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Yanomami (Upper Orinoco) - 1994

Yanomami (Upper Orinoco) - 1994

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-17 16:33:34

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after each of the government's three previous removals, think this time they might be gone for good. "I don't think the garimpeiros will be back. They are very greedy men. They accept any sacrifice. But this time they won't return," a teen-age boy said, speaking through a translator. Around him stood the remains of what a few days earlier had been a bustling garimpeiro settlement: rough huts made from freshly cut branches, a makeshift bar and a litter of discarded pumps and hoses abandoned in the rush of the government raid.

In Boa Vista, too, where a statue of a panhandler stands proudly at the center of the main square, the opinion is that the garimpeiros have had their day. In Rua de Ouro, or Gold Street, men who once handled a pound (.45 kg) of the precious metal every day now chat in empty shops. The only things they buy these days are television sets from garimpeiros moving on. "Things have never been as bad," vendor Gentil Barros said. "When the government went in before, things would pick up afterwards. Now they've struck the heart of the business."

He remembered the good times, when a flood of poor migrants from the underdeveloped northeast, along with fortune-seekers from around the world, made Boa Vista Brazil's fastest-growing city. Now he plans to go back into his previous business as a middleman in the cashew nut business. There is one glimmer of hope for the dreamers of gold. A bill written by a local congressman and awaiting a final vote in the faraway capital Brasilia proposes a radical rethink of Brazil's Indian policy. It would allow mining companies access to reservations that are currently off limits.

Sen. Romero Juca shrugs off protests by alarmed Indian groups. For centuries, tribes have been at the mercy of garimpeiros and loggers, he argues, so why not regulate the industries and let the Indians reap the benefits as royalties? Mining companies are already interested in some areas of the Yanomamis' vast reservation where there are rich deposits of bauxite as well as gold. Juca believes they can operate without disturbing the Indians. In any case, he said, the Yanomamis themselves could veto the projects.

"When Indian people have stood against progress they have been mowed down as if by a charging locomotive," the senator said. "It's not a question of integrating Indian society into our society, it's a matter of allowing the two to interact." Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, one of only a handful of Yanomamis with experience of the world beyond the forest, has a different view of the future. Backed by non-governmental organizations, he has traveled the world to warn of his people's demise. "My people are like children, we are not ready for this bill," he said. "We do not want to be tricked." Kopenawa believes the Yanomamis' only hope of survival lies in education. Already children in some villages are learning customs their parents no longer practice. Then they are taught Portuguese.

"Half of my people have already died," he said. "If we lose our language then we lose everything."