In the Amazon of Brazil, it's nearly impossible these days to run for public office to speak about the environment.
A more common scene is this: Candidates for Congress fly through the streets of the Amazonian city of Boa in helicopters adorned with the Brazilian flag (illegal gold mining). symbol). Vista. He defends the gold rush that ravaged Indigenous territories and polluted rivers. stopped.
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 or 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.
With widespread poverty and a lack of economic opportunities other than damaging the environment, voters in the Amazon are facing political challenges that see the legal protection of the world's largest rainforest as a barrier to development. More and more support for the house.
A survey conducted by the website ((o))eco news found that most legislators in Brazil's nine Amazon states are easing environmental laws, from opening up indigenous territories to mining and legalizing them. I found that I voted YES on five major bills that would. Land grab. 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 is the second indigenous leader in Brazilian history to be elected to parliament, but she is from the state of Roraima, where indigenous people make up 11% of her population, the most in the country.
In her bid for re-election, one of her opponents was a gold prospector and Rodrigo her businessman named Martins de Mello, a trademark of the campaign. used a helicopter as Aircraft are the only way to transport prospectors and equipment to remote indigenous reserves such as those owned by the Yanomami people, where most of the illegal gold mining in Roraima takes place.
"Boa he's mining that brings money to Vista's commerce," said Melo through a 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 the 40,000 prospectors he estimated.
The tendency to downplay the value of forests was 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.
Rondoniawas the case, most of the city was built in the 1970s by immigrants from southern Brazil. Today, the state is one of the Amazon's most deforested states, 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 mi 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 the 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.
"This is a frontier society that transforms the natural landscape into an extractive economy, such as mining, cattle, crops and hydro-energy. It is not a society that sees standing forests as a positive thing," he says. told AP. For the first time for Congress, he pitches himself as being more radical than his competitors. 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.
"I fight like a miner has his T4 rifle to secure a dredger, his gold," he shouted, tapping 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 Seeing environmental support is small and declining. 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 create environmentally-based policies in Amazonian states. Running a campaign has gotten harder 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. You won't be able to," Mantovani said in his AP telephone interview.
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 environmentalists are vying for the Amazonian state, mostly 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. is a nurse living in the suburbs of Manaus 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 tens 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 support her not to wear red or green to avoid attention from Bolsonaro supporters. she said.
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