Analysis: Mining and prospecting dispute area larger than Belgium within Yanomami land

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Recent attacks by miners in the Palimiú region are only the tip of the iceberg in a territory where over 3 million hectares are formally claimed by miners, in 500 petitions registered with Brazil’s National Mining Agency (ANM).

Rifle shots, gas bombs, threats – indigenous people of Yanomami land, a vast territory in the heart of the Amazon, have spent the last month under attack by miners.

Since May 10, when 7 boats opened fire on dozens of indigenous people sitting on the banks of the Uraricoera river, not a week has gone by without new threats being registered. The most recent occurred on June 17, when miners sank a canoe with children on board, forced to swim to safety from the attack.

Information collected by the Amazon Socio-environmental Information Network (RAISG), shows 43 active mining sites on the Uraricoera river, which begins near the border with Venezuela and reaches almost as far as Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, with the village of Palimiú as a sort of geographic center. The community has become the epicenter of the war on illegal mining after its inhabitants decided to intercept the river supply route to the camps.

Now, data from Amazônia Minada, an InfoAmazonia project monitoring mining requests in protected Amazon areas, uncovers another facet of this conflict. The Yanomami TI, a vast territory of almost 10 million hectares divided between Amazonas and Roraima, is the Brazilian indigenous land with the largest area formally requested for mining.

Some 3.3 million hectares (34.3% of the total area of the TI) are claimed for mineral extraction in 500 petitions registered with ANM – a land area larger than Belgium (3 million hectares) or the state of Alagoas (2.7 million hectares) disputed by miners. Almost a third of all these registered applications are for gold mining.

Palimiú is besieged by claims and the Uraricoera river itself, from where the miners attack, is entirely covered by mining protocols registered with ANM.

The wealth of the subsoil of the Yanomami Indigenous Land is such that its total area requested for mining exceeds even the sum of all other requests for mineral extraction on indigenous lands. This means that no other region in Brazil is under such fierce dispute with this segment.

These petitions cannot prosper because there is still no law in Brazil authorizing mineral exploration on demarcated indigenous lands. That said, they remain untouched, in anticipation of a legislative change, which has grown with the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro to the Planalto Palace in 2019.

“The president has said he would fight for releasing mining in demarcated territories. He also supports mining, which is why miners have planes, fuel, machinery, very heavy weapons,” criticizes Dario Kopenawa Yanomami, vice president of the Hutukara Yanomami Association, which publicly represents the ethnic group in lawsuits or in direct contact with public bodies.

Prospecting and mining, legacies of the military dictatorship

The intensification of attacks in recent months has prompted a special effort by the Yanomami. Lacking effective measures from authorities, the Indians decided to monitor their territory on their own, in order to prevent new attacks. “Our people know how to protect themselves in a war and this is what we are doing now. We know where the enemy is,” the leader said.

On June 14, the Ministry of Justice authorized the deployment of the National Force to contain the conflict in the region, but until this article was completed, no action had been taken.

The experience of indigenous people with the war against gold mining is long. It began in the 1970s, when the military dictatorship released the first mineral mapping of the region, the Radam project, which soon attracted at least 500 prospectors to the territory, not yet formally recognized by Brazil as indigenous land (which only happened in 1992).

At the height of this rush for the subsoil riches, the region had some 40,000 prospectors – almost double the current indigenous population. “This is an old problem, in the 1980s, when I was a child, my father was the one who stood up to the 40,000 miners here,” recalls Dario, heir of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesperson for the people for decades.

It was this mineral mapping promoted by the dictatorship that awakened desires for the riches in the Amazon subsoil. In 1986, an airstrip opened by the Ministry of Aeronautics was the missing link in the boom of illegal activities in the area – it provided direct access to 50 mines in the heart of the forest, according to geographer Estevão Senra in his doctoral thesis, defended in January at the National University of Brasilia (UnB). Senra is a consultant for the Hutukara and monitors the areas opened by mining in the IT.

The active mining permit petitions in the Yanomami TI at ANM are a testament to the influence of generals over the forest: almost 70% of the permit requests within the territory were made prior to the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution.

“The colonization project for the Amazon implemented during the dictatorship, to build infrastructure aimed at development, was what produced the conditions we see today. There used to be some diamond prospecting around Mount Roraima, but it was Radam that introduced the notion that the Amazon was a mining province,” notes Senra.

