In the late morn­ing of June 4th, two air force planes descend­ed upon the cap­i­tal city of Brasília, car­ry­ing aboard an unusu­al group of pas­sen­gers: over 140 indige­nous peo­ple, main­ly mem­bers of the Munduruku tribe from the Tapa­jós Riv­er – includ­ing lead­ers, war­riors, women and chil­dren – along with a small num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Xin­gu tribes – Xikrin, Arara, Kayapó. For the indige­nous del­e­ga­tion, the pur­pose of the trip, nego­ti­at­ed dur­ing the lat­est occu­pa­tion of the Belo Monte Dam site, was to meet with Min­is­ter Gilber­to Car­val­ho, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the President’s Office, to dis­cuss their demands for con­sul­ta­tions and con­sent regard­ing a series of mega-dams on the Tapa­jós, Teles Pires and Xin­gu rivers, planned and, in some cas­es, under (ille­gal) con­struc­tion.

Munduruku child

By Jam­i­lye Salles

Dur­ing a four-hour meet­ing held the same day, the Munduruku voiced their con­cerns and out­rage over threats posed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s ambi­tious dam-build­ing spree in the Xin­gu and Tapa­jós basins, autho­rized with­out any process of free, pri­or and informed con­sul­ta­tions and con­sent, as man­dat­ed by the Brazil­ian Con­sti­tu­tion and inter­na­tion­al agree­ments such as ILO Con­ven­tion 169. At the end of the meet­ing, the main pro­pos­al put for­ward by Min­is­ter Car­val­ho was to orga­nize anoth­er meet­ing in a Munduruku vil­lage after a peri­od of 30 days. As Car­val­ho left the meet­ing, he stat­ed unequiv­o­cal­ly to a group of reporters that while open to dia­logue with indige­nous peo­ples, the “gov­ern­ment is not going to give up on its projects.” Inter­est­ing­ly, the Min­is­ter was refer­ring to pro­posed mega-dams such as São Luiz do Tapa­jós whose envi­ron­men­tal impact and eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty stud­ies have yet to be final­ized and approved.

“What the gov­ern­ment wants, we do not want. They want to say that they will build dams on our land and then see what we want in return. And we do not want any­thing in return. We want our riv­er free and our nature pre­served” stat­ed indige­nous leader Valdenir Mundurukú.“The Min­is­ter says he wants to con­sult with indige­nous peo­ples, but that the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion to build the dams has already been made. What kind of con­sul­ta­tion is that?”

Min­is­ter of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at of the Pres­i­den­cy of Brazil, Gilber­to Car­val­ho, speaks to Munduruku Indi­ans dur­ing a meet­ing at the Planal­to Palace

REUTERS/Ueslei Marceli­no

Car­val­ho’s advi­sors attempt­ed to con­vince the indige­nous del­e­ga­tion to return home to the state of Pará the fol­low­ing morn­ing, argu­ing that this was part of the agree­ment around their trip to Brasília and that planes were await­ing them at a near­by air force base. Munduruku and Xin­gu lead­ers respond­ed that there had been no such agree­ment, and they did not intend to return to their vil­lages with­out con­crete results from their time in Brasília.

The next morn­ing, the Munduruku and Xin­gu rep­re­sen­ta­tives assem­bled in the Praça dos Três Poderes, adja­cent to the Pres­i­den­tial Palace, Brazil­ian Con­gress and Supreme Court. There, they were greet­ed by lead­ers of the Ter­e­na peo­ple, who had trav­eled to Brasília to demand the demar­ca­tion of their lands and a full inves­ti­ga­tion into the killing of Osiel Gabriel, a Ter­e­na killed by the fed­er­al police in a land con­flict involv­ing ranch­ers in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. As the Ter­e­na lead­ers depart­ed for a meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, the Munduruku and Xin­gu rep­re­sen­ta­tives pro­ceed­ed in the direc­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial Palace with the goal of deliv­er­ing a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff that includ­ed a request for a meet­ing. How­ev­er, a large secu­ri­ty force assem­bled a bar­ri­cade, phys­i­cal­ly pre­vent­ing the indige­nous peo­ple from reach­ing the entrance to the palace. The let­ter to Dil­ma was nev­er deliv­ered. The del­e­ga­tion then walked to the main entrance of the Brazil­ian Con­gress where they per­son­al­ly deliv­ered a let­ter to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Padre Ton, chair­man of a con­gres­sion­al cau­cus in sup­port of indige­nous peo­ples.

