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Brazil's Native Peoples and the Belo Monte Dam: a Case Study

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Brazil's Native Peoples and the Belo Monte Dam: a Case Study SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 REPORT: AFTER RECOGNITION Brazil's Native Peoples and the Belo Monte Dam: A Case Study Indigenous and peasant Brazilians protest the Belo Monte dam project in April. The dam will cause incalculable social and environmental damage. By Sara Diamond and Christian Poirier 2006 to 6.1% in 2007, 5.1% in 2008) to the UELED BY AMPLE NATURAL RESOURCES, BRA- zil's economy has soared in the last program's success.' seven years under the helm of President Belo Monte, a proposed hydroelectric dam in Lutz Inacio Lula da Silva. As a part of its GDP the Xingu River Basin of the Amazonian rainfor- Sara Diamond is a growth strategy, the Lula government has pri- est, is the PAC's flagship project. Belo Monte is San Francisco-based oritized large-scale infrastructure development the world's largest dam complex in development, researcher and with its Accelerated Growth Program (PAC)-a and if completed it will be the world's third- consultant special- izing in tropical public-private partnership to fund the expan- largest dam, after China's Three Gorges Dam and 2 ecology, conservation, - sion of Brazil's transport, energy, sanitation, and the joint Brazilian-Paraguayan dam Itaipu. The and policy. Christian Shousing infrastructure, launched in 2007. The Belo Monte project will divert the flow of the Poiriet is the Brazil iBrazilian Finance Ministry attributed Brazil's Xingu River, a massive, 1,700-mile tributary of Program coordinator recently increasing GDP growth (from 4% in the Amazon that stretches from the savannas of at Amazon Watch. 25 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT: AFTER RECOGNITION An Arara woman and her child on the banks of the Xingu River near the Amazonian town of Altamira, Brazil the western state of Mato Grosso to the northern jungles than a generator powered by fossil fuels. Excluded from of Para. Operating at full capacity, the dam will generate the public discussion, however, has been the incalculable up to 11,233 megawatts, with most of the electricity go- social and environmental destruction that the dam threat- ing to local mining operations before being routed to the ens to wreak on the Xingu River Basin, a global center of metropolitan areas of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, about biodiversity that supports an extensive network of tributar- 1,800 miles away ies, primary forests, and some 25,000 indigenous people The Brazilian government has mounted a powerful pro- from 18 ethnic groups. paganda campaign to convince its citizens and the world The dam will divert more than 80% of the Xingu River's that this $30 billion megadam, funded almost entirely by flow through two massive canals, flooding more than 193 Brazil's National Development Bank, is a sustainable way to square miles of forest and part of the city of Altamira, while fuel continued economic growth and human development. a 62-mile stretch of the river known as the Big Bend will Moreover, the government argues that the dam is a model be left in permanent drought. This is expected to cause a of "green," renewable energy, based on the premise that it significant decline in the water table, leading to substantial will flood a relatively small area of surrounding forest and losses of aquatic and terrestrial fauna. The dam threatens produce large amounts of electricity with fewer emissions to devastate the surrounding rainforest ecosystem and will 26 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 REPORT: AFTER RECOGNITION displace between 20,000 and 40,000 people, both rural the Ministry of the Interior revealed systemic persecution and urban, destroying their livelihoods with little or no of indigenous peoples in Brazil, including torture, slavery, compensation. sexual abuse, land theft, and even the complete extermina- In addition to the hundreds of riverine communities, tion of 80 tribes. The military government created FUNAI about 800 people from the Juruna, Xikrin, Arara, Xipaia, in part as a public relations effort to construct a humanitar- Kuruaya, Kayapo, and other indigenous ethnicities in the ian, "racially democratic" image.' It was no accident, how- surrounding region will no longer be able to depend on the ever, that the newly birthed FUNAI was an agency of the river for survival. Receding waters would make it impos- Ministry of the Interior, whose principal mission was to sible for local communities to travel by boat to sell their exploit Brazil's natural resources. FUNAI immediately ad- produce or buy staples. Upstream communities, includ- opted a policy of protection by assimilation, encouraging ing the Kayapo, would lose migratory fish species essen- communities to give up traditional ways of life in order to tial to their diet. And for the peoples who call the river join mainstream culture-in short, freeing up native lands basin home-from the Kayapo of the upper reaches of by eliminating cultural diversity the Xingu's tnbutaries to the Arara, who live alongside its After the return to democracy, Brazil's 1988 