Troops bulldoze
homes, leave thousands homeless
Soldiers wearing
U.N. logos evict whole towns in land grab
By Alex Newman
Thousands of poor
Brazilian families are living in wretched conditions at make-shift refugee
camps after being evicted from their homes at gunpoint by federal forces, some
of whom were sporting United Nations logos, according to sources.
The massive operation, which left an
estimated 7,500 or more people, including thousands of children, homeless was
justified by authorities under the guise of creating an Indian reservation.
Towns literally have been wiped off
the map, and no compensation was offered to the victims. About 400,000 acres of
land were expropriated in the latest operation.
Residents in the Siua-Missu area in
the state of Mato Grosso battled heavily armed federal police and military
forces for weeks using sticks, rocks, Molotov cocktails and other crude
weapons.
In the end, however, the powerful
national government forces were overwhelming.
Virtually all of the residents have
now been displaced, living in squalor, packed into school gymnasiums in nearby
towns. Others are living on charity under plastic tarps propped up with sticks
with no clean water or sewage services.
Leaders of the feeble resistance,
meanwhile, are being hunted down by authorities for punishment.
It was in 1993, shortly after the
first United Nations summit on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro, when
the scheme was proposed. The Brazilian government’s executive branch decreed
that the land in question belonged to Indians.
“These areas are marked off with
rushed studies by leftist anthropologists, ideological and hardly scientific,”
Fernando Furquim with the Movement for Peace in the Countryside, a non-profit
organization that supports private property rights, told WND.
“The conflicts between the
productive sector and Indians are assuming greater proportions,” he added.
“Countless non-governmental organizations have appeared, many from abroad, to
involve themselves in the question.”
Brazilian officials, meanwhile, sent
WND an error-riddled statement containing claims that victims were not entitled
to compensation but that some would be re-settled elsewhere if they qualified
under the “agrarian reform” program.
Authorities also told WND that the
U.N. was not involved in the eviction efforts but that the organization’s logos
were on the military equipment and personnel because they had recently returned
from “peace-keeping” abroad.
In Suia-Missu, legal battles ensued
after the executive decree as property owners with valid deeds to their land
fought back. Many of the residents have lived in the area for decades, and some
were born there.
Their properties were mostly
purchased as larger farms in the area and sold off in pieces in recent decades.
Some were inherited from relatives.
The Brazilian courts eventually
ruled that the forced evictions could proceed, so in November, residents were
given 30 days to vacate their land.
Most refused to leave, but heavily
armed Brazilian troops and federal police were too powerful for the poor
farmers in the area to resist.
“The evicted victims are now living
at schools in Alto da Boa Vista and camps, with some being sheltered by
relatives,” Naves Bispo, a local resident and victim of the land-grab scheme,
told WND, adding that the situation was dire and deteriorating.
“None of the people were relocated
by the government, despite the government’s lies,” he noted. “There never
existed a plan for these people, there was just an expulsion: brief, brutal and
grotesque.”
Like other victims and analysts who
spoke with WND, Bispo was unsure about why Brazilian authorities had decided to
create an Indian reservation on land that was never occupied by Indians and was
already lawfully owned.
Official documents obtained by WND
show that in the 1970s, the National Indian Foundation, part of the Brazilian
Justice Ministry, twice confirmed that Indians had never lived on the land in
question.
“I know and feel that we are once
again in a dictatorial state run by followers of Fidel, of Mao, of Che,” Bispo
continued, pointing to the ruling Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) and its
well-documented links to tyrannical regimes in the region.
“This is terror against the poor, a
strongly surging plague, very organized, an affront to democracy in the
Americas,” he added. “I lost my land, my work area, but I will never lose my
ideals.”
Residents resist
While the press was barred from
documenting much of the battle, local news reports showed the true extent of
the human tragedy. Many critics have said it constitutes forced relocation, a
crime against humanity under international agreements.
Gas station owner Arnaldo da Costa,
reportedly the first person to be notified of the evictions, lamented the
situation in a TV interview.
“This is the worst day of my life,
the worst in my 53 years,” he said. “I told the guy to find a place for us,
show me where we’re supposed to go.”
Another man interviewed for the same
segment started his grocery store 30 years ago and was set to lose his life’s
work if forced to leave.
Meanwhile, authorities would not
even let farmers pick their own crops, a young student told the interviewer.
“We planted over 100 acres of rice
that they won’t let us harvest, we wasted 90,000 Brazilian reals ($45,000), and
they simply will not let us harvest it,” she said, crying. “Sad, very sad, sad,
lots of anguish, lots of suffering.”
Some residents, though, were
defiant.
“I am going to stay here until I
die,” Eliezer Rocha told a TV news crew. “I prefer to be killed by a bullet
than to die of a broken heart later without a place to live, without a place to
work.”
