Brazilian tribal opposition to Belo Monte dam

A Kayapó Indi­an leader has appealed for sup­port for his tribe, which is cam­paign­ing against the Belo Monte dam on the Xin­gu riv­er in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon. He said, ‘I have always pre­vent­ed my peo­ple from fight­ing, but I am very wor­ried now. It is time that we take back what belongs to us’. He added that ‘3,000 war­riors’ are ready to take up arms.

A Kayapó Indi­an leader has appealed for sup­port for his tribe, which is cam­paign­ing against the Belo Monte dam on the Xin­gu riv­er in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon. He said, ‘I have always pre­vent­ed my peo­ple from fight­ing, but I am very wor­ried now. It is time that we take back what belongs to us’. He added that ‘3,000 war­riors’ are ready to take up arms.

If con­struct­ed, the dam would be the third largest in the world and it would flood a large area of land, dry up cer­tain parts of the Xin­gu riv­er, cause huge dev­as­ta­tion to the rain­for­est and reduce fish stocks upon which Indi­ans in the area depend for their sur­vival.

The influx of immi­grants to the region dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the dam threat­ens to intro­duce vio­lence to the area and bring dis­eases to these Indi­ans, putting their lives at risk.

The Indi­ans have orga­nized many protests against the dam. Most recent­ly, they have block­ad­ed a fer­ry which cross­es the Xin­gu riv­er and are plan­ning to form a ‘mul­ti-eth­nic com­mu­ni­ty’ which will occu­py the area where the dam is due to be built, in the ‘Big Bend’ of the Xin­gu riv­er.

Raoni and oth­er Indi­an lead­ers stat­ed, ‘We do not accept the Belo Monte hydro­elec­tric dam because we under­stand that it will bring more destruc­tion to our region… more cor­po­ra­tions, more ranch­es, more land inva­sions, more con­flicts, and even more dams. If the white man con­tin­ues to car­ry on like this, every­thing will be destroyed very quick­ly… We already warned the gov­ern­ment that if Belo Monte were built, they would have war on their hands’.

Kayapó leader Megaron Txu­car­ramãe, in a let­ter to the inter­na­tion­al press, said, ‘We want the plans to build the Belo Monte dam to be can­celed… Lula has shown him­self to be the Indi­ans’ num­ber one enemy…We Indi­ans are being seri­ous­ly aban­doned, since we Indi­ans, the first inhab­i­tants of this coun­try, are being neglect­ed by Lula’s gov­ern­ment which wants to destroy us’.

Brazil’s Pub­lic Prosecutor’s Office is call­ing for the license for the dam to be can­celed, stat­ing that the envi­ron­men­tal impact stud­ies were incom­plete, and that the Indi­ans and oth­er peo­ple who will be affect­ed were not prop­er­ly con­sult­ed.

Indi­ans and activists marched against Ama­zon mega-dam in April