Article Author:
Associated Press
Fabiano Maisonave
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — In the Brazilian Amazon these days, it's nearly impossible to run for public office to speak about the environment.
A more common scenario is: A candidate for Congress parades a helicopter emblazoned with the Brazilian flag, a symbol of illegal gold mining, through the streets of the Amazonian city of Boa he Vista. He champions the gold rush that ravaged indigenous territories and polluted rivers. In a neighboring state, indigenous candidates stopped wearing green in public for fear of violence.
Like all Brazilians, residents of the vast Amazon region will elect governors and legislators in his October general elections. But as the campaign unfolds, few candidates and voters are talking about current record-breaking deforestation rates and other environmental issues.
Instead, many politicians made bolder promises to ease legal restrictions on gold mining, increase deforestation for agribusiness, and pave highways through forests. The few who operate on environmental platforms struggle with competition and face public animosity.
Amidst widespread poverty and a lack of economic opportunity other than to harm the environment, Amazon voters are facing a political challenge that sees the legal protection of the world's largest rainforest as a barrier to development. More and more support for the house.
According to a survey conducted by the website ((o)) eco news, most of Brazil's nine Amazon state legislators voted to ease environmental laws in his five We found that we voted yes on two major bills. To legalize the territory for mining and land robbery. In three of the votes, representatives from the Amazon region voted more in favor than representatives from other regions in Brazil.
He is 1 in 100
Today, out of 118 MPs representing the Amazon, he was the only one elected by the Social Environment Platform. Joenia Hupichana was the second indigenous leader in Brazilian history to be elected to parliament, but she is from Roraima, where indigenous people make up 11% of her population, the most in the country.
In her bid for reelection, one of her opponents was a gold prospector, Rodrigo her businessman named Martins de Mello, Using her helicopter as a trademark for the campaign. Airplanes are the only way to transport prospectors and equipment to remote indigenous reserves, such as those owned by the Yanomami people, the most illegal gold miners in Roraima.
"Boa he's the mining that brings money to Vista's business," Melo said through the microphone from the back of his pickup truck. Behind him advanced a much larger truck carrying a helicopter adorned with the Brazilian flag, which has become a symbol of support for far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
In a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Mello, who campaigns under the name Rodrigo Cataratas (Rodrigo Waterfall in English), promised to protect the rights of an estimated 40,000 prospectors.
The tendency to discount forest values is stronger in areas where European immigrants arrived in the 1960s and 70s. To attract people to the Amazon, the military government of the time built roads, turned a blind eye to the chaotic gold rush, and relinquished vast swaths of pristine rainforest inhabited by isolated indigenous peoples. Disease and displacement have pushed some groups to the brink of extinction.
In Rondonia, most of the cities were founded by immigrants from southern Brazil in his 1970s. Today, the state is one of the most deforested states in the Amazon, a major beef producer, and a growing soybean farm.
Last year, the Rondonia Parliament voted unanimously 17 to 0 to reduce protected areas by 2,200 sq km (850 sq miles larger than metropolitan London), to accommodate illegal cattle ranchers and to reduce tropical rainforests. Bolsonaro's loyal ally, Gov. Marcos Rocha, signed the law that allowed rainforests to be opened to agribusiness. It was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by a state court.
According to Ricardo Gilson, a geographer at the Federal University of Rondonia, much of the so-called deforestation arc, which includes dozens of cities, shares its cultural history. doing.
"This is a frontier society that transforms the natural landscape into an extractive economy: mining, cattle, crops, hydro-energy. Not a society that sees standing forest as a positive thing," he said.
To stand out in such a culture, Military Police Corporal Cairo Teixeira da Silva, who is running for Congress for the first time, is more radical than his competitors. I am proud of myself. His shirt has the Brazilian flag printed on it, and he recently appeared in a campaign video of him brandishing a rifle and promising to arm illegal prospectors from police raids.
"Fight the miners to get his T4 rifle to secure the dredger, the gold," he shouted and tapped his gun .
Why two of his Amazon rainforest advocates chose to leave the region entirely and run for Congress in the state of São Paulo, thousands of miles away, is historically This explains the small and declining support for the environment. They include indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara, who Time magazine has crowned him one of the world's most influential people, and her two-time senator-elected former minister from the Amazonian state of Acre. This is Marina Silva.
For Mario Mantovani, senior adviser to the Environmental Congressional Front, legislators who supported Bolsonaro had access to generous federal funds they could hand out, which allowed them to take environmental-based measures in Amazonian states. Running campaigns has become more difficult this year... as they choose.
"They've invested so much money in this region that it's hard to even come up with a strategy against them. It's a game played with marked cards. It will be gone and you won't be able to do anything," Mantovani said in a telephone interview with the AP.
In such a hostile environment, he said, it makes sense to run for election in São Paulo, where many people care about the Amazon.
Despite these possibilities, several lesser-known environmental candidates are vying for the Amazonian states, most of them indigenous leaders. Vanda Witoto is running for Congress in Amazonas. The state has eight seats, now all occupied by men, none from her party Rede, founded and led by former environment minister Marina Silva.
"It's a challenge as big as Amazon," Witoto told his AP by phone. ``We already have a threat background for the protection of the environment and indigenous peoples. A suburban nurse who has no net worth according to disclosure. Mello, whose main business is the air transportation of gold miners, has declared assets of $6.5 million.
Recently, during an expedition she Witoto was harassed by a car that followed her group for dozens of kilometers. She said it was because she and her supporters wore red hats associated with the landless movement in Brazil. was advised by indigenous leaders who supported her not to wear red or green to avoid attention from Bolsonaro's supporters. I am wearing it," she said.
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