{"id":23390,"date":"2022-08-29T12:28:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T19:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=23390"},"modified":"2022-08-29T12:28:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T19:28:48","slug":"the-front-lines-of-the-end-of-the-world-and-the-fight-to-save-the-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/08\/29\/the-front-lines-of-the-end-of-the-world-and-the-fight-to-save-the-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"THE FRONT LINES OF THE END OF THE WORLD \u2014 AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE AMAZON"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

BECOME A MEMBER<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scorched remnants of the Amazon rainforest after a blaze set by farmers tore through the land.\u00a0Photo: Alex Pritz\/Amazon Land Documentary<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Territory,\u201d documentarian Alex Pritz chronicles Indigenous Brazilians\u2019 fight to save their home in the Amazon rainforest.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Andrew Fishman<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

August 28 2022, 4:00\u00a0a.m. (TheIntercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A SOLITARY MAN wades through lush tropical rainforest as a rich chorus of birds and insects chirp all around him. Then: a chainsaw, a tree crashes down, and a barren expanse with dozens of cattle corralled tightly together. The opening frames of \u201cThe Territory,\u201d a new documentary from director Alex Pritz, lay out the two clashing visions for the future of Amazon rainforest without using any words at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only thing that\u2019s saving our planet is our rainforest,\u201d says Bitat\u00e9, a young member of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous people, in the film. \u201cI believe the Amazon is the heart not just of Brazil, but the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/o.prod.theintercept.com\/checkout\/template\/cacheableShow?aid=hsZyoAWmIE&templateId=OTEXERHVRCE9&templateVariantId=OTVEIU52VT7IF&offerId=fakeOfferId&experienceId=EX3LBE28N473&iframeId=offer_d95877cf7d9b23ea09ec-0&displayMode=inline&pianoIdUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fid.tinypass.com%2Fid%2F&widget=template&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Territory,\u201d which is showing in select U.S. and Canadian cities, chronicles the perilous efforts of Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau like Bitat\u00e9 to defend their ancestral home as white settlers seek to illegally slash and burn the forest and turn it into pasturelands. The forest is officially protected by the Brazilian government, but Pritz shows how far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and the Brazilian state\u2019s hostility toward Indigenous people emboldens the land thieves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is very timely. Brazil is gearing up for highly polarized presidential elections in October. And, with the climate emergency exploding across the globe, environmental and Indigenous concerns remain in the spotlight, particularly following the brutal assassinations<\/a> of British journalist Dom Phillips<\/a> and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira<\/a> in the Amazon in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cattle ranching is the leading cause of Amazon deforestation, which has increased at a dramatic rate in recent years, much of it illegal. So much of the rainforest has already been cut down that scientists believe we are on the verge of an irreversible tipping point<\/a>. The Amazon also serves as an essential carbon sink in the fight against climate change and generates the rainfall that supports almost all life on the South American continent. Ranching, as well as mining, logging, and factory farming \u2014 embraced by politicians and bankers as agents of \u201ceconomic progress\u201d \u2014 are driving us ever closer to an environmental (and socioeconomic) catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTHE TERRITORY\u201d WAS shot on the front lines of an active war zone almost 500 years after the conflict began, following the arrival of the first Europeans in search of gold. No nuclear weapons are involved, but the conflict has the potential to dramatically alter the course of life on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pritz and his team spent three years on the southern edge of Brazil\u2019s Amazon rainforest, beginning in 2018, just as Bolsonaro, in the name of economic development, was campaigning on promises to roll back Indigenous rights and empower miners, loggers, and ranchers. The land grabbers of the Amazon saw the opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is how Brazil was created,\u201d a settler named Martins tells the camera in Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory, his arms speckled with wood chips from the once towering tree he had just felled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern Brazil, like the rest of the Americas, was built on the genocide of Indigenous people and the forced expropriation of their lands \u2014 programs conducted by enterprising settlers, the government, and large infusions of international capital<\/a>. Martins is among the poor, dispossessed, landless peasants in the film, but their like is backed and financed by powerful interests that the camera does not capture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The colonial process has been such a successful endeavor that the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau have been decimated \u2014 less than 200 of them remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople say they\u2019re there, but nobody\u2019s ever seen them,\u201d said one aspiring settler, hoping to dismiss the property claims of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau and other Indigenous people who live on the reserve. Cribbing from apologists for colonialism quoted in history books, Sergio, a settler leader, tells the camera, \u201cThe Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, they don\u2019t farm or create anything. They just live there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The settlers employ sometimes paradoxical rhetoric to justify their actions: patriotism, progress, fairness, the perception that the Indigenous do not make good use of their land, and even doubts that they really even exist \u2014 all infused with Christian values and heavy-handed claims to divine right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there is a villain, it\u2019s the people behind Sergio and Martins that are financing this, the people that are really benefiting from having these poor disenfranchised farmers remain with the idea that it is Indigenous people who are holding them back,\u201d Pritz, the director, told The Intercept. \u201cIn America, same as in Brazil, it\u2019s advantageous for the political class to keep disenfranchised people fighting amongst themselves