more on the yanomami Indians

from the Guardian archive

http://www.guardian.co.uk/



Dying breed 
Ancient tribes fight violence, pollution and disease 
Paul Brown 
Guardian 
Saturday September 23, 2000 
The Yanomami people are one of the truly Neolithic human groups in the
world. There are still an estimated 21,000 of them spread across a vast area
of rainforest in Venezuela and Brazil. 
Although their homelands are technically protected, they are constantly
invaded by gold miners, loggers, cattle ranchers and state-sponsored
development projects. Five, including a child, were reported killed in a gun
battle with prospectors in Brazil yesterday. 
For centuries, the cover of the forest has allowed them to develop in
isolation. They were first mentioned by explorers in the 18th century but
left alone until they were "discovered" and studied by anthropologists in
the 1960s. 
The Yanomami depend on the forest for all their needs, cultivating about 80%
of their food and hunting for the rest. They grow numerous plants for
medicinal purposes and their knowledge is being exploited by western drug
companies. 
Environmental groups admire the Yanomami because they manage to live in
harmony with the forest despite the poor soils. Besides hunting and fishing,
and finding nuts, fruit and honey in the forest, each family has cleared a
garden where they plant bananas and tubers. 
They live in large communities centred around a doughnut-shaped shelter
called a yano. A single yano may house 400. 
A gold rush in the 1970s brought confrontations with the Yanomami. The
indians were accused of using violence to defend themselves and many have
been killed, although there is no real evidence that they instigated the
problem. 
Attempts have been made to save the Yanomami from being wiped out, including
the setting up of a 50,000 square mile biosphere reserve in 1991 in the
Upper Orinoco in Venezuela but this has not stopped intrusion by gold
miners. 
As well as epidemics of western diseases brought by outsiders, malaria is
wiping out the tribes. Mercury and soil runoff has polluted the rivers and
streams where they fish. Worst of all, the pools of stagnant water from the
mining operations become breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. 
The latest estimate suggests malaria is killing about 13% of the population
a year. 


 <<...>> 
Scientist 'killed Amazon indians to test race theory' 
Geneticist accused of letting thousands die in rainforest 
Paul Brown, Environment correspondent
Guardian 
Saturday September 23, 2000 
Thousands of South American indians were infected with measles, killing
hundreds, in order to for US scientists to study the effects on primitive
societies of natural selection, according to a book out next month. 
The astonishing story of genetic research on humans, which took 10 years to
uncover, is likely to shake the world of anthropology to its core, according
to Professor Terry Turner of Cornell University, who has read the proofs. 
"In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and corruption it is
unparalleled in the history of anthropology," Prof Turner says in a warning
letter to Louise Lamphere, the president of the American Anthropology
Association (AAA). 
The book accuses James Neel, the geneticist who headed a long-term project
to study the Yanomami people of Venezuela in the mid-60s, of using a
virulent measles vaccine to spark off an epidemic which killed hundreds and
probably thousands. 
Once the epidemic was under way, according to the book, the research team
"refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami,
on explicit order from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that they were
only there to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick
strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help". 
The book, Darkness in El Dorado by the investigative journalist Patrick
Tierney, is due to be published on October 1. Prof Turner, whose letter was
co-signed by fellow anthropologist Leslie Sponsel of the University of
Hawaii, was trying to warn the AAA of the impending scandal so the
profession could defend itself. 
Although Neel died last February, many of his associates, some of them
authors of classic anthropology texts, are still alive. 
The accusations will be the main focus of the AAA's AGM in November, when
the surviving scientists have been invited to defend their work. None have
commented publicly, but they are asking colleagues to come to their defence.

One of the most controversial aspects of the research which allegedly
culminated in the epidemic is that it was funded by the US atomic energy
commission, which was anxious to discover what might happen to communities
when large numbers were wiped out by nuclear war. 
While there is no "smoking gun" in the form of texts or recorded speeches by
Neel explaining his conduct, Prof Turner believes the only explanation is
that he was trying to test controversial eugenic theories like the Nazi
scientist Josef Mengele. 
He quotes another anthropologist who read the manuscript as saying: "Mr.
Tierney's analysis is a case study of the dangers in science of the
uncontrolled ego, of lack of respect for life, and of greed and
self-indulgence. It is a further extraordinary revelation of malicious and
perverted work conducted under the aegis of the atomic energy commission." 
