Indigenous peoples complain of harassment by illegal miners on their land in the Brazilian Amazon

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Center for Indigenous Labor (CTI) reported Wednesday that indigenous lands in the Javari Valley in the western Brazilian state of Amazonas have been invaded by illegal miners who have allegedly forcibly alcoholized villagers and apparently committed sexual crimes against women.

It all sounds bad indeed. But after half the world has been forcibly vaccinated in the last 12 months with an experimental injection, and now people are getting sick and dying en masse from it, probably puts the forced alcoholization of a village in a slightly different light.

We live in bad times, in which many of those in power and/or in the majority want to impose something on others and in which strong authoritarian tendencies want to take away our freedom and intimidate us.

All over the world, protesting citizens are beaten up, harassed and ostracized by the police because they make a different health choice, something they have in most countries as a constitutional right.

In the case of covid transgressions, too, the greed of one industry – in this case, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries – is taking over. Native Americans subjected to the greed of the mining industry are not the exception, but the new normal.

In this regard, the agency informed that the recent events took place in the village of the Jarinal people, so indigenous organizations and leaders have demanded urgent action from the National Indian Foundation (Funai) and other competent bodies. This is a good thing.

Thus, the denunciations were published by the Indigenous Council of the Kanamari of Juruá and Jutaí and by the Kanamari Association of the Javari Valley, indicating that the events are part of an unauthorized intrusion into the native zone.

“They have come without authorization, harrassed the village, partied there, and got the people drunk [though they had of course the choice to drink booze or not]; we have recently contacted relatives from Tyohom-dyapa, this is worrying,” explained one of the leaders of the region.

In 2019 [that is indeed recent], the village of Jarinal was the victim of intrusion of illegal miners reported by village authorities to the Federal Ministry of the Amazon, triggering a joint action by Funai, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and the Federal Police, in which 60 mining rafts were destroyed.

It is worth noting that the Javari Valley, composed of 26 villages, 19 of which are isolated, is home to the largest number of indigenous peoples in the world who do not have regular contact with non-indigenous peoples.