In Memory of Fallen Leaders in the Amazonian World
Exactly one month ago today, the Brazilian indigenous advisor and supporter, Bruno Araujo Pereira, and the Brazil based British journalist, Dom Phillips, were assassinated on the Itaqaí river, close to the Javari indigenous territory on the far west of the Brazilian Amazonas state.
The Javari territory is home to the largest number of isolated indigenous peoples in the world and is a unique ecological sanctuary larger than the island of Ireland. In the language of traditional Irish remembering of the deceased, today would be referred to as Bruno and Dom’s month’s mind, a religious and emotional celebration of their lives.
The two men were on their way to the small town of Atalaia do Norte and had two last stops to make: the first was to pick up an order of 20 oars for indigenous leaders, and the second was to dialogue with riverside fishermen about ongoing conflicts. The oars had not been made, and, tragically, the opportunity for dialogue gave way to ambush and death.
The first to perceive that something must have gone very wrong were Bruno’s indigenous colleagues, who themselves constantly receive threats from aggressive encroachers on their lands. They raised the alarm and immediately set out in search of their two friends who had not arrived at the appointed destination. Thanks to the persistent plea from the Javari indigenous association and their supporters, news of this most recent disappearance spread through national and international media. Only this time, the outcry gained greater momentum because one of the disappeared was a well-known international journalist who used his professional platform to expose the plight and abandonment of the world’s most ancient and most vulnerable peoples. He wanted to bring them and their struggles into visibility, despite concerted efforts to the contrary. He was finishing a book on “How to save the Amazon.”
A most powerful metaphor to capture the present situation of Brazilian environmental and indigenous policies, is one coined by Carmen Lucia Antunes Rocha of the Federal Supreme Court just a few months earlier. She was referring to the systematic corrosion of democratic institutions taking place under the present executive branch of government, through mismanagement, inefficient public policies, the dismantling of legal protections, and a failure to address the land tenure issue. She describes it as the “termiting”, or the gnawing away from within, of constitutional rights taking place under a veneer of legitimacy. The veneer is colored by ideologically fueled notions of a model of sovereignty which overrides global and planetary connectedness, by racist and hierarchical prejudices, by a colonizing economic model based on maximization of profit for power elites. It is buttressed and propagated by warped evangelical fundamentalism tied to the prosperity Gospel and the fiction of “development”.
(I was reminded of the way death threats are sent to certain social and environmental activist leaders in Manaus, Amazonas: “Watch out, or one of these days you will be found on Avenida Tarumã with termites creeping out your mouth.”)
The steady breakdown of the body, both individual and communal, through harassment and violence continues because of widespread impunity and disorder. Bruno and Dom witnessed, firsthand, the deliberate abandonment of ancient peoples and the ancient forests related to them. They actively and passionately became involved from the side of the victims, whose ecological conscience holds out against land grabbing and imposed “carbon trading” takeover of their habitats; against illegal fishing and mining; against massive deforestation, and with it, the progressive elimination of the forest communities. All of which, prepares the way for the takeover and expansion of agribusiness and the international investments tied to the food and agrotoxic industries.
The assassinations and disappearances of leaders, like Bruno and Dom, take place constantly and systematically. Some of the destruction make fleeting press headlines; most, however, falls away and outside the pale of national and international justice. Awareness and recognition by the outside world of the advancing eco and genocidal onslaught into the remotest heart of the Amazonian region is mostly absent. The international world economic order itself is unable to listen to the wisdom which has cared for the forests all this time.
The month’s mind is a moment to uphold memories and extend grief; it is also a recognition of how the goodness, generosity, and dreams of the departed continue to live on in the community. Just like one indigenous association explained during the ceremonial rituals for Bruno and Dom:
“Our sadness is as immense as the canopy of the forest, and our anger is strong as the root of the chestnut tree.
For our part, we will continue the fight, we are at war, we will not stop! When one falls, many others will take his/her place.