Prof Turner says Neel and his group used a virulent vaccine called Edmonson
B on the Yanomani, which was known to produce symptoms virtually
indistinguishable from cases of measles. 
"Medical experts, when informed that Neel and his group used the vaccine in
question on the Yanomami, typically refuse to believe it at first, then say
that it is incredible that they could have done it, and are at a loss to
explain why they would have chosen such an inappropriate and dangerous
vaccine," he writes. 
"There is no record that Neel sought any medical advice before applying the
vaccine. He never informed the appropriate organs of the Venezuelan
government that his group was planning to carry out a vaccination campaign,
as he was legally required to do. 
Fatalities
"Neither he nor any other member of the expedition has ever explained why
that vaccine was used, despite the evidence that it actually caused or, at a
minimum, greatly exacerbated the fatal epidemic." 
Prof Turner says that Neel held the view that "natural" human society, as
seen before the advent of large-scale agriculture, consists of small,
genetically isolated groups in which dominant genes - specifically a gene he
believed existed for "leadership" or "innate ability" - have a selective
advantage. 
In such an environment, male carriers of this gene would gain access to a
disproportionate number of females, reproducing their genes more frequently
than less "innately able" males. The result would supposedly be a continual
upgrading of the human genetic stock. 
He says Neel believed that in modern societies "superior leadership genes
would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity". 
"The political implication of this fascistic eugenics is clearly that
society should be reorganised into small breeding isolates in which
genetically superior males could emerge into dominance, eliminating or
subordinating the male losers in the competition for leadership and women,
and amassing harems of brood females." Prof Turner adds. 
In the memo he says: "One of Tierney's more startling revelations is that
the whole Yanomami project was an outgrowth and continuation of the atomic
energy commission's secret programme of experiments on human subjects. 
"Neel, the originator of the project, was part of the medical and genetic
research team attached to the atomic energy commission since the days of the
Manhattan Project." 
James Neel was well-known for his research into the effects of radiation on
human subjects and personally headed the team that investigated the effects
of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs on survivors and their children. 
According to Prof Turner, the same group also secretly carried out
experiments on human subjects in the US. These included injecting people
with radioactive plutonium without their knowledge or permission. 
Nightmarish
"This nightmarish story - a real anthropological heart of darkness beyond
the imagining of even a Joseph Conrad (though not, perhaps, a Josef Mengele)
- will be seen (rightly in our view) by the public, as well as most
anthropologists, as putting the whole discipline on trial," he says. 
"This book should... cause the field to understand how the corrupt and
depraved protagonists could have spread their poison for so long while they
were accorded great respect throughout the western world... This should
never be allowed to happen again." 
Yesterday Professor Turner told the Guardian it was unfortunate that the
confidential memo had been leaked, but it had accomplished its original
purpose in getting a full response from the AAA. 
A public forum would be held at its AGM in November to discuss the book its
revelations and courses of action. 
In a statement yesterday the association said "The AAA is extremely
concerned about these allegations. If proven true they would constitute a
serious violation of Yanomami human rights and our code of ethics. Until
there is a full and impartial review and discussion of the issues raised in
the book, it would be unfair to express a judgment about the specific
allegations against individuals that are contained in it. 
"The association is anticipating conducting an open forum during our annual
meeting to provide an opportunity for our members to review and discuss the
issues and allegations raised in the book." 


Environment  White men bearing gifts  Modern Brazil was born out of violence
and slavery. As its dignitaries meet former colonisers for a 500th birthday
party, Jan Rocha charts the ongoing rape of the Amazon  Guardian  Wednesday
April 19, 2000  Five hundred years ago this Saturday, the smooth-skinned
inhabitants of what was to become Brazil watched in astonishment as a group
of hairy white men dressed in strange coverings arrived offshore in huge
canoes, rowed to the beach and, unknown to them, claimed their territory for
the Portuguese crown.  It must have been the equivalent of watching a flying
saucer land and disgorge little green men from Mars. Even so, the indigenous
people welcomed them, exchanging their bows and arrows for hats and
bracelets, never guessing that the newcomers' lasting gift to them would be
500 years of slaughter, enslavement and disease.  Commemorating "the meeting
of two civilisations", as the speechwriters are now calling it, is a bit
like celebrating the meeting of German and Jewish cultures in the second
world war, says Jose Saramargo, the Portuguese poet. At least 5m Indians,
maybe as many as 15m, lived here when the white men arrived, but today they
number a mere 330,000 out of Brazil's total population of 165m.  The
slaughter was always ruthless: "It is after 10am when the group . . . reach
the camp. They see children playing, women cutting firewood, an old blind
woman sitting, a baby lying in a hammock. One man opens fire and the others
follow, shooting at anyone, man, woman or child . . . the attackers search
the huts, stabbing with their knives everyone they find there, injured and
uninjured . . . Goiano Doido does not spare even a small baby lying in a
hammock, wrapping it in a cloth and cutting it to pieces with a machete. The
old blind woman is kicked to death."  A 16th-century chronicle? No, it's
evidence given at the trial of a group of goldminers who in 1993 attacked a
Yanomami village in the Amazon rainforest. Five hundred years after
conquest, modern Brazil still shows little respect for the descendents of
the original inhabitants or for their unique knowledge of the rainforest.
