October 1, 2012
I thought today I would reserve some blog
space for a discussion about the local natives.
Often, while walking around town, I have come upon a small group of
native Indians from the Xikrin or Kayapo tribes, and our interpreters and drivers
have pointed them out also. The group I
have seen has about twenty members, about 18 of which are women and children.
Short, dark as coffee beans with large upper bodies, proud faces and short
legs, several women carry babies wrapped in blankets tied around their
shoulders and hips. They come into town in the back of a large flat deck, all
sitting in the back. I have only seen
two men, one with his face tattooed, and the other one quite disabled and
walking with a cane. I suspect they have
seen their share of changes in their lives.
The ground I am sitting on as I type this was undeveloped jungle only
seven years ago. The town I am staying in is no older. It sprung up to support
the smelter and is still badly in need of infrastructure. Few streets are paved, raw sewage runs green
and grey down the sides of the dirt roads, and the ditches are filled with
litter. Dead animals lay stinking on the
road and are not removed by the state; they gradually disappeared as they are
ground to a pulp by passing vehicles and picked at by scavengers. The
surrounding jungle has been selectively logged leaving scattered stands of palm trees. All the undergrowth has been hacked back to
allow for cattle grazing and every day, piles of dried tropical waste is burned
in fires with heavy smoke spiralling heavenward.
But getting back to the natives, theirs is a plight common to all conquered lands and peoples. The
conquerors push forward leaving the conquered in their dust. I was talking about this very subject with a
friend from Uraguay and he said, “We don’t have a native problem, but we killed
them all off.” As convenient as that
may have been, it didn’t quite work here though there have been massacres here in this area for hundreds of
years. As recent as April 17, 1996,
military police opened fire on a road block set up by natives at Eldorado de
Caraja, just east of here.
The Indians, frustrated by constant
encroachment by foreigners ever since the Portuguese first arrived here over
400 years ago, blockaded a road in the hopes of getting attention for their
plight. They got the attention they wanted but 19 of them died and many more
were wounded (New York Times April 21, 1996) when they were shot. Just
20 years earlier, just on the other side of the Araguaia River, 70 “Camponeses”
started a protest and began a walk to the capital though they didn’t get
far. The Brazilian army scattered them, hunted
them down, killed them one by one, beheading several of them (for the purposes
of identification because it was too difficult to remove corpses through the
dense jungle).
I don’t know what the answer to all this is. I
do think, and I’m talking about natives in all countries including Canada, that they would have more to gain from being
integrated into general society, rather than being segregated. Even if we throw money, alcohol, and flat
screen tvs at them, they lose the self respect that comes from contributing to
society, from earning one’s way. I say they should be given a reasonable amount
of time, and the resources (health care, education, opportunity) to integrate
into society, get a job and start paying taxes. By all means, maintain their
culture just like the Polish, or Italians, or Doukhobours do. It might take a
full generation or two to get them back on track but it’s taken ten generations
to screw them up so bad in the first place.
That’s just my two-bits on the subject.
