BRASILIA:
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro visited two indigenous reservations in the Amazon on Thursday for the 1st time as head of state, regardless of protests from some tribal leaders against his drive to open up their protected lands to industrial mining.
Bolsonaro, flanked by army officers and wearing a feather head-dress, watched members of the regional Tukano neighborhood execute a ritual dance at the Balaio reservation, exactly where he inaugurated a bridge.
Regional indigenous leaders from the upper reaches of the Rio Negro river mentioned they have been not invited to see Bolsonaro and that he only met with unrepresentative chiefs in a photo chance for his re-election campaign next year.
“Our institution is three decades old but we were not included in the president’s agenda or any dialogue on public polices for the region,” the Federation of Rio Negro Indigenous Organizations mentioned in a statement. “He met with self-proclaimed leaders to produce fake news.”
The president’s workplace did not straight away respond to a request for comment.
The wooden bridge that Bolsonaro inaugurated was constructed by the Brazilian army on a road that runs to the border with Venezuela, passing by way of the Balaio reservation, exactly where significant reserves of niobium have been discovered.
The metal is used to make light-weight steel for jet engines and other particular applications. Bolsonaro has on a regular basis talked about its worth in speeches about the untapped riches of the Amazon that Brazil need to exploit.
The Balaio reservation is above the Rio Negro at the north-western tip of Brazil bordering Colombia and Venezuela.
Bolsonaro later visited and stayed overnight at a military frontier post in Maturacá, which is situated at the western finish of the Yanomami reservation, the biggest in Brazil.
The reservation’s eastern section in the state of Roraima has been invaded by more than 20,000 illegal gold miners, who have been emboldened by Bolsonaro’s assistance for the legalization of wildcat mining in Brazil.
Yanomami leaders deplored the far-appropriate president’s go to to their reservation and repeated their calls for authorities to expel the miners.
“The government must urgently remove the invaders from our territories to safeguard our health and that of Mother Earth,” they mentioned in a letter to Bolsonaro.
“We do not accept the legalization of mining activities on our lands, because it will not bring the Yanomami any benefit,” the letter signed by leaders from Maturacá mentioned.
Bolsonaro’s go to came the day following gold miners illegally prospecting on indigenous lands along the Tapajos river in the Amazon shot at a Munduruku village and burned down the home of one of its leaders.
The decrease home of Brazil’s Congress, exactly where Bolsonaro supporters have a majority, is at present thinking of legislation proposed by the government that would open the door to industrial mining and agriculture on indigenous reservations.