Now this view is more alive than ever in Bolsonaro’s discourse. A recent visit by the president to the Amazon marked his first incursion into a Brazilian indigenous land – but it was interpreted as a show of support for illegals, although at the time Bolsonaro pledged to respect the indigenous people’s wishes regarding the economic exploitation of their territories.

Furthermore, the recent appointment of reserve military officer Leandro Silva Peixoto da Costa as coordinator of the National Indian Foundation’s Yanomami Ye’Kuana Ethnoenvironmental Protection Front rekindles the memory of a past that the Yanomami do not want to forget, but struggle to overcome.

“Our territories were invaded by the military dictatorship and today all that is being repeated,” Kopenawa laments. “Bolsonaro’s strategy is the same as that of past governments, it is the logic of European thinking that came, took the land, extracted minerals. Unfortunately, this continues,” he concludes.

Activity brings death and violence to Indians

The dictatorship’s action had brutal consequences: according to Ministry of Health estimates compiled by Estevão Senra in his research: between 1987 and 1990, 14% of the Yanomami population in Roraima died from diseases associated with mining invasion. “Likewise, the destruction of river beds and their contamination by mercury, diesel oil and other waste caused significant damage to local ecosystems, preventing the Yanomami from enjoying numerous resources indispensable to their production system,” the geographer adds.

Now, a report published by the Hutukara in March this year pointed out that the Uraricoera river concentrates over half (52%) of all areas damaged by mining, identified by remote sensing in the indigenous land. The devastation of illegal mining, which had increased 30% in 2020, continues to advance: more than 2,430 hectares have been destroyed by miners.

The craters formed in the forest by this illegal activity led researchers from the Socio-environmental Institute to compare the scenario to the image of Serra Pelada, the world’s largest open-pit mining operation. Indigenous leaders estimate that there are currently more than 20,000 illegal miners working in their territory – nearly the size of the entire Yanomami population within the TI.

Cases of malaria have surged in the area since last year, and although they are part of the priority group for vaccination against Covid-19, Indians report that their shots have ended up in the arms of miners, with doses bought at the price of gold. “It is a crime, but in illegal mining there is no law. We were infected by miners and many of us died,” laments Kopenawa, noting that there are Indians still waiting for the vaccine in very remote and difficult-to-access areas.

In addition, last year two Yanomami were murdered by prospectors in the Parima region and an indigenous teenager was kidnapped by invaders in Surucucu. The reports sparked alarm in the community, recalling the tragic 1993 event known as the Haximu massacre, in which prospectors exterminated 16 Indians, including children and elders. It was the first case of genocide in Brazil formally recognized by the courts.

“Violence surrounding illegal mining has always occurred. What is different today are guns, which have a much higher lethal potential: if before miners would shoot with shotguns, today they have rifles,” Senra points out.

Mining requests are illegal

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office believes that ANM should immediately reject permit requests because mining on indigenous lands is prohibited as long as there is no law authorizing it. Based on this argument, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Amazonas obtained an injunction last year (still in force) overturning 75 requests for mining overlapping part of Yanomami territory in the state. There were 645,000 hectares in the western part of the territory claimed for mining.

The 1988 Constitution determines that indigenous lands may only be cleared for mining when a specific law on the subject establishes the terms under which such exploitation may occur – for instance, by granting consultation and veto rights to the affected ethnic groups, as well as the distribution of royalties, according to the impact caused. Many attempts have been made over time -all of them unsuccessful- but since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, the call for change has grown, in line with his anti-preservationist discourse.

Bolsonaro has introduced his own bill to legalize mining in protected areas. “Bill 191/2020 is extremely complicated, it involves mining, hydroelectric dams, oil, gas, GMOs. It is a big package that exceeds the provisions of the Constitution and has already been listed as a priority by the government,” explains Marcio Santilli, founder of the Socio-environmental Institute, who participated in the debates when the Brazilian Constitution was being drafted and considers the bill to be “the worst ever presented” in the history of Brazilian democracy.

A study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) estimated that this change could result in devastation of the Amazon in an area the size of Venezuela.

The Planalto is also attempting to pass an older bill, dating from 2007, which complicates the demarcation of indigenous lands and legalizes prospecting.

It is no coincidence that Bolsonaro’s first two years in office marked a record high in the amount of mining claims overlapping indigenous lands. “According to the Yanomami people, mining on indigenous lands means death and violence. The government will end the Yanomami people,” Kopenawa alerts.

Source: El Pais