Dozens of indigenous people in Brazil showed their determination on Thursday to continue blocking a major Amazon highway, even at the cost of their blood, until the government listens to their demands on the coronavirus and deforestation .
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These members of the Kayapo Mekranoti tribe, armed with bows and arrows, set up a barrage across the BR-163 on Monday, near the town of Novo Progresso, in northern Brazil.
They said Thursday that they no longer wanted to raise the roadblock to occasionally allow passage of heavy goods vehicles whose line is longer, as they have done over the past two days.
“We will stay here until the government sends envoys to talk to us,” one of their leaders, Mudjere Kayapo, told AFP.
The BR-163, a 4500 km drain in the middle of the Amazon rainforest that connects the South to the North of Brazil, is an essential road axis for the transport of crops from the center-west – corn and soybeans especially – to the river ports of Amazonia, before their export.
A federal judge, Sandra Maria Correia da Silva, on Monday ordered the lifting of the dam, citing the “disturbances” caused to “the regional economy” and to “users of this road”.
On Wednesday, she rejected an appeal from the Kayapos Mekranoti and asked federal police to dislodge the protesters if they did not leave.
“We don’t want to fight. But we will not allow the army or the police to come here and evacuate us by force. If that happens, blood will be spilled on the asphalt, ”they warned in a letter to Funai, the government body responsible for indigenous affairs.
Protesters, tattooed and wearing feather headdresses, burned a letter in which Funai rejected some of their demands.
The Kayapo Mekranoti are asking the government of Jair Bolsonaro for financial compensation for the damage inflicted on their environment by the construction of the BR-163.
They also demand that Brasilia fight against illegal gold panning, deforestation and the coronavirus, which has greatly affected the indigenous tribes.
In Brazil, the second country most affected by the pandemic after the United States, COVID-19 has infected 26,000 indigenous people and killed 690 of them, according to the results of the APIB, the Brazilian Association of Indigenous Peoples.
“The health of the natives is weakening day by day (…) We are here to protect the Amazon and our territory”, they wrote to Funai. “But the government wants to allow illegal projects on indigenous lands, such as mining, deforestation and ranching.”