Constitution waterways-the Big Bend is the cradle of civilization. The included several hard-won provisions guaranteeing indig- word Xingu means "house of God" to indigenous groups, enous rights. The most important of these was Article 231, and its destruction will represent nothing less than a cos- which recognized both the cultural and territorial rights rnological catastrophe to them. of indigenous peoples based on their heritage, establishing Despite these concerns, which have been publicly aired their right to permanently live in traditional territories, and by the people who live near the dam project, by experts in guaranteeing the exclusive use of natural resources neces- numerous fields, and even by some dissident government sary for securing their cultural integrity and physical well- administrators, the official line has not budged. At a press being. In 1989, Brazil ratified Convention 169 of the In- conference in February, after the Belo Monte project was ternational Labor Organization, which entitled indigenous granted an environmental license, Minister of Environment peoples to participate in the decision-making process of Carlos Minc flat out rejected the criticisms. "Not a single infrastructural development in their territories and codi- Indian will be displaced," Minc said. He conceded only fied their right to be fully consulted before exploration or that the peoples of the Xingu will be "indirectly affected."3 exploitation activities begin. Although the 1988 constitutional provisions were an E VEN AS THE LULA GOVERNMENT HAS PURSUED BELO important gain for indigenous cultural independence and Monte and other megaprojects, it has postured it- property rights, the enforcement of these rights remains self as concerned with sustainability, conservation, tenuous and often contingent on external political lever- and indigenous rights. At the beginning of his presidency, age. Because of this, Belo Monte's development process and Lula appointed ex-rubber tapper Marina Silva as head of that of other infrastructure projects have been alarmingly the Ministry of the Environment, where she organized lo- deficient in fulfilling the state's legal obligations to indig- cal River Basin Committees to help manage water resourc- enous peoples. Leaders from the Xingu River Basin have es. And in 2007 Brazil voted for the United Nations Dec- made it clear that their right to consultation on Belo Monte laration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), as spelled out in the Constitution, UNRIP and ILO 169 has which guarantees the right to self-determination, including not been honored. free, prior, and informed consent, for projects that affect Jose Carlos Arara of the Arara people on the Xingu's their communities. But despite these and other steps, the Big Bend, for example, has denounced the government's Lula government has on balance perpetuated the Brazilian claims that he and other leaders took part in an official state's history of violating indigenous rights and ignoring meeting with the government regarding Belo Monte, as environmental conservation in the name of progress. mandated by the licensing process. He even has video The Lula government's efforts to portray itself as sensi- footage of government officials stating that their 2009 tive to indigenous rights draw on a recent history of re- meeting with local leadership was an unofficial consul- forms and legal commitments beginning with the creation tation, clearly promising that an official audience would of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) in 1967. An take place. In total, only four public hearings were held entire governmental department dedicated to protecting on Belo Monte, offering little or no access to the remote the interests of indigenous people, FUNAI was founded populations who stand to be most affected by the project. after a scandalous 5,000-page report commissioned by In addition, security forces impeded the entrance of civil 27 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT: AFTER RECOGNITION society representatives to the hearings, and the few public prove the project. In April, Judge Antonio Carlos de Almei- queries that were voiced were dismissed, ridiculed, and da Campelo suspended the dam's preliminary license, writ- evasively answered. ing in his decision that "it remains proven, unequivocally, Belo Monte has violated almost all the articles of that Belo Montes plant will exploit the hydroelectnc po- UNDRIP, especially those that detail rights to full consulta- tential of areas occupied by indigenous people who would tion and participation (including veto power) in develop- be directly affected by the construction and development ment projects that are on or affect indigenous territories, of the project." Campelo filed three injunctions against or that affect indigenous cultural practices or survival. Belo Monte's license, but they were quickly dismissed by Brazil has furthermore violated Article a higher court. In June, Campelo was re- 231.3, Chapter VIII, of its own Constitution, "The Lulu overnment moved from ruling on environmental a1 cases which guarantees indigenous peoples' right is clearly prressuring[ altogether in an administrative maneuver.
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