There is evidence that the Amazon basin had been densely populated when the
Europeans arrived. Scientists now believe that the Indians had learnt not
only how to survive in the hostile environment but how to cultivate it.
Charles Clement, researcher at the government's Amazon research institute,
INPA, says the Indians domesticated a large number of wild plants (one of
them was the pineapple) to make them more productive. But the arrival of the
Europeans led to the ruin of the Indians, and the rainforest reverted to
wild.  European naturalists who trav elled to Brazil in the 18th and 19th
centuries marvelled at the exuberance of the rainforest, which they saw as
an empty paradise created by God without the intervention of man. Baron von
Humboldt, one of the first European naturalists to visit the Amazon basin,
wrote home to Germany in 1799: "What an extravagant country we are in.
Amazing plants, electric eels, armadillos, monkeys, parrots . . . we have
been running around like fools. For the first three days we could not settle
on anything."  Charles Darwin spoke of his "rapture" as he wandered by
himself through the forest: "I collected a great number of brilliantly
coloured flowers, enough to make a florist go mad . . . the air is
deliciously cool and soft."  The "empty" Amazon also attracted adventurers
in search of El Dorado, like the ill-fated British colonel Percy Fawcett,
who disappeared in 1925 while looking for a lost city, or, more recently,
the thousands of wildcat prospectors who overran the Yanomami reserve in
their frenzied hunt for gold. The turn of the century rubber boom made
fortunes for a few, but for 30,000 Indians used as slave labour it all too
often meant death, although it was the technology they had developed which
produced the latex.  One hundred years later, Asian logging companies have
joined the Americans and the Europeans in stripping the forest of mahogany
and other hardwoods, and researchers from major pharmaceutical companies,
eager to find the ingredients for new miracle drugs in Amazon plants, target
the knowledge of indigenous communities, where shamans are the repositories
of centuries of plant knowledge.  Successive Brazilian governments have seen
the rainforest's unplanned exuberance as a challenge and tried to discipline
it with roads and settlements, subsidising the burning of the forest to make
way for cattle ranches; turning its giant rivers into waterways for huge
grain barges: installing a free trade zone to swell the Amazon capital of
Manaus with a sprawling circle of shantytowns, peopled by migrants from
riverside villages.  Even environmentalists, who over the past 30 years have
campaigned to save the rainforest, took time to acknowledge that it was
inhabited.  For 500 years, the Indians have been seen as labour to be
exploited, savages to be civilised or obstacles to development plans. Rarely
have they been regarded as people whose knowledge is invaluable, whose
culture should be respected, whose opinion should be sought about what to do
with the rainforest.  Satellite surveys show that where indigenous reserves
have remained intact, the forest has not been destroyed. Indian reserves now
cover only 11% of Brazil's total land area, but they are under continuous
attack from those who want to mine and log their resources and who claim
that the reserves add up to "a lot of land for very few Indians".
Indigenous organisations have been given no say in Brazil's development
policy. This week, while Brazilian and Portuguese dignitaries hold their
solemnities on the Atlantic beach at Coroa Vermelha, where Pedro Alvares
Cabral landed in 1500, the Indians are holding their own encounter to demand
that, after 500 years, they should be heard.  * Jan Rocha, a former Guardian
South American correspondent, presents The Brazilian Dream on Radio 4,
tomorrow and on April 27, to mark the 500 years. Survival International and
Indian representatives will launch a report on indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Address: 11-15 Emerald Street, London, WC1N 3QL (tel 020 7242 1441; website:
www.survival-international.org).        
