Editor’s note: We are grateful to present this wonderful article by our appreciated guardian Trinity La Fey today. Original writing by DGR cadre, guardians and supporters makes the most powerful articles because it genuinely reflects our spirit, the deep empathy and love for the natural world that keeps us grassroots activists going, and gives insight into our struggles.
When, concerned for our safety, my husband pressured me to either censor or disguise myself online, I replied, “You keep talking at me like I don’t know what kind of world this is and I am asking you: what kind of a world do you want to live in?”
I-search papers annoy me and I try not to write them, but in this, there can be no dispassionate analysis. Without relating the experience, how can this story be told? If Rebecca Wildbear, who recounted, “Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has caused the loss of 80% of wild mammals and 50% of plants. 90% of large fish, 50% of coral reefs and 40% of plankton have been wiped out. Of all the mammals now on Earth, 96% are livestock and humans. Only 4% are wild mammals.” couldn’t convince you, or at least pique your curiosity, I doubt I will either. There are already exceptional writers and reciters of numbers and names of species. That is not what I am and that is not what this article will be.
This is about where we live.
When I hear about dams, mining, logging, drilling, fracking and industrial production, I hear about it in numbers and names: this many of that species eradicated (to use the euphemism); this much money for that company; this many jobs for which community; how many years of what material; this many of that habitat displaced.
Are these the questions we really want the answers to?
I live in my body. When I eat too much or not enough, when I’m ill dressed for the weather, when I’m careless with my movements in relation to my environment, pain and discomfort tell me, in no uncertain terms, what is wrong.
Derrick Jensen once said, “Before you laugh and say a river is just a container through which water flows and happens to be filled with other beings, let me ask you: when was the last time you had a drink of water; and let me ask you: when is the next time you’re gonna’ pee?[ L]et me remind you that more than 90% of the cells in your body don’t contain your DNA . . .”
I can tell you the kind of world I don’t want to live in and the kind of person I don’t want to be. That is a world in which dams, mines, drills, deforesters and trawlers go unfettered in their genocidal quests, the kind of person that is complicit in those atrocities by default.
If I were a rich man, maybe it would embarrass me to hear arguments to the effect that environmentalism is a luxury of the privileged. Maybe, if I didn’t know that Bangladesh is one-third under water, I could be spoken over about how, “There’s no point in trying to ‘save the planet,’ how arrogant and self-righteous it is when everything is doomed and Earth has gone through plenty of extinctions. What’s one more event?”
But I am not a rich man and I live in a country that has displaced more people than water has, so far, in Bangladesh. Will Falk once said, “Don’t ask, ‘What can I do?’ but, ‘What needs to be done?’”
So I went to Thacker Pass and asked him.
Except it wasn’t as simple as that. Before Thacker Pass, since September of 2015, my husband and I have spent but one night apart. We’re the kind of couple that really leans into the whole ‘interdependency’ concept. Though I have been a passenger near and far, being a late-blooming driver, until Thacker Pass, I’d never myself travelled more than two hours away from my home. Thacker Pass was two, eight-hour days of driving away from my responsibilities and loves, where I work for a living. As I told everyone who came to the camp, I cried all the way to Laramie. I bored everyone else to tears talking them up about him. All five of us.
Surreal doesn’t touch it. I had to rent a car, reserve an out of state hotel, two ways, with a card. I am not a rich man luxuriating in ideology. I’m at ground level out here, seeing and feeling the dire effects of pollution and poverty. Both of those acts were things I’d never done before. They were alien and beyond expensive. They are things I want gone: emblematic of a way of life that as Max Wilbert so eloquently said, “ . . .we don’t get to vote on . . . .”
Before I left, I kept thinking: this is my ‘real’ car insurance money this year.
Do I really care about the planet, or do I care about the people that I personally know?
This is my tuition for that class I have to take.
Do I really care about the environment, or do I care about my life today?
Am I betraying my relationships by leaving to do this?
Do I really care about the Earth? What do I care about?
What if something happens to one of us? I am on my little flippy phone; no use out there in the boonies.
I can barely bring myself to leave the house for work or groceries. How the hell am I going to leave my life, with my husband, in our apartment and stay away for fifteen days?
I cried
all
the way
to Laramie.
I wasn’t out there because I so much enjoy winter camping. I wasn’t out there for my good health. I had to go because I couldn’t live with not going. It was an emotional allegiance I could either live up to or shrivel. I didn’t want to leave at all. My husband had to encourage me to go because I had convinced him with my initial determination and it was too late to back out now. In one of his videos, Max spoke about native people who rejected horse riding because it moved your body faster than your soul could travel and it took time to catch up.
That is my experience also.
As soon as I got there, I wanted to go back home. Principle had made me some kind of fool to bring me out in the middle of this beautiful nowhere when I needed to be saving up and hunkering down. I set up a little calendar to count down the days. It was February 16th. At that time, there were three of us.
It would be inappropriate to speak about the others, by name, who, like me, came and stayed and left. I will say that true-blue environmentalists are some of the most attractive people it has been my pleasure to meet. They were an easy crowd to be around, easy on the eyes, easy to fall in love with. We made coffee and dreamed dreams and walked around and waited for our souls to catch up with us.
The expectation felt was that we should write some great thing to make us not euphemise genocide and then stop committing it. I’m a writer. I write. So, I know how this works. You can’t effectively write about what you don’t feel. If I wanted to be able to listen to the place, I’d have to get all the other stuff out of the way. I wrote love letters to my husband like it was some bygone wartime. I wrote every day, sometimes all day. There was much to get out.
