by Minerva Vitti

A forest in agony, that’s what Brazil’s Amazonia is. Called the “lung of the planet,” that name may cease, at any moment, to be an appropriate description. No longer can we drink its waters or fish therein for they are poisoned. Mammals, reptiles, birds – all are disappearing. The riches that make Amazonia what it is are under constant threat from drug-trafficking, militarization of communities and borders, exploitation of natural resources, and now, bio-piracy, the practice by which big companies from rich countries create medicinal and cosmetic products out of Amazonia’s botanical treasures. The pressures and assaults on nature are unending; indigenous peoples are struggling to preserve their identity; innocent people are killed for a piece of land. And Amazonia is no longer so green.

This area is also populated by those who live on the banks of the rivers and by the poor who exist on the margins of the cities. A transnational reality now encompasses Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana – nine of the thirteen countries that make up South America.

Spanish Jesuit Fernando López has been carrying out his mission on the waters of the Amazon River and in the thick jungle forests since 1998. He is part of an itinerant team (‘equipo itinerante’) consisting of some twenty persons and fifteen institutions. The team has two working groups: one, called “Trinity,” is located in Manaus, and the other, called “Three Borders,” is based in the critical zone where three countries meet: Tabatinga (Brazil), Leticia (Colombia) and Santa Rosa (Peru).

The missionaries live in the same way in simple houses built on stilts, just like the people of the communities in which they are located. The specific aims of the itinerant team include getting to know what daily life is like for the people, offering advice whenever the special skills of team members are needed, helping to form communities, establishing and strengthening ties of solidarity with non-governmental organizations in the area, and studying and analyzing topics of interest for the people and the region. The team also seeks to record, systematize, analyze, and publicize the experiences and the histories of the communities and the team itself.

According to López, “the political borders, which were established in Latin America and Amazonia during the 16th century, have divided many indigenous peoples. … The divergent public policies of each country in relation to the native peoples do nothing to help those peoples become more integrated and strengthened. Rather, the policies tend to divide and weaken them, often to the point of extinction.”

In Amazonia the land has a fundamental value for the communities because it constitutes their future. “We are caretakers of the realm of nature, so that our children and the children of our children can dance upon the earth” – that is indigenous logic.

Nevertheless, the din of power saws and tractors is gradually taking the place of ‘purahei’ or birdsong. The vast lands of the indigenous peoples are being reduced to tiny, unprotected islands. The Amazon forests are being converted into grasslands. The cattle ranches and the sugar cane plantations are considered more important than the lives of the native peoples. The new element fertilizing the land is human blood.

López reports what happened last September, in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, a few kilometers from the Paraguay border: “Two villages of the Kaiowa Guaraní were burned: Laranjeira Ñande Ru on 14 September and Apyka’i on 18 September. The women were beaten, and a Guaraní man was wounded by gunshot. … The Guaraní people were assaulted and evicted, and forced to live in fragile shelters made of black plastic, set up between the fences of the ranches and the asphalt of the highways.”

López insists that there is an urgent need to protect the natural resources of Amazonia. Otherwise, in a very short time there will be nothing left for anybody. Meanwhile, the pressures and attacks continue, and people keep dying. The Brazilian jungle is no longer so green, and the indigenous populations ask themselves: “Can it be that Tupãna (God) made a mistake in creating these tribes of ours in Amazonia?”

Minerva Vitti
Assistant for Communication and Advocacy
Jesuit Refugee Service in Latin America and the Caribbean