                 <<...>>        

The West really is the best  Global 'McCulture' is a tragedy... but it's a
price worth paying for spreading the gospel of human rights  Polly Toynbee
Observer  Sunday March 5, 2000  Sometimes it seems as if a tidal wave of the
worst Western culture is creeping across the globe like a giant strawberry
milkshake. How it oozes over the planet, sweet, sickly, homogenous, full of
'E' numbers, stabilisers and monosodium glutamate, tasting the same from
Samoa to Siberia to Somalia.  A traveller across the desert wastes of the
Sahara arrives at last at Timbuktu, where the first denizen he meets is
wearing a Texaco baseball cap. Pilgrims to the Himalayas in search of the
ultimate wilderness in the furthest kingdom find Everest strewn with
rubbish, tins, plastic bags, Coca-Cola bottles and all the remnants of the
modern global picnicker. Explorers of the Arctic complain that empty plastic
bottles of washing-up liquid are embedded in the ice. Global culture and its
detritus wash up everywhere, nothing sacred, nothing wild, nothing
authentic, original or primitive any more. These modern travellers' tales
tell of cultural vandalism, Western Goths contaminating ancient
civilisations and traditions untouched for centuries.  If the West were to
set out on a mission of global imperialism deliberately planned we would
surely choose better cultural ambassadors. It is not pages from Shakespeare
or scores of Mozart that litter steppe and savannah but some marketing man's
logo from last year's useless, meretricious product, or a snatch of that
maddening theme tune from Titanic .  Was ever an empire so monstrously
self-assured and ambitious? Western cultural imperialism reaches right into
the hearts and souls, the sexual behaviour, the spirit, religion, politics
and the nationhood of the entire world. It happens haphazardly with no
master plan or empire-building blueprint, but with a vague and casual
insouciance that drives its detractors to despair.  So when we consider the
globalisation of culture most of us bring to the subject a jumble of
deep-seated alarms - moral, intellectual, political, spiritual, artistic and
nationalistic, melting into a great pot of 'globalisation panic'. It causes
deep pessimism about the cultural future of a world turning homogeneously
horrible. But there is some ethnocentric disingenuousness about our concern
for the preservation of traditional cultures and our disgust at the way
Western culture invades the arts of other peoples.  We worry that, by the
very act of visiting it, we will spoil the thing we love. For our own belief
in our elemental selves we need there to be an idea of Eskimos and nomads,
Red Indians and Yanomami, living as close to their ancient, natural ways as
possible. It reassures us that there is a 'natural' state of mankind in the
wild for us to reconnect with when we feel lost. We steal from them all
kinds of cultural icons and ideas - Eastern mysticism, Bangra music, world
music, Japanese tea ceremonies, Sufi dancing, Thai batik, Tai Chi - tasting
an exotic melange of other traditions, adapted and Westernised, often
reinvented altogether to suit our own cultural needs.  Those who fear
globalisation seem to want those traditional cultures to stay as they are
for ever, a permanent primitive resource for us. But the human thirst for
the new is very easily awakened in people everywhere once they come in touch
with worlds beyond their own narrow horizons. Give them a taste of a life
beyond their own and they are drawn towards it. All over the world people
try to leave claustrophobic subsistence farming communities for the bright
lights of something more. Cultural globalisation for them means seizing the
opportunity to have our wealthy life-style, even if, sadly, a baseball cap
is as much as they can get their hands on.  We are selective in our feelings
about global culture. We may regret the Coca-Cola bottles but we will strive
with missionary fervour to spread our most important values. In our
political and social culture we have a democratic way of life which we know,
without any doubt at all, is far better than any other in the history of
humanity.  Deeply flawed maybe, but the best so far, Western liberal
democracy is the only system yet devised that maximises freedom for the
many. We preach and struggle to practise a doctrine of freedom for women and
multicultural optimism - by no means perfected, but probably the best there
is. Modern urban society may sometimes be frighteningly free, alienating and
