Battle in Amazonia.

• Author: Baletti, Brenda

After over a decade of ignored complaints, failed negotiations with the government, and countless threats against their leaders by loggers and their gunmen, the residents of the Arapiuns region in the Brazilian Amazon launched a public protest over illegal logging on their lands. More than 500 people from 40 communities joined in their rabetas (canoes with outboard motors) to block the Arapiuns River to logging activity in the Gleba Nova Olinda. The protestors seized two barges of timber.

Their protest dragged out for more than a month as state and federal government officials alternately ignored them or responded evasively. Finally, the frustrated protestors decided to send a stronger message. On November 12, after their second meeting with state and federal government officials who again offered no resolution to their problems, they set fire to the barges.

Gleba Nova Olinda covers 172,900 hectares between the Maro and Arua Rivers, at the source of the Arapiuns River in the municipality of Santarem. Its natural resources are vital to the survival of the people of the Arapiuns. The protest unites 14 communities from throughout the region in the Movement in Defense of the Life and Culture of the Arapiuns.

Gleba Nova Olinda's indigenous and peasant communities have petitioned the government for legal recognition of their territorial rights since the creation of the neighboring Tapajos-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve 13 years ago. Over the past decade, state land exchange programs and development incentives drew loggers and potential soy farmers to Gleba Nova Olinda. Violence and threats of violence are a common means of conflict resolution in the state of Para, where valuable resources such as timber lead to high-stakes conflicts and state enforcement is minimal.

The logging companies have co-opted some communities, purchasing community support cheaply by providing infrastructure that the government never delivered, such as generators and community buildings, or jobs that turn the area's inhabitants into agents of deforestation. Most people of the region, however, continue to protest the presence of the loggers.

The communities of Gleba Nova Olinda, the rural workers' union and the Pastoral Land Commission worked for three months to draft a land tenure plan that would guarantee the rights of inhabitants. This plan was based on years of discussion among the communities of Gleba Nova Olinda and the larger Arapiuns region. After all their effort, the state government chose to ignore their proposal in favor of a proposal submitted by the logging companies and cooperatives that illegally claimed land and resources in the area. [1]

The government of the state of Para effectively decided not to expel the loggers and land speculators operating in traditional and indigenous territories. On the contrary, the proposal authorized 11 "sustainable management plans" and reduced the size of the Vista Alegre Agro-extractive Agrarian Reform Settlement Project from 25,000 hectares to 5,000 hectares.

Meanwhile, the legal process, by the National Foundation for Indians (FUNAI), to recognize and demarcate indigenous territory has been stalled for years. [2] FUNAI's reluctance to demarcate the area has allowed the region's loggers and the state government to continue to ignore the rights of the Borari-Arapiun indigenous people by constructing logging roads, licensing management plans and refusing to enforce logging and land tenure regulations inside the indigenous territory.

Moving land and resources into markets

In the state of Para, the vast supply of natural resources has led to institutionally...