The sentiment was widespread as
poverty-stricken locals, on the verge of losing their only means of subsistence
and virtually all of their property, tried to keep federal forces at bay with
improvised weapons and mass demonstrations.
Some residents burned Brazilian
flags while others organized patrols, in vain, to chase the police and military
away.
Local politicians, state lawmakers
and even federal members of the Brazilian Congress spoke out as well.
“Ten people were injured in this
clash,” Brazilian Sen. Jayme Campos from Mato Grosso was quoted as saying in
Brazilian media reports after one of the many battles that raged between
residents and federal troops.
“Any and all aggression by
government forces will correspond inevitably with a violent reaction from the
community,” he said.
Drawing attention to the thousands
of people being forcibly evicted with no place to go, Campos said they were
doing nothing but waging “a desperate fight to maintain the achievements of
their entire life’s work, sweat, and sacrifices.”
To defuse the situation and prevent
deaths, the senator called for a temporary suspension of the evictions and a
change in the Constitution that would allow lawmakers to have some control over
the executive branch’s currently unilateral establishment of “Indian lands”
wherever it chooses.
The “extreme measures” being pursued
by authorities, he said, were inappropriate.
“These rural farmers are willing to
do anything: to kill and be killed,” Sen. Campos observed. “A tragedy can
happen at any moment.”
His pleas, along with those of
fellow lawmakers, fell on deaf ears.
All over
By Jan. 18, Brazilian authorities
claimed that the entire area had been “cleared.”
Many of the structures – homes,
churches, schools, a hospital, playgrounds, farms and more – were already
bulldozed. The rest will be razed soon.
“This is a real shame what is going
on here,” local property owner Paulo Gonçalves, whose land was also expropriated,
told WND in a phone interview. “A great injustice is being committed against
these people. They have nowhere to go, no plan.”
Another local resident, who did not
respond to a request for permission to use his name by press time, told a
similar story.
“My father had 2,000 hectares in the
region and lost everything,” the young man told WND. “He had six employees who
worked directly or indirectly on the farm, and today they are living on charity
and almost suffering from hunger and have had not any help from the federal
government.”
Local media reports showed tearful
residents telling reporters their whole world had come crashing down in an
instant.
“We’re looking for a place to go, I
still don’t know. Everybody left here without knowing where they were going to
go,” Juvenil Moreira, a local farmer, said as tears ran down his face.
“It wasn’t voluntary. They came and
threatened us. The feds already came in my house two times and threatened me,
saying that if I didn’t leave, they were going to confiscate all of my
possessions,” he added. “I told them I didn’t have anywhere to go but they
don’t want to hear it.”
“There hasn’t been a single person
who has been re-settled by government agencies –not a single person,” Moreira
explained, contradicting government claims that it would assist certain small
farmers as part of its “agrarian reform” policy.
Another local farmer, Mamede Jordao,
said a federal officer had threatened to take him in a helicopter and throw him
out if he continued to speak out against the evictions.
The communities’ were also forced to
leave all of their dead behind in graveyards that includes plots decades old.
Combined, residents of the area also
owned hundreds of thousands of cows. Now they have nowhere to put them.
Much livestock was left behind, too,
as locals tried to save whatever animals – dogs, cats, chickens – that they
could take with them to their new refugee camp “homes.”
Charity
Some help has arrived.
Christian preachers from hundreds of
miles away have been gathering tons of food and assistance from their
congregations to ship to the displaced victims.
Concerned citizens throughout the
region have been donating, too. And towns in the area have tried their best to
help shelter as many families as possible with the few resources available to
them.
At least one local businessman has
also promised to donate some land so people can rebuild their homes and try to
eke out a meager living from the soil once again.
One of the town people found
temporary refuge in Alto da Boa Vista, where Mayor Nezip Domingues promised to
help despite his people’s lack of resources.
He thanked all of the concerned
citizens in the region who sent assistance.
“In truth, if it was not for the
actions that these groups and society are taking – they are so moved by the
situation in Siua Missu – we don’t know what we would have done,” Domingues
said in a TV interview.
“Our municipality does not have the
resources to attend to these necessities, so we’re thankful from our hearts for
everybody who has helped these families,” he added.
Sources told WND that the people
would be eternally grateful to God and to the pastors and congregations for the
help being provided by Christians in the region.
However, the refugees also feel a
sense of humiliation. Once independent, they now must depend on donations just
to feed their own children.
Hope
Locals are still petitioning the
government to undo the relocation, which they say has shattered thousands of
lives, by returning the land and offering compensation for the loss of their
houses.
A few still cling to a small ray of
hope, thinking God may intervene or that the federal government will realize
the error of its ways.
“There’s a small ray of hope, but it
exists,” farmer Romão Flor told TV Araguaia in an interview after detailing the
miserable living conditions evicted residents are suffering.
