Slavery and Deforestation in Amazonia
…the green discourse about Amazonia rarely devotes much time to the human inhabitants of the region as it does to the flora and fauna. A report just published by Venessa Fleischfresser, a leading Brazilian academic at the Federal University of Paranà, shows that a better focus on the human problems of the region who are so often ignored in the green discourse could reverse the ecological damage that is being caused.
She has found that those areas of Amazonia where the land is being cleared with the greatest abandon are those where slavery is most in commonly practiced. Now the region has a long and shameful record of slavery. The first Jesuit missionaries, who sought to evangelise the Indians, held out against their being enslaved by the Portuguese conquistadores and landowners. The political pressure on these missionaries was so great in the 17th century that they decided to lift their opposition to the introduction of foreign slaves from Africa if the indigenes were spared the forced labour. Then in the mid-18th century the Jesuits themselves were expelled from Portuguese-controlled lands and the order itself suppressed. Education in Brazil, which was at the time mainly in their hands, suffered a blow from which it is only beginning to recover. There was a massive revolt of Indians, blacks and poor whites in Amazonia in 1835 which was finally put down with the utmost cruelty in 1840. Then the rubber boom brought more slavery to the seringueiros, those who were recruited to tap the rubber trees. The South American rubber barons who worked the seringueiros to death were brought low only after the publication of a damning report written by Roger Casement when he was a British diplomat and before he threw in his lot with Irish revolutionaries and was condemned to hang at Pentonville prison in August 1916.
Now there is a new form of slavery as landowners in Amazonia concentrate on clearing the forest in order to plant soya beans. In great demand throughout the world, particularly by those responsible for the fast growing economy of China, soya is the crop of the hour in Brazil.
counterpunch.org
July 18th, 2006 at 8:30 am
RE: Éthe green discourse about Amazonia rarely devotes much time to the human inhabitants of the region as it does to the flora and fauna.
Good point, but how long are we to have this conversation before it leaves the academic circle and becomes a reality? Indigenous people have an inalienable right to a voice, firstly because it is their home, and it is to their benefit. Secondly it is now also to our benefit – having ruined most of the land we had available to us or sectioned it off in the great “fortress conservation” era – because they have great expertise and knowledge, and they, romantic as it might sound, but true, are “keepers of the forests”, their world vision being inextricably bound to the forest, unlike ours wherein we put aside small plots to gaze upon rverently “look but don’t touch” as if nature were an alien creature to be held captive for our amusement to be used, and yes, abused as we see fit. We go in wth our “green” (ironic word really – naive & eco supporter) horn blaring and run roughshod over Indigenous peoples rights to a respected and dignified life and decide what we want to do with their land and lives in our best interest. One would think that after centuries of destroying countless indigenous cultures and lives, not to mention huge swathes of forest, and to boot – being none the wiser for it, we should know better. Our supreme arrogance and racism as regards this have become accepted fare but never-the-less they still remain stunning.