lonely, but (for those above abject poverty) it offers a welcome escape from
social pressure, superstition, patriarchy and hierarchy.  Is it possible to
proselytise these new freedoms while preserving what is best in alien
cultures? Probably not. Some of the outward charm of old ways may survive an
entirely new intellectual culture but those old traditions quickly become an
ersatz heritage industry as Western ideas take hold. There is a trade-off
between the charm of ancient monarchies, tyrannies or theocracies, and the
spreading of democratic freedom.  Is there really a choice? Decorative
autocrats make good postcards, not good lives. So convinced are we of the
rightness of democracy that most Westerners believe it is only a matter of
time before the world eventually succumbs to its obvious merit. Theocratic
imams, military dictators, ethnic-cleansing demagogues and remaining
communists will all fall in time. Historical inevitability is with us and
the onward march of the human rights culture. But that also means a far
greater degree of globalised culture - a price well worth paying.  The ideas
of the Enlightenment proclaim that essential elements of culture are
universal. Universal human rights know no national frontiers. We are
entering a new era where the nation-state will become decreasingly
important. In any case, nations frequently created artificial cultural
identities for themselves within their arbitrary physical borders.  As for
those in a moral panic about the way Western sexuality is corrupting the
world's more dignified cultures, they look only at the worst and not at the
best outcomes. They see only how family life has broken down in the West,
divorce spreading like a plague with lewd, tawdry images breeding disrespect
for women and old sexual customs.  Sexual liberation in the West is seen
only for its tacky side, never for what it really is - harbinger of most
fundamental freedoms. We worry so obsessively about how to contain its less
desirable side-effects that we too easily forget the freedom it also
represents. Worlds of misery and repression are swept away once people seize
the freedom to choose whom they love, live with and marry.  Divorce frees
people from disastrous mistakes made early in life, releasing them from
relationships made in hell. For many people freedom from violent or deeply
unhappy marriages has meant far more than political freedom. The tidal wave
of divorce that follows Western cultural influence isn't an unfortunate
disease but an integral part of the spread of human rights as everywhere it
is the result of women's emancipation.  That's how it began in the West -
women free to walk away from violent, abusive, unequal and unhappy
marriages. Once they have the power to do that women are liberated to find
the power and the voice to be more than be chattels for the first time in
history, which also frees men from the obligation to care for them for life
as they did.  Breaking down the laws and customs that make a woman the
virginal possession of a husband is the first great step in women's rights.
It changes the family bond and traditional family power structures for ever.
Those who consider Westernisation an invasion of ancient traditions are
usually looking at the world through male spectacles. The emancipation of
women is the most radical cultural revolution the world has ever known,
reaching right into the most elemental aspects of humanity.  There's no
going back, and the world's women are all being swept up in its path.
Cultural globalisation means global feminism, freeing women everywhere. What
has been a great unequivocal good for women of the West can't be denied
indefinitely to others in the name of preserving indigenous (male) cultural
tradition.  All these are reasons to consider that much cultural
globalisation is essentially a force for good, something worth promoting. We
may be coy and self-deceiving about it, but in fact the West is quite
rightly intent on spreading its culture across the world. Even if we don't
like to admit it, we are all missionaries and believers that our own way is
the best when it comes to the things that really matter - freedom,
democracy, liberation, tolerance, justice and pluralism. Our culture is the
culture of universal human rights and there is no compromise possible.  *
This is extracted from an essay appearing in On the Edge, Living with Global
Capitalism , edited by Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens and published by
Jonathan Cape at £16.99.        
