Brazil's 'lost report' into genocide surfaces after 40 years

[Catherina]

Brazil's 'lost report' into genocide surfaces after 40 years

Figueiredo report reveals alleged crimes against indigenous tribes from 1940s to 1980s and sheds light on current land policy


Jonathan Watts and Jan Rocha
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 May 2013 12.50 BST


Umutima shaman in 1957: the Figueiredo report caused an outcry after it revealed crimes against Brazil's indigenous population. Photograph: José Idoyaga/Survival

...

"The Indian Protection Service has degenerated to the point of chasing Indians to extinction," the prosecutor writes in an introduction addressed to the interior minister.

The pages – all bound, initialled and marked MI-58-455 – include an alphabetical list of the alleged perpetrators and the indictments against them. Most are accused of falsely appropriating land, misusing funds or illegally selling cattle or timber to enrich themselves at the expense of the communities they were supposed to be protecting. But many are implicated in far more heinous crimes.

The number of victims is impossible to calculate. The Truth Commission believes that some tribes, such as those in Maranhão, were completely wiped out. In one case, in Mato Grosso, only two survivors emerged to tell of an attack on a community of 30 Cinta Larga Indians with dynamite dropped from aeroplanes. Figueiredo also details how officials and landowners lethally introduced smallpox into isolated villages and donated sugar mixed with strychnine.

...

Survival International's director, Stephen Corry, said nothing has changed when it comes to the impunity regarding the murder of Indians. "Gunmen routinely kill tribespeople in the knowledge that there's little risk of being brought to justice – none of the assassins responsible for shooting Guarani and Makuxi tribal leaders have been jailed for their crimes. It's hard not to suspect that racism and greed are at the root of Brazil's failure to defend its indigenous citizens' lives," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/29/brazil-figueiredo-genocide-report

[ocpagu]

1. Thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen that article from Guardian before.

There's also a related thread I've posted a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110817383

I've been researching a lot about the "Relatório Figueiredo" since it "reappeared". Shocking material.


Atrocities against the Cinta Larga tribe were exposed in the Figueiredo report. After shooting the head off her baby, the killers cut the mother in half.


A Karajá couple with their baby, who has died of flu

[Catherina]

2. OMG. You know these things but the see them is a totally different matter

Do you mind if I kick up your thread and append the OP to it? So that it's all together?

Remind me again who the savages are please.

[ocpagu]

3. No, I don't mind at all.

I want as many people to read it as possible. It's a f* genocide and no one is talking about it in the mainstream press... at least, not here in Brazil.

It's disturbing to think that, from all organizations, the Indian Protection Service was the responsible for conducting these actions, together with landowners.

[Judi Lynn]

4. It IS genocide. It's evil, pure evil. If people are this cruel to the helpless,

the vulnerable in the world there should be no place here for them as they have proven they are not human beings themselves. They should not be left to their own devices any longer. They should be in prison, NOW.

We haven't seen references to Brazil's genocide in the corporate media in the US, either. They know they have their own filthy dark evil secrets right in their own country where nearly the entire native population was tortured and slaughtered from coast to coast, and the survivors forced into horrible areas no one wanted to live out the rest of their days with absolutely nothing to sustain them, left to fade away, to die, to be forgotten, and to meet seething, vulgar racism if they attempted to overcome the barriers.

Hope real light can be used to illuminate what the Brazilian ranchers/loggers/corporations are doing right now to make them back away from these human beings who are NO ONE'S ENEMIES.

Anyone who harms them should be removed from society.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thank you. It's overwhelming. Words fail. n/t