"Progresso"

Come sono buoni i “progressisti”…

They owned an island, now they are urban poor: the tragedy of Altamira

Construction of the Belo Monte dam has cast men, women and children who lived rich lives along the Xingu River to the outskirts of Altamira, Brazil’s most violent city. Here, to the sound of gunfire, they must live behind barred windows, and buy food with money they’ve never had – or needed before

Antonio das Chagas and Dulcineia Dias had an island. A slice of the Amazon rainforest, on the Xingu River.
“I had a better life than anyone in São Paulo,” says Das Chagas, referring to Brazil’s wealthiest city. “If I wanted to work my land, I did. If I didn’t, the land would be there the next day. If I wanted to fish, I did, but if I’d rather pick açaí, I did. I had a river, I had woods, I had tranquility. On the island, I didn’t have any doors. I had a place … And on the island, we didn’t get sick.”

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Somewhere between their island on the river and their rented house in the city, these people of the forest were converted into urban poor. Typifying the government-led settlement of the Amazon, this process reached its apex under the 1964-1985 civilian-military dictatorship, when megaprojects like the Transamazon Highway were launched. But the event that obstructed the lives of Das Chagas, Dias and and hundreds of families living on the Xingu took place under democracy[?].

Built in the Amazon forest, in the state of Pará, the Belo Monte hydroelectric complex is one of the biggest infrastructure projects on the planet. It is also hugely controversial. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has filed 24 lawsuits against Belo Monte for human rights and environmental violations. The project has left a huge stain on the Workers’ Party, two of whose leaders – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) and Dilma Rousseff – made it a top priority of their administrations.

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Now, theirs is a life of firsts: the first electricity bill, the first rented home, the first time they needed to buy what they eat, the first hunger. Das Chagas wakes before 4am feeling suffocated and rushes to the backyard, a cement slab that has no trees but where he can glimpse a piece of sky. He doesn’t sit because he doesn’t have a chair. He stands, clinging to this shard of freedom, sometimes crying. “Being poor is living in hell,” he says.

‘I was king’

Raimundo Braga Gomes is harsher: “On the river, I was king.”

He and Das Chagas are ribeirinhos, traditional people of the forest, and one of the most invisible, misunderstood populations in Brazil.

Ribeirinhos have a singular identity, defined by their intimate relationship with forest and river. They do not own the land, they belong to it. This is “walking on wealth,” as Gomes puts it. “I didn’t need money to live happy. My whole house was nature. The lumber, straw, didn’t need any nails. I had my patch of land where I planted a bit of everything, all sorts of fruit trees. I’d catch my fish, make manioc flour. If I wanted something else to eat, I’d grab a hen I’d raised. If I wanted meat, I’d hunt in the forest. And to make money, I’d fish some more and sell it in town. I raised my three daughters, proud of what I was. I was rich.”

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Accustomed to changing islands and indifferent to the concept of land as merchandise, they often confound people when they proclaim their freedom. “I’ve never had a job,” says Das Chagas. “Always been free.” They all work hard, because forest life is tough, but they only do what they want, when they want. Converting them into the urban poor drains them of their essence.

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Resistance

Critics see the conversion of the forest peoples into the urban poor as no accidental tragedy, but rather a political strategy. As a traditional people, the ribeirinhos have a constitutionally guaranteed right to their way of life. When they are transformed into residents of the periphery, they lose this right. On the one hand, the forests they once occupied are freed for construction, mining, agriculture, and livestock raising. On the other, they become part of the enfeebled urban masses who will support any major incursion into the forest if it holds the possibility of a job.

Since democracy was reclaimed in Brazil, the pressure has never been greater to relax environmental laws and open forests to exploitation than under the current congress, the most corrupt and conservative in recent history. Michel Temer, president by force of impeachment, needs congress to stay in power. It’s a tough moment.

But it is also the first time that ribeirinhos expelled by a megaproject have forged a resistance movement of real size. This week, a group of them landed in Brasilia, the capital, to lodge an unprecedented demand: the creation of a “ribeirinho territory” for 278 families along the Xingu river. They refuse to continue as urban poor. They demand, in effect, a kind of “un-conversion” back to their lives as forest people.

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