                 <<...>>        

Land rights  Bill of wrongs  Rightwing factions are pressing the Brazilian
government into reneging on its pledge to protect Amerindian lands. Jan
Rocha reports  Guardian  Wednesday June 23, 1999  While the G7 countries
have put millions of pounds into Brazil to protect indigenous lands in the
Amazon rainforest, inside Brazil a powerful lobby of mining and logging
companies is seeking to overturn this protection.  In congress, rightwing
representatives are calling for the reduction of indian reserves, while a
senator from the Amazon state of Roraima has presented a bill to provide
amnesty for goldminers who have committed crimes while "exercising their
profession in indigenous or environmental conservation areas". This would
include the goldminers found guilty of genocide after murdering 18 Yanomami
indians.  Unfortunately, the government of social democrat president
Fernando Henrique Cardoso is so weakened by the recent financial crisis and
Central Bank scandal that, in order to secure support from the rightwing
"Amazon bloc" in congress, he seems prepared to renege on his commitment to
demarcate and defend indian lands.  Last week he conceded an important
victory to the anti-indigenous lobby, reducing the area of the Makuxi
indians to avoid expelling illegal farmers' and miners' settlements. This
success will encourage pressure to reduce the neighbouring 9,000 sq km area
which is home to 10,000 Yanomami.  In the past, only international pressure
has protected the Yanomami from the onslaught of the goldminers. So last
week Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa came to the UK to appeal to the British
government - as a G7 member and funder of a health project in the reserve -
to help save his people.  It is not only the Brazilian right wing the
indians are up against. The UK rightwing think tank, IEA, has just published
a booklet called The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage, claiming that if left to
their own devices, native peoples destroy the environment - while if
collective land rights are replaced by private property, conservation
thrives.  But Brazil's space research institute, INPE, has shown by aerial
surveys that, in parts of the Amazon, indigenous reserves are oases of green
forest, surrounded by hundreds of miles of devastation where the forest has
been burnt by cattle ranchers or cleared by loggers.  By recognising
indigenous land rights, Brazil has indirectly ensured that the largest chunk
of tropical forest in the world is under some form of legal protection,
however precarious. If this protection is abandoned, the rainforest could
become a free-for-all, as Brazilian and multinational logging and mining
companies move in.  If their land were safe, the Amazon's 50,000 indians
could concentrate on developing sustainable sources of income. The Yanomami
want time to adapt to co-existence with a society that is, in many ways, as
strange to them as an invasion of ETs would be for us. They want the
appropriate weapons - not guns, but a knowledge of Portuguese and
arithmetic. The Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY) has set up a school in Davi
Kopenawa's village, and some of the young people are training to become
health agents, so they can recognise and treat the diseases, especially
malaria, brought by the goldminers.  An agroforestry project has also begun
to repair the environmental damage caused by goldmining activities and to
plant fruit trees to provide an alternative food source.  The Yanomami know
they cannot return to isolation, but they do not want to become, like so
many other indians - a people pushed off their land and reduced to being
marginalised misfits. 

Indians 'were sterilised for votes' in Brazil 
By Alex Bellos in Rio de Janeiro
Guardian Unlimited 
Friday September 18, 1998 
Dozens of women from a tribe of Brazilian Indians were sterilised by a
doctor in exchange for their votes in Brazil's last election, prompting
fears about the survival of the tribe, according to a Sao Paulo newspaper. 
At least 63 women of the Pataxo Ha-ha-hae tribe in the northern coastal
state of Bahia are reported to have been sterilised four years ago by a
doctor who is standing again in federal elections next month. The
revelations in the daily paper O Globo threaten to create a storm.
It is common practice in poor areas of Brazil for election candidates to
bribe voters with gifts. Women are often offered sterilisation as an
effective method of birth control.
According to the newspaper, the Indian women agreed to the operations. But
aid agencies believe they were acting against their best interests and
putting their civilisation in jeopardy.
"They don't have a perspective on the future. They do this kind of thing
without understanding the real consequences. What is at play here isn't the
individual, it is the whole community," Roberto Liebgott, co-secretary of
the Missionary Council for Indigenous Affairs, said.
According to O Globo, the women were sterilised during the 1994 election by
Roland Lavigne, a doctor who was standing as a federal deputy. Mr Lavigne,
who denies the allegations, is trying for re-election on October 4.
The sterilisations are linked to the Indians' land disputes with local
coffee and cacao plantation owners, who have ties to politicans.
"Politicians are doing this to kill off the nation," Alcides Fransisco
Filho, one of the Pataxo Ha-ha-hae chiefs, told O Globo.
The 1,500-strong tribe live in poverty in six villages 70 miles inland from
the coastal town of Ilheus. In the village of Baheta there have been no
births in four years because all 10 women of child-bearing age were
sterilised.
A survey being carried out by the Indigenous Health Council has discovered
63 cases of sterilisation so far. It claims that the operations, in which
the doctor makes a small incision to cut the Fallopian tubes, were conducted
with minimum medical standards.
The allegations could become an embarrassment for the president, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, because Dr Lavigne is a member of the rightwing Liberal
Front, whose support his coalition depends on.
The government department that is responsible for Indians, Funai, has said
it is investigating the allegations and has barred politicians from entering
Indian reservations until after the election.
The Centre for Justice and International Law, in Washington, is preparing to
submit a complaint against Brazil to the Organisation of American Nations.
It is the most serious indigenous case the OAN has dealt with since Brazil
was condemned by its human rights committee in 1985 for failing to protect
the Yanomami Indians from disease and destruction brought by miners.
 <<...>> 
        This article collection is my private personal opinion


Arno Tausch
                 <<...>>