We build reality and community justice.
We are protectors of the territory, of the forest.
Itahu Ka’apor, at the 3rd March for Good Coexistence in the Forest
Once again the Ka’apor people, through their ancestral organization TUXA TA PAME, has demonstrated its strength. On May 12, 13 and 14, there took place the 3rd March for Good Coexistence in the Forest, for Autonomy, Self-Government and Self-Determination in the Alto Turiaçu territory on the Amazonian portion of Maranhão state. It is not a festive moment. Rather, it is an occasion to denounce the atrocities that Indigenous Peoples and quilombola and peasant traditional communities suffer in the hands large-scale landowners, loggers, mining corporations, gold diggers, carbon credit speculators and the petty-minded and disgusting sector of society known as agribusiness.
In 2022, Sarapó Ka’apor was murdered, yet another milestone in the project of violence, injustice and humiliation to which the Peoples that defend the forest are submitted. This is a project built by mining and landowning greed, which insists on advancing into the Alto Turiaçu territory, destroying the forest, poisoning rivers, fish and people. The Brazilian State and the governments of Pará and Maranhão, as well as the federal government, play active roles in this genocidal project against the Ka’apor people.
In solidarity with Tuxa Ta Pame, we demand a response from the Federal Police regarding the murder of Sarapó, including the naming of the intellectual authors, who are active and continue persecuting leaders and supporters of the organization.
In recent years, several leaders have been murdered. The resulting investigations have been compromised by the discriminatory bias of the civilian and military police forces, by the anti-Indigenous Peoples white justice system and above all by the political oligarchies made up of fascist parliamentarians and agribusiness that control the region in Pará and Maranhão states, thus de-legitimizing the autonomy of Tuxa Ta Pame to self-defend their territory. They facilitate the illegal exploitation of forest assets as is the case when the National Mining Agency (ANM) issues mining permits in and around the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Land with the complicity of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA), in turn under the wing of agribusiness and aided by the ostracism practiced by the National Indigenous Peoples' Foundation (FUNAI) and the Indigenous Peoples' Ministry against those Peoples that do not agree with their institutional policy of taming indigenous rebelliousness in the face of the erasure of their roots and culture via colonialist policies.
The Ka’apor People, guided by their Tuxa Ta Pame ancestrality, is constantly persecuted by local and regional political and economic groups that are favored by major mining, gold-digging, logging and land-grabbing activities, as well as -- more recently -- by speculation on the carbon offset market. The climate crisis is a product of capitalism and will not be solved in the financial markets. Rather, it will be solved through the struggle, unity and self-determination of the peoples of the forest. Corporations such as VALE (via its strategy of indigenous co-option and its "Social Ambition", by means of its Basic Environmental Plan - PBA), WordLife Works and Forest Trends have only caused damage and division among the Ka’apor people by recruiting leaders from other Indigenous Peoples in Maranhão and Pará, thus opening the way for the financialization of territories via forest grants. These leaders are belittled by the petty power and domination games played by the upstairs crowd against the majority of their peoples.
Since Tuxa Ta Pame is the only group inside the territory that opposes this new form of corporate-political-state colonialism, it suffers with the unequal correlation of forces, where even mayors of the neo-Nazi Liberal Party (PL) provide lawyers and all kinds of political-legal-police support to carry out offensives against all those who say "no" to this project to dominate the peoples of the forest. We must denounce this permanently!
This is why the Ka’apor led by TUXA TA PAME do not expect justice from the white man; instead they build justice with self-defense for their people and territory, as well as governance experiments that demonstrate the clarity of their life project. The struggle of the Ka’apor against mining in their lands, against the financialization of their forests and biodiversity, must also be our fight. In defense of the lives of all our relatives, we shout out: Sarapó lives!
Organizations that cooperate with and support the Ka’apor people and the 3rd March for Good Coexistence in the Forest
- Núcleo de Educação Popular Paulo Freire (NEP/UEPA)
- Asamblea de Articulación de Los Pueblos del Kollasuyu, Argentina
- Federação Anarquista Cabana (FACa)
- Mirasawa Murukutu Tupinambá Kuri’o Ytinga – Maery
- Red Descolonialidad y Autogobierno
- Sindipetro - Sindicato dos Petroleiros PA/AM/MA/AP
- Idade Mídia Comunicação para Cidadania
- Centro de Cultura Libertária da Amazônia (CCLA)
- Instituto Amazônia Solidária (IAMAS)
- Instituto Pororoca
- Sindicato dos Docentes da Universidade do Estado do Pará (SINDUEPA)
- Centro de Educação Neo Humanista de Ananda Amarga (CENHAMAR)
- Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira (CAB)
- Aldeia Tupinambá Serra do Padeiro no território indígena Tupinambá de Olivença, Cacique Babau Tupinambá
- Seção Sindical do ANDES (Regional Nordeste 1 MA/PI/CE) (APRUMA-MA)
- Danilo de Assis Climaco, professor de antropologia, Universidad de San Marcos, Peru
- Roberto Espinoza, Sociólogo, Peru
- Asamblea de Articulación de Los Pueblos del Kollasuyu, Argentina
- Associação Cultural Amazônia (ACAM)
- Conselho Warao Ojiduna
- Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre
- Conselho Indigenista Missionário – Regional Maranhão
- Movimento Mundial Pelas Florestas Tropicais - WRM