Brazil:
Women and Eucaliptus; stories of life
and resistance
The invasion of local
peoples’ territories by Aracruz Celulose S.A.’s agro-industrial
project, established in the sixties and seventies in Espirito
Santo, caused enormous material and symbolic losses to the indigenous
and quilombola peoples. Some are irrecoverable.
“They are my cousins.
When Aracruz came here and evicted them... it arrived by invading.
When it arrived, they were afraid and abandoned their lands and
left. It arrived with a lot of tractors and rode over their little
houses. The houses were made of mud and straw, where they lived.
So, they are my cousins who would like to come back to the village
again.” (Maria Loureiro, from the Tupinikim village of Irajá).
The arrival of this
agro-industrial project was demolishing for the local peoples:
out of 40 indigenous villages, today only seven are left. According
to information from the Quilombolas (*),
of the 100 communities existing in the northern region of Espirito
Santo - comprising some 10,000 families - only 1,200 families
are left, distributed in approximately 37 communities, surrounded
by eucalyptus trees and sugar cane for the production of alcohol.
Many of these peoples
became scattered. A group took refuge in the margins of their
old territory, others sought out a place to live in the cities
of the metropolitan region of Vitoria (the State capital).
The new territorial conformation drastically interfered with the
division of work by sexes, and as a consequence, in the social
and family roles of men and women. Indigenous people and Quilombolas
had to suffer the dispersion of their relatives. The families
that managed to remain in their territory crowded together in
small plots of land.
Paradoxically, with
the sadness of the violence and genocide that these peoples have
had to support, there is also a beautiful story of resistance
over the past six centuries. The most evident proof of this resistance
is the presence of Indigenous people and Quilombolas in all the
regions of Brazil.
With modern and developmental
components, the relationship between the traditional peoples of
Espirito Santo and Aracruz Celulose S.A. replays colonial history
and imposes irreparable material and symbolic losses on the Indigenous
and Quilombola communities.
In this new context,
men and women experience both common and different impacts. With
the loss of territory, women have lost their space to plant, rear
domestic animals and produce medicinal plants.
And for us, women,
it was also a very strong impact. We have this feeling, this feeling
of loss of our wealth. (Maria Loureiro,
Commission of Indigenous Tupinikim and Guarani Women).
The replacement of
forest by eucalyptus plantation caused the loss of foodstuffs
that previously had come from fruit-gathering, fishing and hunting.
The end of the tropical forest also caused the extinction of rivers
and streams, which had been places where women used to gather
and provided a privileged opportunity to exchange feminine knowledge.
It was very hard
for us because we lived off it...we used the river to fish.
Now, this difficulty... the river dried up because of the eucalyptus,
right? And we can only blame the eucalyptus. It was very hard
for us. But we women always suffer with this, with the lack of
water. Before, there was channelled water, but it did not reach
our houses properly and we suffered a lot. (Marideia,
Pau-Brasil Tupinikim village).
Indigenous and Quilombola
people had to live with environmental pollution due to the agrochemical
products used by the monoculture industry.
Then they started
to spray the pesticides, as this young woman said, they started
to finish everything off. The pesticides killed the animals we
used to hunt, the birds; the water also became polluted, killing
fish, crabs such as those in Pau-Brasil. There is a little
river there that went up to Barra do Sahy. So, that river disappeared.
The fish also disappeared because of the poison they put down;
they killed our fish, our crabs. Nothing is left in the mangrove.
You can go and look and you will see nothing, crabs, blue land
crab, all this was our food, what fed us. We lacked nothing, we
fed our children (Rosa, Pau-Brasil
Tupinikim village).
The disappearance
of the forest also caused the end of the raw material used in
making utensils and crafts which, in the case of the Indigenous
people, is an activity mainly carried out by women.
The loss of biodiversity
meant the loss of a considerable number of medicines derived from
forest plants, roots and animals. In the case of Guarani indigenous
women, who had previously used herbs to stimulate or to reduce
fertility, this meant the loss of their right to family planning
and becoming hostages of contraceptive devices and having their
tubes tied. Indigenous and Quilombola women no longer find the
lianas, the trees and the fat from animals they used in practicing
their medicine.
