Brazil Launches Operation to Remove Diamond Prospectors from Amazon Indian Reservation
MICHAEL ASTOR 3/22/2002
Federal authorities launched a massive operation aimed at removing thousands of diamond prospectors from an Indian reservation deep in the Amazon rainforest, officials said Friday.
About 3,000 wildcat miners are believed to have invaded the Roosevelt Indian Reservation, home to the Cintas Largas tribe, in Rondonia state, some 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of Rio de Janeiro near the Bolivian border. Over the past year, federal police estimate the miners have extracted dlrs 50 million worth of diamonds from the area, which may possess South America's largest diamond lode.
In the first two days of the operation, authorities detained about 1,300 prospectors and confiscated some tractors and other vehicles, Antenor Goncalves Bastos Filho of the Federal Indian Bureau said by telephone from Cacoal, a town on the reservation's edge.
The wildcat miners have dug up an area 30 kilometers (19 miles) long and 50 meters (165 feet) wide along the Roosevelt River, causing tremendous damage to the environment on the reservation amid dense forest, Bastos said.
So far, police have seized some 2,000 diamonds from the prospectors who are being questioned and searched. Those considered dangerous are being held on charges of illegal mining and Indian exploitation.
Initially, the Cintas Largas welcomed the prospectors into the region, charging as much as 13,000 reals (dlrs 5,500) per person for the right to mine on the reservation.
"Some Indian leaders did allow the prospectors to enter the reservation, but they later regretted it and asked the federal government to correct their error," Bastos said.
Six
Federal Indian Bureau officials have also been implicated in the scheme to charge
prospectors for the right to mine on the reservation. Three of them have been
arrested and another three are still being sought by police.
Bryson
Burke Diamond Corporation
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History of the Removal
This is the fourth time in 10 years that federal authorities have launched an operation to remove invaders from the land of the Cinta Larga, a people of Mondé linguistic origin whose population was reduced from 650 people in 1993 to less than 400 today. The area, located in the southern tip of the state of Rondônia, northwest of the state of Mato Grosso, has large reserves of diamonds. The Federal Police estimate that gems amounting to 50 million dollars were smuggled from the region to Belgium last year.
The presence of miners in the area, in addition to the illegal activities of woodcutters, jeopardizes the group's social fabric. Many indigenous families stopped fishing and hunting to associate with the invaders in exchange for money. Some indigenous people are charging up to R$ 10,000 (US$ 4,290) to allow machines to be brought to the area. And there are reports that Funai and Ibama employees are also involved in the illegal exploitation and trade of diamonds. Growing violence is prevalent among the miners. According to the police, about 40 men were murdered in the region in recent months.
Alcoholism, drugs, prostitution, malnutrition, and social disaggregation are the more visible harms caused by the actions of miners and woodcutters in the lands of the Cinta Larga and also in the territories of the Zoró, Gavião, and Suruí in the states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso. Referring to the brutal murder of Carlito Kaban Cinta Larga in Aripuanã (state of Mato Grosso) on the night of December 19, Dal Poz compared the present situation to the one prevailing in 1963, when gunmen hired by rubber plantation owners Arruda and Junqueira machine-gunned a Cinta Larga village located on the banks of the Aripuanã river in an episode that became known in history as the "Parallel 11 Massacre."
Cimi's executive secretary, Egon Heck, compares the situation of the Cinta Larga to the one faced by the Yanomami in the mid-1980s, when their lands in Roraima were invaded by thousands of miners who left a trail of violence and epidemics that killed at least 1,500 indigenous people.