Munduruku child at demon­stra­tion in front of Pres­i­den­tial Palace

By Brent Mil­likan

Fol­low­ing the deci­sion to extend their stay in Brasília, the indige­nous del­e­ga­tion was informed by Min­is­ter Car­val­ho’s staff that his office would not pro­vide addi­tion­al lodg­ing, food or trans­porta­tion in Brasília. As a result, the del­e­ga­tion moved to a com­pound on the out­skirts of Brasília oper­at­ed by CIMI, one of the pro­gres­sive arms of the Catholic Church that sup­ports indige­nous peo­ples. After a few days, they need­ed to find anoth­er place to stay because the CIMI com­pound was already reserved for a large event. The new Pres­i­dent of FUNAI (the gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion tasked with indige­nous affairs), Maria Augus­ta Assir­ati, told CIMI and the indige­nous del­e­ga­tion that her agency would resolve the prob­lem. When a solu­tion failed to mate­ri­al­ize, the Munduruku and Xin­gu rep­re­sen­ta­tives decid­ed to occu­py FUNAI head­quar­ters in the cen­ter of Brasília.

Munduruku protest out­side the Min­istry of Mines and Ener­gy

By Brent Mil­likan

The Munduruku and their Xin­gu allies sub­se­quent­ly staged an impres­sive protest at the entrance of the Min­istry of Mines and Ener­gy – de-fac­to head­quar­ters of the Brazil­ian dam indus­try – that includ­ed singing and danc­ing. The del­e­ga­tion for­mal­ly request­ed meet­ings with Joaquim Bar­bosa and Felix Fis­ch­er, chief jus­tices of the Fed­er­al Supreme Court (STF) and Supe­ri­or Court of Jus­tice (STJ), respec­tive­ly, to dis­cuss out­stand­ing law­suits regard­ing lack of pri­or con­sul­ta­tions in the cas­es of Belo Monte and the Tapa­jos dams. Nei­ther request was grant­ed.

On June 12^th, Brazil’s most well-known indige­nous leader,Chief Raoni, trav­eled to Brasília to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Mundurukú, one of the main out­comes of a meet­ing just orga­nized among the Kayapó of the Xin­gu Basin. In the past, the Kayapó and Mundurukú occa­sion­al­ly engaged in con­flicts, which made Chief Raoni’s pres­ence an even more his­toric event, unit­ing com­mu­nites with a com­mon goal of defend­ing their ter­ri­to­ries and rights against destruc­tive dam projects.

Munduruku war­rior in front of Brazil­ian Con­gress

By Brent Mil­likan

Through­out their stay in Brasil­ia, the Munduruku and Xin­gu rep­re­sen­ta­tives insist­ed that the gov­ern­ment hon­or the issue of con­sent: i.e. that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should lis­ten to indige­nous peo­ples and respect their deci­sion. This is pre­cise­ly what the admin­is­tra­tions of Lula and Dil­ma Rouss­eff have not done, bla­tant­ly flout­ing the Brazil­ian Con­sti­tu­tion and inter­na­tion­al agree­ments regard­ing indige­nous peo­ples’ rights while inter­ven­ing in fed­er­al courts to ensure the rule of law is not upheld.

Last Thurs­day, the Munduruku and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Xin­gu returned to the state of Pará after nine days in Brasil­ia, vow­ing to con­tin­ue the strug­gle. “Our fight has just begun. We’re return­ing to our com­mu­ni­ties where we will strength­en our­selves and cre­ate alliances with oth­er indige­nous peo­ples so that, togeth­er, we can fight this desre­spect of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for our cul­ture, our beliefs and our rights” stat­ed Valdenir Mundurukú, short­ly before the group embarked on air force planes for the long voy­age home.

21 June 2013, On Fri­day, May 24, Berta Cac­eres, the Gen­er­al Coor­di­na­tor of the Indige­nous Lenca orga­ni­za­tion COPINH, and Tomas Gomez of COPINH’s com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion, were trav­el­ing on rur­al dirt roads to reach the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co when they were stopped by 15–20 sol­diers. The whole area had been mil­i­ta­rized just two weeks before in response to the area-wide mobi­liza­tion against a hydro­elec­tric dam being ille­gal­ly built in the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co. The First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers, com­mand­ed by an SOA grad­u­ate, occu­pied the area to pro­tect the inter­ests of the com­pa­ny and enable dam con­struc­tion to con­tin­ue in direct vio­la­tion of ILO Con­ven­tion 169 and the will of the com­mu­ni­ties in the area.

