To stop Amazon plunder, Brazil must change hearts and minds
In late January, harrowing pictures from the Yanomami Indigenous reserve began popping up on Brazilian social media. Emaciated children with famine-bloated bellies stared at nothing. Adults reduced to wraiths languished in hammocks. Rescue choppers airlifted dire cases to critical care. The stricken were not victims of a natural disaster or deadly pathogen, but of an all-too-familiar Brazilian affliction: human plunder, waved on by the highest authorities.
It is encouraging that the new government has declared a health emergency and dispatched first responders to northern Roraima state, where Brazil meets Venezuela — the epicenter of the Amazon gold rush. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited a crowded Indigenous infirmary in Boa Vista, the state capital.… Seguir leyendo »