Officially, Sivam, the Amazonian Surveillance System intends to
monitor the Brazilian Amazon. The Brazilian Missionary Indigenist
Council, however, fears that the surveillance system might
violate the rights of the Indians in the area.

The history of indigenous people in the Brazil Amazon is marked by the violence of military presence and action. When the first Portuguese arrived, the indigenous population was estimated to be five million (three million living in the Amazon area). By the early 1980's there were a little over 200,000 indigenous people in Brazil. At that time, the federal government created the Calha Norte (Northern Trench) Project, whose goal was to occupy the frontier area of the Amazon, to build military units in these areas, and to bring assistance to the communities living in the interior. The government successfully occupied this part of the Amazon, considered a "demographically empty space" by the military ideologues.

The federal government justified this militarization of the northern frontier of the country using the doctrine of National Security. This doctrine, however, did not prevent the influx of gold miners and loggers who brought death to many indigenous, especially the Yanomami, whose numbers were drastically reduced due to the invasion of almost 10,000 miners. Ignoring the 1988 Constitution's call for the demarcation of all indigenous lands, the government instead began to revise the boundaries and give much smaller land areas to the indigenous peoples in the states of Roraima and Acre. This action nullified any perspective of development for indigenous communities.

Without achieving any of the above-mentioned goals for the Calha Norte Project, it became instead another grand project interfering in the life of the indigenous. The construction of military units near indigenous villages generated conflicts, violence and sexual abuse. Victims who reported crimes suffered reprisals. Indigenous assemblies and meetings that included representatives from groups in Amazonas, Roraima and Acre denounced innumerable cases of aggression and violence by the military.

Last August, then President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, inaugurated the Amazonian Surveillance System (Sivam) in Manaus, Amazonas state. The stated objective of the project is to monitor, by means of airborne radar and satellite signals, 5.5 million square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon. Since the project was announced, in the early 1990s, the Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Missionary Indigenist Council, a branch of Brazil's National Conference of Catholic Bishops) also known as Cimi, has expressed concern that, besides issues related to corruption, Sivam could negatively affect the rights and interest of the indigenous peoples and riverbank populations of Amazônia.

Similar to the example of the Calha Norte Project, Sivam was conceived under the bias of the old militaristic doctrine of National Security, according to which the indigenous populations that live on the countries borders are potential enemies of Brazil.

Recently, the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo stated that Sivam entered into operation just at the moment when there is a military build up on the border with Colombia, where nine fronts are located against the Armed Revolutionary Forces (FARC). As foreseen, information collected by Sivam will most likely be utilized by operations of the Colombia Plan, a $1.3 billion project financed by the United States. Under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers, the project has clear military objectives within the neighboring country.

Everything indicates that Sivam will be nothing but a branch of the broadest aerial monitoring system ever in South America and the Caribbean, evidently controlled by the government of the United States.

According to the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, the chief of staff of the Air Force, General Marcos Antônio de Oliveira, favored the Raytheon company, the fourth largest Pentagon contractor, in a public tender against the French company Thompson, for deployment of the Sivam project. The stakes were $1.4 billion. The military also supposedly promised to pass on information collected by Sivam to US authorities.

This information is based on 400 documents that the newspaper obtained from the State Department. According to these papers, the American government sees the victory of Raytheon not only as a business success, but as a geopolitical advance as well. In a telegram dispatched on June 13th to the State Department, then-ambassador of the United States to Brazil, Melvin Levitsky, stated that "this project represents not only a very important business opportunity, but it also represents an excellent opportunity to further the interests of the US government in the fields of environment, air traffic safety and activities to combat drug trafficking, to name but a few".

With the Sivam project, the Brazilian government has virtual control of all of the Amazon area and finds it necessary to install military units in indigenous areas of the states of Amazonas, Roraima and Rondônia. Cimi representatives say that they are not disputing the relevance of the Armed Forces in defending the nation but that they have already seen how harmful the presence of military soldiers on traditional indigenous land is to the people.