Despite the military’s pres­ence, evic­tions, sab­o­tage to COPINH’s vehi­cle, death threats against com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, and intim­i­da­tion, the resis­tance to the dam con­tin­ued to grow as the Rio Blan­co com­mu­ni­ty neared 2 months of block­ing the dam entrance. When Berta and Tomas drove the wind­ing dirt roads to Rio Blan­co on May 24, as they had many times before in COPINH’s now well-rec­og­nized vehi­cle, the mil­i­tary was wait­ing for them. They were on an iso­lat­ed dirt road, where any­thing that occurred would be the word of at least 15 sol­diers against that of Berta and Tomas. The COPINH lead­ers were ordered to stop and get out of the car. The sol­diers pro­ceed­ed to search their vehi­cle in detail, even pok­ing their fin­gers in the engine, and found noth­ing. How­ev­er, that did not mat­ter in their pre-planned oper­a­tion to crim­i­nal­ize Berta and weak­en the strug­gle against the Agua Zarca dam: they sim­ply claimed to have found a gun and then called the police, who took Berta and Tomas to jail. Berta was arrest­ed and kept in jail overnight, final­ly being con­di­tion­al­ly released after dozens of inter­na­tion­al phone calls inquir­ing for her safe­ty. But first, she was charged with “ille­gal­ly car­ry­ing weapons,” a charge that can result in time in prison. Sub­se­quent­ly, she was also charged with attempt­ing against the inter­nal secu­ri­ty of the state of Hon­duras.

Two-time SOA grad­u­ate Col. Mil­ton Amaya, the Com­man­der of the First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers, made accu­sa­tions about Berta Cac­eres to the press, result­ing in sev­er­al news arti­cles that claim the well-known social move­ment leader was ille­gal­ly armed. This is part of a broad­er strat­e­gy by the mil­i­tary and Hon­duran oli­garchy to crim­i­nal­ize and defame social move­ments by paint­ing them as armed or oper­at­ing out­side the law.

In the case of COPINH, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion and defama­tion of Berta Cac­eres by the mil­i­tary was aimed at break­ing the community’s resis­tance to the hydro­elec­tric dam – thus enabling pow­er­ful multi­na­tion­al inter­ests to prof­it from the Rio Blan­co community’s care­ful­ly stew­ard­ed nat­ur­al resources.  Con­fi­den­tial sources report­ed that the com­pa­ny felt that by “tak­ing her (Berta) down, the oth­ers will break.” In a telling indi­ca­tion of the true motives behind Berta’s arrest, the Hon­duran dai­ly news­pa­per El Tiem­po report­ed that Col. Amaya “accused Cac­eres of ral­ly­ing the Indige­nous pop­u­la­tion of the area known as Rio Blan­co… to reject the con­struc­tion of the Agua Zarca hydro­elec­tric dam.”

The pow­er­ful inter­ests behind the project and their influ­ence in the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment was evi­dent when the pros­e­cu­tor against Berta was changed from the local office in San­ta Bar­bara to the Nation­al Procu­raduria Gen­er­al de la Repub­li­ca, which request­ed that Berta be impris­oned while await­ing tri­al. How­ev­er, what the pow­ers at be did­n’t count on was the wide­spread sup­port for Berta Cac­eres by Hon­duran social move­ments and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions. On June 13, out­side the cour­t­house where a hear­ing against Berta held, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from over 40 orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered to demand an end to the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Berta and COPINH. Nobel Peace Prize win­ner Adol­fo Pérez Esquiv­el held a press con­fer­ence in Argenti­na and orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als from across the Amer­i­c­as con­tact­ed the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment and released state­ments call­ing for Berta’s free­dom.

On June 13, the hear­ing dragged on, with two recess­es, the sec­ond post­pon­ing the res­o­lu­tion to the end of the day. How­ev­er, those gath­ered out­side the cour­t­house to demand Berta’s free­dom refused to leave. It was report­ed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­pa­nies build­ing the hydro­elec­tric dam had gone drink­ing with the judge in the days pri­or to the hear­ing, but this time their efforts to sway the eas­i­ly cor­rupt­ible Hon­duran jus­tice sys­tem were not enough. There was no evi­dence against Berta, numer­ous irreg­u­lar­i­ties in her arrest, and the two sol­diers who tes­ti­fied about sup­pos­ed­ly find­ing a weapon con­tra­dict­ed each oth­er sev­er­al times in their tes­ti­mo­ny.

