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Yanomami (Upper Orinoco) - 1994
Yanomami (Upper Orinoco) - 1994
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-17 16:33:34
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13,000 are believed to live in Venezuela but they too have been devastated by disease. Malnutrition is suddenly a problem for a people who used to flourish in the forest. There is little left to hunt and nothing to fish. The population has begun to grow slowly again but child mortality is 15 times that of the rest of Brazil.
In a sinister development, the garimpeiros are giving out guns and eight Yanomamis were shot to death by other Indians in the first half of 1997, taking traditional inter-village fighting into a new dimension of violence. "The Yanomamis face a very real risk of extinction from disease and violent conflict," Sullivan Silvestre, head of the Brazilian government's Indian Foundation (Funai), said. He said Funai was determined not to let the Yanomamis go the way of dozens of other Indian groups in Brazil that have been wiped out this century as farming, logging and mining interests swallowed up their traditional homelands. "They might live in the middle of the world's biggest Indian reservation but they need protection," Silvestre said.
In January, Brazil completed its fourth clearing out of garimpeiros from the reservation, a near-impossible task in an area the size of Portugal, blanketed in thick forest. Five hundred miners were arrested, many of them sick or starving, and another 250 gave themselves up, glad for the chance of an airlift out of the jungle. Dozens of landing strips were blocked with logs and equipment was seized. About 80 garimpeiros were believed to remain deep in the forest. Working by hand, without heavy equipment, they can slip away into the trees at the sound of approaching helicopters. But if the government's plan to control sales of aviation fuel works, they will be cut off from supplies, leaving them no option but a 30-day trudge back to Boa Vista, capital of remote Roraima state on Brazil's northern border with Venezuela.
The Yanomamis, who have seen the garimpeiros return after
...
See photographs from:
Brazil Gallery
,
Venezuela Gallery
