An Amazon nation draws a line against developers

[YankeyMCC]

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A FEW WEEKS ago, I flew over the Amazon in a single-engine Cessna to a reunion with the leaders of the Kayapó nation, one of South America's proudest and most famous indigenous groups. For decades, 7,000 Kayapó have defended their 28-million acre, Ohio-sized homeland in the Brazilian states of Pará and Mato Grosso from incursions by speculators, ranchers, gold miners, loggers, and squatters.
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Today, the Kayapó face a greater and more dangerous foe: five huge hydroelectric dams planned on their lifeline Xingu River, and completion of the second half of BR-163, a 1,100-mile paved highway that slices through Pará. The road will open the remote frontier to the kind of untrammeled exploitation and development that has so far deforested close to 20 percent of the Brazilian Amazon. Some of the richest biological diversity on the planet has been eliminated, mainly to grow more beef and soybeans for export.
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Each year, 10,000 square miles of the Amazon are leveled, an area the size of Massachusetts. The results of this rapacious destruction stunned me as I flew to the Kayapó summit. The forested wilderness I saw 15 years ago was now scrubland pasture holding thousands of stringy cattle, and endless soybean plantations like wheat fields carpeting western Kansas. When we crossed over -- as it were -- into Kayapó airspace, the scene changed dramatically to magnificent, unbroken rain forest stretching to the horizon. Eden, it seemed, was still safe.
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There was a time-warp quality to this pow-wow in the jungle. Megaron and other Kayapó elders lead a warrior people, maintain an ancient culture, revere their lands, and defend them against covetous outsiders. They reminded me of Native Americans fighting the intrusion of the white man during the Western expansion two centuries ago. But there is a major difference. The Kayapó are defending their Amazon homeland, not only for themselves, but for all of us working to protect the last vestiges of the planet's unspoiled nature.
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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/07/an_amazon_nation_draws_a_line_against_developers/

[mia]

1. Wolfowitz pulls the strings here too. I wonder if he cares.

The Kayapó grand chief, Megaron, is leading the fight to preserve their lands that form the largest tropical rain forest reserve in the world. He and other indigenous leaders recently wrote to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, imploring him to ensure that the environmental impacts of BR-163 and the dams are carefully considered before the bank funds them. Wrote Megaron: ``If you lend money to the government of Brazil to pave roads and build other projects the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, you will be contributing to the destruction of our forests, and conflicts with, possibly even deaths, of our people."

[mom cat]

2. The death cult does not care. It is based on power over and can only

see the value in thongs that people call money.