In the Hon­duran judi­cial sys­tem, lack of evi­dence isn’t a prob­lem when there is a polit­i­cal motive for a con­vic­tion, but this time it seems the polit­i­cal cost of lock­ing up a wide­ly known and respect­ed leader with sup­port from across the con­ti­nent was too much. After tak­ing recess­es to sure­ly con­sult with the pow­ers at be, instead of order­ing a tri­al and send­ing Berta to prison in the mean­time, the judge “pro­vi­sion­al­ly dis­missed” the charges. Those stand­ing vig­il out­side the cour­t­house cel­e­brat­ed the news of Berta’s free­dom and the fail­ure of the mil­i­tary’s efforts to jail her. The pro­vi­sion­al part means that the pros­e­cu­tor has 5 years to present new evi­dence but is clear to all involved there will be nation­al and inter­na­tion­al push­back to any attempt to fab­ri­cate charges.

How­ev­er, the pow­er­ful inter­ests behind the project are not giv­ing up. Fol­low­ing the court’s deci­sion not to jail Berta, there were new death threats against her and oth­er COPINH and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. It is report­ed that some­one was paid to mur­der Berta this week and there are indi­ca­tions they may try to crim­i­nal­ize oth­er lead­ers. The First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers con­tin­ues to occu­py the zone, lit­er­al­ly pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests rather than the pop­u­la­tion. COPINH has denounced that sol­diers have even dri­ven com­pa­ny machin­ery to try to cus­to­di­an the machin­ery past the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ty’s block­ade. On June 11, when many in the com­mu­ni­ty were away for a mobi­liza­tion, sol­diers and police phys­i­cal­ly destroyed the road­block. They then attempt­ed to accom­pa­ny employ­ees of DESA and SINOHYDRO past the block­ade but the small group of women and chil­dren present refused to let the com­pa­ny in. On June 16, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers report that 150 sol­diers and police arrived at the Rio Blan­co block­ade, sev­er­al trav­el­ing in com­pa­ny vehi­cles as they often do. Again the com­mu­ni­ty refused to move, refus­ing to let the com­pa­ny advance in ille­gal­ly build­ing a dam in their ter­ri­to­ry.

The Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ties are up against very pow­er­ful inter­ests who want their ter­ri­to­ry – in vio­la­tion of their right to the land that has belonged to their com­mu­ni­ty for cen­turies, which they have care­ful­ly stew­ard­ed and plan to pass onto their chil­dren. One of the prin­ci­pal investors in the dam is the Hon­duran Bank FICOHSA, whose pres­i­dent is Cami­lo Ata­la, is an extreme­ly pow­er­ful busi­ness­man iden­ti­fied as one of the “intel­lec­tu­al authors and financers of the coup d’etat.” FICOHSA also exer­cis­es sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal pow­er because they pur­chased Hon­duras’ inter­nal debt after the 2009 mil­i­tary coup. The World Bank and Cen­tral Amer­i­can Bank for Eco­nom­ic Inte­gra­tion are also key investors. A Chi­nese state com­pa­ny, SINOHYDRO, which is the largest hydropow­er com­pa­ny in the world is work­ing on the project. As Berta Cac­eres explains, “we are con­fronting an oli­garchic, bank­ing, finan­cial, and transna­tion­al pow­er, as well as the State of Hon­duras itself and its repres­sive forces, which have his­tor­i­cal­ly aligned them­selves with the inter­ests of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.”

The crim­i­nal­iza­tion and mil­i­ta­riza­tion faced by COPINH and the Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties of Rio Blan­co takes place in the con­text of increas­ing crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Hon­duran social move­ments, espe­cial­ly those who are defend­ing their nat­ur­al resources as the right-wing gov­ern­ment ush­ered in by the mil­i­tary coup lit­er­al­ly sells off the coun­try to multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the Hon­duran oli­garchy.

Take action: Click here to e‑mail the World Bank, the US Embassy in Hon­duras, and the Hon­duran author­i­ties, urg­ing them to end the mil­i­ta­riza­tion and crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the Rio Blan­co strug­gle and respect for ILO Con­ven­tion 169 and the right of the Indige­nous Lenca com­mu­ni­ties of Rio Blan­co to decide whether or not they want a hydro­elec­tric dam built on their ter­ri­to­ry.