Without the ecosystems
that ensured reproduction of the way of life of these traditional
peoples, the masculine role, within the family and the community/village,
was undermined. Great hunters, farmers and fishermen, the indigenous
men found themselves forced to sell their work-force to Aracruz
Celulose’s outsourced companies and in the case of Quilombola
men, they were also forced to work for companies producing alcohol,
such as the Disa- Destilaria Itaúnas S.A. However, most of them
became unemployed as the companies’ have a policy of not hiring
indigenous and quilombola labour, as a means of forcing those
who stayed in the region to leave. The weakening of the male role
has exposed women to live with their partners’ alcoholism and
with domestic violence.
[...] So,
it ruined part of our lives, our freedom and our culture, our
daily harmony, our health. This arrival of the large companies
here ruined everything, it took away a piece of ourselves, it
is like a piece, as if we had one part alive and another dead,
as if we were living-dead, do you understand? Due to the large
companies that came here. We were happy, not now, we are unhappy
with this life, we need to fight for what is ours, for our territory,
for what they have snatched away from us, and with that everything
left, everything that was ours, so all that is left is for us
to protest, that’s right, on behalf of us all, of all the community.
(Eni, from the Quilombera Community
of São Domingos).
Some indigenous women,
bearers of a rich knowledge of the fauna and flora, became maids,
daily workers, nannies and cooks for the officials of Aracruz
Celulose. The obligation to carry out new tasks has affected the
exercise of motherhood, obliging mothers to stop breast-feeding
earlier and to leave their babies in order to look after the children
of city women.
Faced by these transformations
in their lives, these peoples have established alliances with
movements and NGOs supportive of their struggle. Today, they are
joined in a network, seeking to increase their capacity to resist.
Thus we have been
struggling, uniting with the other 36 communities to fight for
the issue of our lands; lands that were taken from our people,
from our predecessors, today in the hands of Aracruz Celulose.
So the struggle that unites us today is against the expansion
of eucalyptus plantations within our communities. (Katia
from the Divino Espírito Santo Community).
The women, who are
also protagonists in these struggles, have started a process of
organization in specific spaces, with the objective of discussing
the impacts of eucalyptus monoculture on them and the ways of
contributing to recompose the way of life of their people. They
intend to take up their place in this process of struggle in an
increasing way. When “[...] the environment starts
to affect their children, many women will take action.”
The process of women
organizing in specific spaces is recent. For example, in the case
of indigenous women, there are organized groups in each village
devoted to the production of crafts and recovering knowledge and
use of medicinal herbs. Some are in a more advanced process
of organization, others are just starting. In order to strengthen
their process of organization, a little over a year ago they set
up the Commission for Indigenous Tupinikim and Guarani Women,
which seeks to link indigenous women from all the villages and
to develop activities and struggles in their interest.
It is noticeable
that the organizational movement involving women has encouraged
public recognition of the various tasks they carry out: on the
battle-front, in the self-demarcation of the territory, in confrontation
with the police on occupying the Aracruz factory (in 2005), in
the kitchen, on preparing food for the large indigenous assemblies.
In this way, they are increasingly broadening their opportunity
to socialize, and seek partial replacement of the spaces that
were taken from them. Organization has also contributed to increase
their self-esteem.
Indigenous and Quilombola
women, who for so many decades shared the impacts of eucalyptus
monoculture plantations, now want to share their experience of
organization and to discover together the path of freedom.
They are women who are increasingly united, fighting against the
oppression of agro-business and patriarchy.
Exerpted from “Women
and Eucaliptus, stores of life and resistance”, WRM’s research
commited to Gilsa Helena Barcellos, e-mail: gilsahb@terra.com.br,
and Simone Batista Ferreira (members of the Alert against the
Green Desert Network), e-mail:
sibatista@hotmail.com
* Quilombolas: the
descendents of runaway slaves