Army Abuse

In the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in the state of Amazonas, the army, for many years, has recruited indigenous youth for military service. Women are constant victims of abuse and sexual violence. The judicial system of that city has more than 300 suits petitioning recompense for food for women who are pregnant by the soldiers. Only 34 of these judicial petitions were judged favorable to the victims. The Yanomami territory (Surucucu region) of Roraima also has an army base. A committee of federal deputies investigated and confirmed many cases of adolescents who also were impregnated by soldiers, who abused them sexually in exchange for food and small gifts.

In indigenous territory in the north of Roraima, the army launched a military operation called Operação Caçador (Hunter) 2. Indigenous residents were perplexed and fearful of the presence of so many soldiers and heavy armaments of war, including tanks. These and other operations of war in indigenous territories in the last years take place without the consent of the inhabitants of the area or the official indigenous organizations.

New Territories

There is a bill in the Lower House of Congress to have a plebiscite in the state of Amazonas concerning the creation of Federal Territories of the regions that include Alto Rio Negro, Solimões and Juruá. This proposal is not new. It is renewed during every election campaign by candidates who use the issue to plant illusions in the local towns where there are high rates of poverty and low rates of even elementary knowledge about the rights of citizenship.

What is hidden behind the illusory promises of rapid development and progress is a great deal more than an agreement among the dominant politicians about the creation of new power bases. For indigenous peoples, the creation of federal territories represents a new wave of attacks against their guaranteed rights, and especially against the right to their land.

The regions to be affected by the territories, according to the bill's sponsors, include 24 small cities in Alto and Médio Rio Negro, Alto Solimões and Juruá, where 52,817 indigenous people representing 30 distinct groups live, in an area of 296,481 square kilometers.

The people in these municipalities live with high rates of unemployment and disease with little government support in terms of health. There is little hope for the youth who study and have no employment future. The government fails to provide basic sanitation, safe water and dependable electricity. The dominant politicians know very well how to use these lamentable conditions to incite the residents of the urban centers, and the rural residents as well, against the indigenous peoples, whom they accuse of having a great deal of land.

Various campaigns have been launched in recent years when these dominant groups played the urbanized residents against the indigenous population: the poor against the poor, as if the politicians, those responsible for the politics and the economy of their municipalities, were not responsible for the poverty, since year after year they've shown themselves incapable of creating concrete programs for employment and income.

These dominant groups (the same that say that they are owners of immense tracts of land in the state of Amazonas and Roraima, an adjacent state, often acquired by fraud, as an official parliamentary commission of inquiry confirmed) incite the rural and river workers, small land holders, prospectors and many others to invade the territories where during millenniums indigenous cultures were created and whose people today need their space to live with dignity, with at least minimum guarantees for future generations.

However, those that are stimulated to invade the indigenous territories are not called to discuss their participation in the decisions that affect them directly. They are simply bombarded by the opinions of the dominant politicians, by radio, television, newspapers (all owned and controlled by a small elite) and public gatherings, where they are made to believe that there is no alternative to submit to these audacious politicians.

Indigenous, river-dependent and other poor segments of the communities are not consulted nor enlightened about the damage that can be caused by the proposal, especially for the indigenous peoples. The principal representative organizations of the indigenous peoples in the regions to be affected by the proposal are worried and have indicated their opposition to the division of Amazonas state.

Those most interested in the creation of the territories are commercial groups that seek to exploit lumber, mining and biodiversity of the forest. Most of these resources are to be found in the indigenous lands. As was done in other former territories, these groups are using all possible maneuvers to revise the established boundaries of the (indigenous) lands.

The bill was not based on the concrete reality of these areas. Its logic is the same that guided the development policies for the region—seeing the Amazon region as an area of low population as well as a deposit of infinite natural riches that ought to be exploited in function of external interests. The consequences of this policy are reflected in the poverty and the abandonment of the people in the interior of the area, in the ecological degradation and in the violation of indigenous rights.

If the proposal is approved, the indigenous peoples will suffer the greatest impact as a result of increased migration to the region and because, once again, they are accused of being obstacles to "development," and political opportunities will be sought that may cause the permanent loss of their lands.

With information from "Por uma Terra Sem Mal" (For a Land Without Evil), published for the Campanha da Fraternidade (Fraternal Campaign) 2002.

This material was supplied by Sejup, which has its own Internet site: http://www.oneworld.net/sejup/

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