Update
in Tupinikim/guarani land struggle
Open Letter
of the Commission of the Chiefs - 18 January 2007
Commission
of Tupinikim and Guarani Chiefs and Leaders
The Commission of Tupinikim and Guarani Chiefs and Leaders wants to
inform you that on 3 December 2007, we, the Aracruz Celulose company
and FUNAI (the governmental institution for Indigenous Issues), with
the interventions and signature of the Public Prosecution Service
(MPF), signed an agreement (called TAC in Portuguese), where each
representation commits oneself to assume certain obligations. It is
up to FUNAI, besides other commitments, to transfer financial support
for emergency projects up to R$ 3 million (Brazilian reals). The President
of the FUNAI, Mr. Márcio Meira, assured that R$ 1 million would
be available on 15 December 2007.
Trusting the words of the President
of FUNAI, and pressed by the necessities of the indigenous communities,
foodstuffs were bought to attend part of these necessities in order
to assure that our families could pass the end of the year holidays
with dignity.
What happened is that the financial
support (R$ 1 million) was not transferred by the FUNAI and the community
is now in debt with the commerce in the region. On the other side,
the communities have been showing a big and growing dissatisfaction
with this delay, and above all with the not fulfilled verbal promises,
which jeopardizes the credibility of the chiefs and leaders before
their communities.
The fact of FUNAI not fulfilling
the obligations assumed in the TAC puts at risk the "survival"
of this document, considering the importance of the role of FUNAI
in the whole of obligations that this TAC contains: demarcation of
the lands, realization of the ethno-environmental study, preparation
and execution of projects and programmes for the economic self-sufficiency
of the communities, etc.
Besides this, we received information
that Aracruz intends to take out their eucalyptus trees from the recognized
indigenous lands (11,000 ha) in only 4 months, in spite of having
a period of 1 year to do this, counting from the day that the TAC
was signed (3 December 2007). This information increases the fear
that, after taking out the eucalyptus trees, the rights of the Indians
in the TAC in the document will not be put in practice.
Because of this situation, we
sent on 11 January this year a letter to the President of the FUNAI,
with a copy to the MPF, where we inform this situation and presented
the following proposals:
a: That the first installment
of R$ 1 million of the emergency projects resources gets immediately
transferred until 18/01/2008 (at 16:00hs of 18/01/2008 we received
a written proof of the deposit of this installment)
b: To prevent any doubt or ambiguity, that the beginning of the physical
demarcation of the lands, the start of the ethno-environmental study
and the taking out of one third (1/3) of the eucalyptus trees in the
area happens at the same time
c: That the projects and programmes, results of the ethno-environmental
study, get prepared, and the extraction of the rest of the eucalyptus
trees only permitted by means of a guarantee of the financing of these
same mentioned projects and programmes (on behalf of the government)
We would like to stress that these
proposals (b and c) should not be interpreted as a not fulfilling
of the terms of the TAC, once we are not introducing new claims, neither
impeding the extraction of the eucalyptus by Aracruz Celulose. On
the contrary, we understand that these measures are necessary to assure
that the obligations of all parts get realized simultaneously, and
by doing so, that the rights of the indigenous communities and Aracruz
Celulose get integrally guaranteed.
Finally, we want to show our intention
to maintain the dialogue between the parties. We propose to bring
together again the group that discussed and developed the TAC in order
to look after the true fulfilling of the commitments assumed in the
document.
18 January 2007
- Commission of Tupinikim and Guarani Chiefs and Leaders