because it keeps the heat off them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau in the film are more direct and concise in their analysis than the settlers. \u201cThey just want money,\u201d one unnamed elder tells a gathering of leaders. \u201cThat\u2019s all it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photos: Top\/Right: An invader rides his motorcycle through the rainforest fire blaze. Bottom\/Left: A cattle feed lot in southern Rond\u00d9nia, where beef production accounts for the majority of deforestation. This area was once all rainforest.Photos: Alex Pritz\/Amazon Land Documentary<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HOPE IN THE face of overwhelming odds is the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau\u2019s strategy. Fears of the complete extermination of their people \u2014 genocide \u2014 are on the lips of multiple Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau in the film. They are angry but also cognizant that they are outgunned. Rather than use the warfare tactics of their ancestors, we accompany their surveillance teams, armed with bows and arrows, drones, cameras, and GPS trackers, to document and report invasions to authorities with the help of environmentalist allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is one of the contradictions that the film reveals: The Indigenous, derided as backwards by their enemies, employ modern technology and sophisticated public relations to promote a vision for the future that is increasingly the only hope for survival. Meanwhile, the supposed agents of socioeconomic progress use antiquated ideologies and outright criminality to destroy Brazil\u2019s most precious resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigenous groups are also testing their luck<\/a> in courts. The patrols, meanwhile, take matters into their own hands and snuff out incipient invasions whenever they judge it safe enough to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invasions<\/a> into Indigenous territories are up 180 percent under Bolsonaro, according to a new study<\/a> by the Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples. The land raiders\u2019 bonanza has proved dangerous to the Indigenous and their defenders, who live under constant threat from ruthless enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips and Pereira, the journalist and Indigenous expert, respectively, were assassinated about 500 miles to the northwest while working with a similar surveillance project being implemented in the Javar\u00ed Valley, a sprawling Indigenous reserve on the border with Colombia and Peru. The accused murderers were illegal fishermen with alleged ties to politicians and international drug smuggling networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the killing, the Indigenous patrol group had repeatedly denounced<\/a> the activities of this gang to authorities with documented evidence, but nothing came of it. Human rights organizations complain that the police have been hesitant<\/a> to investigate who is really behind the killers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Bitat\u00e9 Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau and members of the Jupa\u00fa surveillance team patrol the river by boat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Alex Pritz\/Amazon Land Documentary<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips, who was writing a book called \u201cHow to Save the Amazon,\u201d strongly believed that most of the people committing environmental crimes on the ground are also victims of a system designed to make unsustainable development their only viable economic option. In addition to empowering Indigenous movements, he argued, any solution must include more sustainable alternatives for those working in the extractive and land-grabbing industries \u2014 the very sort of people that assassinated Phillips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this is likely to happen under the current government. Recent polling suggests<\/a> that leftist former President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva continues to lead nationwide, but Bolsonaro and aligned anti-Indigenous and anti-environment politicians have the upper hand in the Amazon region in this October\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All hope is not lost, though: Eighty-one percent of Brazilians believe that protecting the Amazon should be a priority of the next president, and two-thirds nationally, and in the North specifically, believe the Bolsonaro administration is not actively combating crimes such as land grabbing, drug trafficking, and illegal logging in the region, according to another recent poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government isn\u2019t doing their job. That\u2019s our reality \u2014 they\u2019re not. And now we\u2019re doing their work for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems contradictory that polls show that people in Brazil\u2019s north both support Bolsonaro and want more done to protect the Amazon, but the responses are indicative of the complexity of the issues at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The realities are that policies of death and destruction are subsidized by the government and bankrolled by faraway investors, while criminality is not held accountable. Options for Brazilians are limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is easy to imagine that if alternative, sustainable economic models were incentivized, a different electoral reality would exist. \u201cIn another world,\u201d said Pritz, \u201cSergio could be an advocate for agrarian reform and some of these other leftist movements.\u201d Instead, social programs, law enforcement, and sustainable development have been whittled away and most Brazilians are feeling increasingly desperate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government isn\u2019t doing their job,\u201d Bitat\u00e9 says in \u201cThe Territory.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s our reality \u2014 they\u2019re not. And now we\u2019re doing their work for them.\u201d The young Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau leader spoke as he was trekking through the forest in search of invaders. The words, though, could just as easily have come from the mouth of Martins as he chainsawed the path for a new road into the reserve that he hoped will one day be built \u2014 the only path he can imagine to escaping poverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BECOME A MEMBER The scorched remnants of the Amazon rainforest after a blaze set by farmers tore through the land.\u00a0Photo: Alex Pritz\/Amazon Land Documentary In \u201cThe Territory,\u201d documentarian Alex Pritz chronicles Indigenous Brazilians\u2019 fight to save their home in the Amazon rainforest. Andrew Fishman August 28 2022, 4:00\u00a0a.m. (TheIntercept.com) A… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23391,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23390\/revisions\/23391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}