"Rivers Teach Us to Ignore Borders and Continue the Struggle"

To the Brazilian people, international community,
and to all the relatives who see the importance of life:

There was a time when the Xingu flowed free, a freedom that guarantees life. Then they decided to strangle the Xingu’s course. They decided to raise a wall from its bed, to tie off its jugular and make its blood gangrenous. We continue fighting…

In taking the government in 2003, the forces of the left in coalition with the parties of the center, with the badge that hope had vanquished fear, they promised to initiate a period in which many of our historic demands would be met. For us, the Amazonian people, in a new dawn of those days, already cautious about the reactivation of the Project of Death to Belo Monte and the possible swelling plans to wall-off our rivers extending to the four corners of our Amazon. A hard blow that will not be forgotten… In 2008, once again we formed the alliance of the peoples of our Xingu river and we cried: “Xingu Vivo Para Sempre!” (“Xingu Alive Forever!”) And we continue the fight…

We realize that in this tough fight, in which we take on a very powerful enemy in order to make us even stronger, many preferred to adopt developmentalism as absolute truth and as the only solution for our centuries-old problems. The circle of power in Brasilia continued to adopt the large-scale projects of death as an offer to provide solutions to our centuries-old demands for education, health, housing, food security and much more. We endured the cynicism of these policies, the greed of the contractors, the advance of agribusiness, and indispensable allies of the mismanagement and lies of governments at all levels. All the same, we continue fighting…

We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Madeira River in their struggle, we helped expose the environmental, judicial, and above all, social atrocities that came with the construction of the Santo Antônio and Jirau hydroelectric dams. At the height of the 2014 rainy season, the very waters of the Madeira seemed to cry out for help and shout out to the world that our Amazonian biome will not readily withstand mega-constructions of this type, and much less by the people attempting to survive all of this.

We are suffering harsh blows from the very Branch of government whose primary mission it is to ensure justice. The legal artifice of the Suspension of Writ of Mandamus (Suspensão de Segurança), devised under the military dictatorship, was and continues to be used in these times of “Democracy” in a direct mockery of this and of the rights of the people to their self-determination. The Brazilian Constitution and Convention 169 of the ILO represents nothing under the dome of the Brazilian Judiciary, as we witness the malevolent decisions to deny this right to the indigenous peoples and traditional populations. And still we continue fighting…

When we thought we were all alone, all of a sudden on the national scene a people ascended who cross two hydrographic basins, disregarding the frontiers, anticipating it, in a movement typical of warrior men and women accustomed to the great battles for their territory. The Munduku Iperêḡ Ayu Movement made sure to teach us, with this gesture of solidarity, that this fight is not ours alone, but of all humanity. In the tense moments of a supposed dialogue, where the federal government insists on lying to force the prevailing of its position, these warrior people suffered the harsh repression of the federal police forces in the village of Teles Pires bringing death and destruction, then later at the Belo Monte construction site, then subsequently in the capital of the Republic (Brasilia), and then again in their own territory, with a clear signal demonstrating that this is not just dealing with a matter of dialogue, but a monologue in which the government insists on being the sole protagonist. Nevertheless together, and even more so, we continue fighting…

Thus, this struggle has taught us that pain has no borders and the long night of more than 500 years of oppression and attack on the way of life of our Amazonian peoples is far from over. Never have the words of Che held so much meaning, “There are no borders in this struggle to the death” and that, “we cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world.” As people of the Amazonian waters we continue to struggle…

We have learned in the struggle to wield the truth about the grand projects in the Amazon, especially Belo Monte, and we denounce to the world the atrocities that this project can and is causing in our region. While we reaffirm the possibility of another way of life, which is nothing more than that of our peoples, the Brazilian Government has criminalized and is still currently criminalizing us. While we reaffirm the value of life, the Brazilian Government imposes on us the death of our rivers. While we said that it is possible to organize to fight in the name of liberty of thought and of free association, the government spied on us and used practices that were typical during the Military Dictatorship, while not causing any inconvenience to the pro-dam bureaucratic inner circle, who were largely a victim of the regime. We continue fighting…

We are telling the world that Belo Monte has not killed the resistance. Its cement has not blinded all people’s eyes, nor has its money bought all consciences. Its repression has not deadened courage or silenced mouths; its lies have not deafened all ears. The resistance, courage, truth, dignity, life, and our rights are non-negotiable. This is what we state on our tenacious journey of struggle…

To the critics who take a defeated perspective and say that Belo Monte is a fait accompli, that the walls of concrete are being erected, and that in the end, we will just be defeated, Xingu Vivo restates its opposition to the project of death that is Belo Monte, and says that never has the pulsating cry been more apparent #PAREBELOMONTE, because no hydroelectric dam built, in any part of our Panamazônia, represents an acquittal of the crimes and other violations perpetrated against the peoples of the river and of the forest. The possible operation of its turbines represents a mockery of the Constitution, and of fundamental rights of democracy and of liberty. We continue fighting…

And if Belo Monte is not the only one, if there is a threat to liberty on other rivers, if in other regions there is planned extermination of the forest, of indigenous life, of the fisherman, of the riverine peoples, of the fish, of the animals, and where they attempt to plant mistrust, greed, discord, hunger, hopelessness and fear, we will be there with our resistance, courage, solidarity and dignity. We will always be reaffirming the autonomy of the people to decide their own destiny, law and position incompatible with the projects of death being ordered on our Amazon. This is what we propose in our struggle… to keep fighting…

We will continue fighting for the respect of life, culture, the free socioeconomic and political organization of the indigenous peoples, of the fishermen, of the riverine peoples, of the women and men of the countryside and of the city. We reclaim the harmony of the originating and traditional peoples, the harmony with the birds, with the fish, with the forest, with the rivers, alive forever.

If the rivers are the veins of our land, where there are those who want to block them, our struggle will be there. As men and women of the waters, where there are those who want to fight, that is where we will bring our support and ask for their solidarity. Never has our Xingu, Tapajós, Madeira and Teles Pires alliance been so apparent. Just as the rivers know no borders, there will be no borders in the defense of our right to decide our own destinies. The struggle never ends, because as a wise old man has taught us “the struggle is like a circle, you can start at any point, but it never ends.“

Long Live the Struggle!

#PAREBELOMONTE

#TAPAJÓSSEMBARRAGENS

#PELAAUTODETERMINAÇÃODOSPOVOS

Altamira, Pará – April 4th, 2014