Members of indigenous peoples, communities of extractivist workers, small-scale farmers, riverine and quilombola communities, together with militants of social movements and organizations from Brazil and other countries launch a letter in an appeal to Brazilian society and the peoples of the world to defend the territories from capitalism and its new “green” attack.
‘We, the participants came together for the meeting “Amazon Besieged: Between Extreme Violence and Green Scams People of the Forest in Defe nse of Mother Earth and Against the Invasions of Capital”, to continue to break the silence imposed by the pandemic. We denounce that we are besieged by direct violence as executed by illegal loggers, plantation and ranch owners and mega proj ects, exacerbated by the Brazilian fascist and genocidal government policy, and by indirect, yet no less severe, violence of “green capitalism” with its projects and programs REDD+, REM, PSA and “Nature based solutions”. Since 1999, the “Government of th e Forest” has transformed Acre into a worldwide showcase of the “green economy”.
Meanwhile, its intervention in our territories has caused division, and our collective struggle in the defense of our land and rights has been pushed back . Despite the enormo us amounts of money that the government received in relation to these policies , no indigenous lands have been demarcated. Instead, communities’ coexistence with the forest has been restricted, endangering our physical, cultural and spiritual survival. At
t he same time, the extraction of timber, livestock farming and deforestation continue to forge ahead. Faced with this, we have decided to strengthen our process of reflection and resistance against the invasions of
capital , including its green scams in th e Amazon. Our hope lies in our presence in our territories. Instead of accepting immediate “benefits” and “opportunities” which hold us hostage to the interests hidden behind “green capitalism”, our decisions shall be guided by long term considerations , co nsidering the lives of the generations to come. We want to strengthen our alliances with urban communities which are also experiencing dispossession and violence and who, like us, fight for their territories and their ways of life. We appeal to civil soc iety in Brazil and the entire world who have expressed solidarity with our fight for survival, the Amazon forest and life on Earth, and who reject the false “green” solutions.
Let us work and fight together. Communication , denunciation and mobili zation are our weapons, and unity is our strength.’
Read the letter in full here.