“However, the government is very
strong, the Indian agency is very strong, the pressure from foreign interests
is very strong, and the NGOs are very strong,” he said.
“It won’t be easy.”
Others, however, have all but given
up after seeing what remains of their former hardscrabble towns and homes.
“I just got back from there, to see
what had become of [the town of] Posto da Mata. It’s over,” sobbed a young
mother and small farmer named Maria da Costa from her new “home” in a school
gym, shared by eight other families. She broke down into tears before finishing
her thought.
An elderly woman next to her, also
crying, added: “They destroyed our people. Our whole world is destroyed.”
The lands
Brazilian officials told WND that
the land in question had traditionally been occupied by the Xavante Indian
tribe, which was expelled from nearby areas in the 1960s by government forces
so settlers could move in.
However, numerous documents obtained
by WND, and testimony from Xavante Indians, show that the tribe never occupied
the land in question.
One Xavante Indian, for example,
speaking at a local rally, blasted FUNAI for seizing the lands, saying the
agency was operating at the expense of Indians and expropriating property in
their name, but that it was not interested in the truth.
“They know that the Xavantes live in
the cerrado (savannah-type region as opposed to forest) and that you’re living
here,” the elderly Indian exclaimed.
“Now, help,” he continued, pointing
his finger in the faces of some government officials at the gathering. “Give
back everything you’ve stolen from the Indians and from the whole human race.”
Turning to the crowd again, he
concluded: “We want to stay in our place, and you stay in yours.”
A Brazilian congressional delegation
that visited the area quoted four Xavantes who all said the same thing: Their
tribe has never lived in the area in question.
FUNAI itself admitted as much in the
1970s, twice, when asked by a large landowner for development purposes to
certify that no Indians had ever lived there.
The tribe, which consists of around
14,000 members and already has about 3.5 million acres of land in Mato Grosso,
was offered a better piece of land by the state government to avoid the forced
evictions.
The real reasons
While it is remains unclear whether
the U.N. was involved in the most recent forced eviction, the actions are in
line with an international agreement on indigenous people, analysts say.
Local rancher Sebastian Prado told
reporters that authorities were essentially running an extortion racket seeking
millions of dollars in exchange for halting the land grab.
Upon speaking out, he was personally
attacked by a top federal official.
“Mr. Sebastian Prado will be
prosecuted for his lies against Secretary Paulo Maldos and will pay in the
courts for his folly and irresponsibility,” Chief Minister Gilberto Carvalho
with the General Secretariat of the President said in a press release.
Numerous other possible motives,
however, have also been identified.
Among the most frequently cited:
pressure from foreign NGOs like Greenpeace and religious persecution of the
conservative and devout evangelical communities there by powerful Catholic
“liberation theology” forces.
Victims and analysts who spoke with
WND also identified as a probable cause the effort to advance socialism in
Brazil and the broader region by eroding property rights and attacking
independent citizens like farmers and ranchers, a process that is already well
underway in Latin America led in large part by senior PT officials.
Finally, mega-corporations from
abroad and foreign governments hoping to extract rare minerals have been cited
as well.
United Nations agreement
A little-known U.N. agreement dubbed
the “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People,” approved by the global
body’s General Assembly in 2007, has been cited as a justification for
expropriating the land.
While the U.S. originally rejected
the controversial U.N. scheme, which purports to require the surrender of lands
“traditionally” occupied by natives, President Obama signed on to it in late
2010.
Last year, in a move that drew a mix
of ridicule and alarm from critics, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of
Indigenous People James Anaya visited the U.S.
He concluded, among other points,
that Mount Rushmore and vast tracts of land should be returned to Native
Americans to put the U.S. government closer to compliance with the global
agreement.
Several lawmakers contacted by WND
were aware of the situation in Brazil, but none were willing to comment
publicly about it at this time.
Still, analysts say that with the
U.N. and authoritarian-minded governments seeking to exploit past injustices
against indigenous people to advance their agenda, the danger will continue to
grow – at least without international pressure on Brazilian authorities, who
are desperately trying to polish their image on the global stage.
Socialism
The march of socialism in Latin
America, meanwhile, continues, backed by foreign powers and largely under the
radar of the Western media.
It is making great progress through
the Foro de São Paulo (FSP), a shadowy socialist and communist political
organization founded by former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva
with the PT, Marxist despot Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas and others.
Marxist narco-terror groups like the
FARC have also been intimately involved in the group, including by providing
funding from the drug trade to advance the cause.
Today, political parties that are
part of the FSP, such as the Brazilian PT, control most national governments in
Latin America. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, for example, is a prominent
participant, as are other, less-known socialist strongmen.
Current Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff, a “former” communist guerrilla and revolutionary, is also playing an
increasingly important in the network.
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