Brazil's biggest tribal reserve faces uncertain future under Bolsonaro

Brazil’s biggest tribal reserve faces uncertain future under Bolsonaro


Far-right government vows to legalise mining and commercial farming on indigenous Yanomami land

Dom Phillips in São Paulo
@domphillips
Tue 18 Dec 2018 01.00 EST

The indigenous leader and campaigning photographer who fought to create Brazil’s biggest tribal reserve warned it could be threatened under the far-right government of the president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, as a major retrospective exhibition opens.

Bolsonaro has said the Yanomami reserve, which at 9.6m hectares (24m acres) is twice the size of Switzerland, was too big for its indigenous population.

“The president already said that the Yanomami territory is very big. I don’t know if they will try to cut it down,” said the photographer Claudia Andujar, whose images have been shown internationally and whose latest exhibition, The Yanomami Struggle, opened on Saturday at the Moreira Salles Institute in São Paulo. “We already fought so much! We will have to continue.”

Bolsonaro takes office on 1 January with promises to legalise mining and commercial farming on indigenous reserves and end the “fines party” of environment agencies. He has pledged to help the illegal artisanal gold miners called garimpeiros whose destructive work has been described by campaigners as an epidemic in the Amazon. His incoming environment minister, Ricardo Salles, whose appointment was recommended by agribusiness groups, has said he wants the “defence of the environment with the support of economic development”.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/18/brazil-biggest-tribal-reserve-faces-uncertain-future-under-jair-bolsonaro