Brasil de Fato<\/p>\n
Tu\u00edre Kayap\u00f3, one of the most important Indigenous leaders in Brazil, died on Saturday (10)<\/a> at a hospital in the town of Reden\u00e7\u00e3o, in the state of Par\u00e1. She was 57 and battled uterine cancer. Her death ended an outstanding story of defending the rights of Indigenous and Amazonian peoples. From the disputes about the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant up to the legal argument known as \u201cmarco temporal<\/a>\u201d (usually translated into English as “Time Frame Law”), Tu\u00edre has always taken a stance about government attacks against forest peoples.<\/p>\n Tu\u00edre raised international attention in 1989. That year, the city of Altamira, Par\u00e1, was home to the First Meeting of Xingu Indigenous Peoples. The event, which gathered 600 Indigenous individuals all painted for war, aimed at discussing the Karara\u00f4 Hydroelectric Plant, later renamed Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant.<\/p>\n At a certain point, the then 19-year-old Tu\u00edre put her machete on the face of the president of the Eletronorte company, Jos\u00e9 Ant\u00f4nio Muniz Lopes. According to her recollections of the episode in an interview with the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA, in Portuguese), Tu\u00edre said to the man: \u201cWhite man, you have no forest. This land isn\u2019t yours. You were born in the city and came here to attack our forests and rivers. You won\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n The photograph of her action became known worldwide and drew the attention of authorities, activists and international artists, postponing the construction of the power plant for 20 years. After finished, Belo Monte<\/a> was dubbed \u201cthe end of the world\u201d among people in Volta Grande do Xingu. Tu\u00edre was, in A\u00edlton Krenak\u2019s words<\/a>, the woman who postponed the end of the world.<\/p>\n It is important to note that the Kayap\u00f3 call themselves M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre, which means \u201cthe people who came from the water hole” in their native language. According to their cosmology, in order to arrive in this world, the M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre made a long journey, reaching the surface of Earth through water. Therefore, rivers are their roots, which makes it easy to understand why this Indigenous people opposed so vehemently Belo Monte: a barred and deviated river would mean the end of fishing and navigation, but also a way to see the world. If rivers are the M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre\u2019s roots, building the power plant would drain the people\u2019s liquid roots.<\/p>\n In addition, another element profoundly marked the disputes surrounding the plant. At first, Belo Monte was going to be called Karara\u00f4, a war cry in the M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre language. The Kayap\u00f3 are a warrior people. For them, courage and strength are sacred attributes expressed in war cries. Preventing the power plant from being named Karara\u00f4 was a way of demarcating the limits between white people\u2019s power \u2013 that is, electric energy \u2013 and the M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre\u2019s power. It was a way of making it explicit that, while white people\u2019s power was to destroy, the M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre\u2019s power was to protect the forest.<\/p>\n I talked to Tu\u00edre only once, in an interview in the city of Bel\u00e9m last year. On the occasion, she was already under health treatment, but decided to talk to the press about the Temporary Framework, which was then being voted on in Congress. Tu\u00edre spoke in her mother tongue, M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre, and her partner cacique Dudu (\u201ccacique\u201d is a political leader among Indigenous peoples in Brazil) translated it into Portuguese. Despite not being able to understand her words without translation, I could feel the strength that came from them, the steadfastness of her eyes and the conviction in her voice. Strength, steadfastness and conviction were there until the very end of her life, regardless of the interlocutor.<\/p>\n Thirty years after the First Meeting of Xingu Indigenous Peoples in Altamira, Tu\u00edre went to a meeting in the Chamber of Deputies, in 2019, and confronted Federal Deputy and Bolsonaro supporter Jos\u00e9 Medeiros. During the meeting, the politician criticized NGOs working with Indigenous peoples and defended mining of minerals on Indigenous lands, which Tu\u00edre strongly opposed.<\/p>\n In 2023, she faced her last battle: marco temporal<\/a>. In her interview with me, published in Brasil de Fato<\/strong><\/a>, Tu\u00edre criticizes politicians who, even without knowing the forest, insist on saying what is best for it: “Because senators live in the city, congressmen live in the city. They don’t live in the forest. But us – we live in the forest, in the Amazon (…). They should do programs aimed at the city. They just want to do their programs and projects inside our lands, our forests, and our Amazon. This land is ours. We’re the ones who are going to create a project, who are going to do something in our forest.”<\/p>\n These words echo those she said to the president of Eletronorte, and express her discontent with the white men\u2019s politics: to decide the fate of Indigenous peoples without listening to them. In the last 35 years, there have been many attempts by the Brazilian state to silence Indigenous peoples. At each of these attempts, however, Tu\u00edre’s voice rose.<\/p>\n Saudade<\/em> [a Brazilian word whose closest translation into English is \u201cto miss something or someone\u201d] is an always present feeling in the lives of the M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre. This applies to both the living, who miss their dead, and the dead, who miss the living. After a M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre dies, their soul, called the karon<\/em>, leaves their body and begins a journey towards the village of the dead. There, the karon<\/em> lives a life similar to that of the living: they marry, have children and fight wars. However, the karon<\/em> of the dead often goes to the village of the living, especially during celebrations. The m\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre rituals are both a celebration of life and a tribute to the dead. The Kayap\u00f3 refuse to forget their dead, and the karon<\/em> don’t forget the living. The M\u1ebdb\u00eang\u00f4kre are so united that not even death separates them.<\/p>\n Have a good journey, Tu\u00edre. The Kayap\u00f3 cosmology says that, when it’s day here, it’s night in the village of the dead, and when it’s night here, it’s day there \u2013 always the opposite. I hope the village of the dead is an enormous Amazon in which trees keep standing and rivers keep flowing free, with no barriers. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every time the state tried to silence Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the late Tu\u00edre raised her voice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1849,1512,35,777,280,1505,708],"class_list":["post-212621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amazon","tag-belem","tag-bolsonaro","tag-brasil","tag-cacique","tag-para","tag-temporal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}