CULTURE CLASH

In the remote Amazon forests, native tribes face encroachment from the outside world

BRASILIA, Brazil — For generations, the Awa lived far from the rest of humanity, picking fruit, hunting pigs and monkeys and following the seasons’ rhythms in their patch of the lush Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Then the rest of the world found the Awa. Loggers and ranchers came, cutting into the tribe’s ancestral lands in search of profits. So did a rail line where trains shuttle tons of iron ore through the forest, from mines in the heart of the Amazon to Atlantic Ocean ports, with much of it headed for Chinese steel mills.

The threat to the Awa grew so grave that it caught the attention of the British-based indigenous rights group Survival International, which designated them “the world’s most endangered tribe” and made their preservation its top campaign priority this year.

While the Awa may face the most immediate threat, tribes across Brazil are locked in the same struggle as they battle loggers, ranchers, miners and farmers who often invade government- demarcated reserves. Brazil’s maturing economy is driving much of the development, as is renewed strength of the country’s farm sector, which recently pushed through reforms loosening Brazil’s forest protection law.

Watchdog groups say more conflict is inevitable as government-backed projects such as hydroelectric dams and roads bring thousands of settlers to remote areas. Two bills now working their way through Brazil’s Congress would further open indigenous territory to development and potentially weaken tribes’ hold on their land.

“We’re seeing that the conflicts Indians are having are becoming more potent in recent years, with a series of violent clashes stoked by the agenda of the federal government to develop remote areas,” said Cleber Buzatto, executive director of the Brazil-based indigenous rights group CIMI.

The issue takes center stage during this month’s “People’s Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, a gathering linked to the annual World Social Forum, also held in Brazil. The summit is expected to draw thousands of activists to an alternative to the United Nations’ Rio+20 conference on sustainable development happening in Rio at the same time.

Last week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff created two new nature reserves, as well as seven indigenous territories in the Amazon, covering thousands of square miles across the country.

For Brazilian farm groups, protecting tens of thousands of indigenous people is too high a price to pay for blocking production of soy, beef and other agricultural goods, exports of which have helped fuel rising fortunes in Brazil and a growing middle class. In total, 11 percent of Brazilian territory and 22 percent of the Amazon have been turned over to indigenous groups.

“Who benefits from this? Not our country, which today enjoys the best and cheapest food in the world and boasts of being the globe’s second-largest food exporter,” Sen. Katia Abreu, president of Brazil’s National Agriculture and Livestock Federation, wrote in a recent opinion article for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

“Neither do the Indians, who as their numbers show don’t need more physical space, but sanitation, education and an efficient health system. They need, in short, a better life, like all of us.”

Federal agencies responsible for protecting the indigenous say they are doing virtually everything in their power to stop the encroachment, but acknowledge their powers are limited while policing with limited means roughly 480,000 square miles of Indian reserves, an area larger than Texas.

In Mato Grosso do Sul state, the 40,000-strong GuaraniKaiowa tribe has seen many members pushed into makeshift camps along highways and tent villages along rivers, as they lobby to have their lands recognized legally.

Economic hardship has sparked a rash of suicides. More than 550 tribe members killed themselves from 2000 to 2011, according to government statistics. An additional 282 were murdered, mostly in fights over land, between 2003 and 2011, according to CIMI, making up half of all native people killed in Brazil during the period.