of police Fabiano Bordignon, Gonzalez declared that he went to the garimpo to hand in to the Indians a proposal in the name of the Companhia de Mineração de Rondônia. After that, he was liberated. This morning, officer Bordignon was hearing the pilot of the airplane that took Gonzalez to the garimpo. Contacted by the ISA, the president of the Companhia de Mineração de Rondônia (CMR), Leandra Vivian, who is also chief of cabinet of governor Ivo Cassol, confirmed that Gonzalez is the CMR's advisor for commercial affairs, but said she was not aware that he had been with the Cinta-Larga and had been taken to Pimenta Bueno. "I talked with him yesterday and today and was not informed of that", she claimed.

Thus if on the one hand this episode exemplifies that the case of the Cinta-Larga is still far from a solution that takes the law into account, on the other it also shows that the Indians are alert and that the Funai is present and following each chapter of this story, with the support of Rondônia's environmental police and the Federal Police.

A task force for the Cinta-Larga

Last year, after several attempts to remove invaders from the Cinta-Larga garimpos failed, an Emergency Plan was laid out by the Fundação Nacional do Índio - National Foundation for the Indian - (Funai) to create health, education and communication programs and to make a diagnostic of the area. "There was one main objective: the rescue of the Cinta-Larga dignity", says Walter Blós, Funai's administrator in Cacoal (State of Rondônia). The resources were liberated in November. The Federal Police, which was in the area, left at the Indians request, and by January 25 there was no garimpeiros left in the area. From January 30 until August 2 the garimpo remained closed.

Roadblocks were set up by Funai employees and Indians to prevent non-whites from coming in. In this period the Funai promoted a Cinta-Larga forum, with the presence of the Coordenação Indígena da Amazônia Brasileira - Indigenous Coordination of the Brazilian Amazonia - (Coiab), of the Conselho Indígena de Roraima - Indigenous Council of the State of Roraima - (CIR) and of several indigenous leaders from other States in the Brazilian Amazonia. The Cinta-Larga, in turn, have visited the State of Roraima to see how the Indian associations operate there. In the opinion of Walter Blós, this process has helped to strengthen the leadership of the Cinta-Larga true leaders. The Indians now feel more secure and their self-esteem has increased significantly.

ISA, Inês Zanchetta,
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