Finally, the walks started yielding phrases and poem snippits. Then themes from our conversations and firelight stories gave me some language of place. I started writing love letters of parting to my fellow campers.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time outside in wild, half-wild and deadly domesticated places. I would describe Thacker Pass as half-wild. Cattle move through there; we were camped under a weather tower; roads, fences and power-lines are visible in the day; city and ranch house lights are visible at night. We were completely surrounded by mountains. From a mountainous place, I didn’t expect the desertous Nevada I remembered to have such landscapes. It really was a wonderful consolation against the cold and wind and waking up alone to piss in the cold wind to be in such a beautiful place, surrounded by so many impressive kindred. Everywhere life was teeming around us, in the ice and wind. Every night the coyotes sang from the valley below. Every day the ravens cawed and swooped down from the cliffs above. The kangaroo mice left their tracks and teeth marks on everything. I made friends with a rat. The sage was very patient with us. The rabbit brush was like the sage’s lover. These others weren’t names on a list. These are family members in a shared landscape. Once my soul caught up with me and I got all my stuff out, there wasn’t too much I missed. The number-one reason I don’t recreate in the mountains of my home is that it is Earth-expensive, but a close second is that it hurts so much to come back. The longest I’d been out before was a week. After two weeks at Thacker Pass, I was half-wild again too. Coming back is some bullshit.
There are good things. I wept with a soldier’s relief to see my husband again. Having running water, with soap, next to a toilet is amazing. Showers.
But.
What does it cost?
Do we want to live in ugly places?
Why are the places we reside and rely on made ugly and despoiled?
Lierre Keith noted, “Right now, we are losing 200 species every single day. So, all the prairies, all the forests, anyplace that you could grow those crops, has been taken over. It’s quite grim when you think about it: 99% of the forests are gone and 99% of the original prairies are gone.” What could I possibly write to convince one who would rationalize or justify? The Lorax has already been written. It’s all there. No need for an argument about numbers as ratio or names as technicality. There is only: the last one. Then: none.
Where I live, there is a beer manufacturer polluting the river; a steel refinery, a meat packing plant and a pet food company poisoning the air. You can tell which way the wind is blowing by them. There are fracking rigs everywhere. Really. Everywhere. Deserted oil derricks, mine pits, clear cuts: those are mostly in the half-wild places.
Why did I go to Nevada when there’s plenty of work to do here? Because I can’t face down a sea of denial in all human relationships. I can’t fight this alone, just like Max and Will put out the call for others to come join them: because they understood that it would take the people living in and around Thacker Pass; it would take Canadians holding Lithium Americas to account and it would take total strangers willing to sacrifice, in solidarity, to stop the mine from going through.
What if we worked together to stop all the mines?
What if we invented life insurance?
What if we stopped industrial agriculture?
What if we invented credit cards and rental cars?
What if we ended rape?
What if we charged people to live in endless toil?
What if we murdered every species until they were all driven to extinction?
What if we don’t do that?
That is the only thing that concerns me now. This is not a passive extinction event, wrought about by the inevitable breaths of algae or touch of comets. We are doing this, as one species, to every other. Rather, some humans, with names and addresses, are profiting enormously (short term, of course) from massive social inequality among humans and human indifference or contempt for our only home and fellow Earthlings. This is not a series of accidents. These are devastating acts, deliberated over and intentionally carried out by people for whom they have been structurally incentivized.
What if we restructured?
I’ve been back now for longer than I was gone and still, I am not acclimated back into my normalized civilian life, because it is unnatural. I can’t unpack. I just walk around in my camping clothes, waiting to go back.
Even in the half-wild, even without my better half, even sometimes feeling pain and discomfort, re-wilding happened effortlessly. My stance widened. I grew two inches back from my working years. It felt good to do a hard, right thing: to put my time and money and body where my mouth was. My speech grew free and bold among new friends. I had a good time.
What if we were mammals inexorably bound to and interdependent with a larger, encompassing body?
What if, instead of quantifying, justifying, rationalizing, minimizing or qualifying global genocide, we stopped being genocidal?
What if we continue being genocidal?
What if we call the abuse of women and girls ‘sex’ and feed the footage of it to the limbic systems of men and boys for a few generations?
What will happen?
What has happened?
The expectation is that I should write something to make it stop.
You make it stop.
The Lorax has already been written.
Rebecca, Derrick, Will, Max, Lierre and I are part of an organization trying to do together what we cannot do alone. We need your help. In every way, we have to stop extracting and start re-wilding. There is no effective isolationist approach. We cannot buy into or out of it. We cannot escape from civilization anymore than we can the climate. We have to change.
We have mutilated ourselves into whatever kind of cyborgs we are now. Certainly, we can do something else instead, perhaps extending some humble curiosity toward the other species who do not destroy all life on the planet as a matter of course, but contribute to the possibility and furtherance of life, or our human ancestors who did the same.
I’m not feeling numbers and names when I feel the pull back to the half-wild place, but the same pang of love that is concerning one’s self with another. Not one inch of that place is appropriate to sacrifice further. Not one of our kindred species is it okay to push closer to the euphemism.
I don’t want to be the kind of person that says, “I tried to stop the mine at Thacker Pass. I spent two weeks there, but I had a life and couldn’t afford to go back.”
I want to be the kind of person who can say, “There aren’t mines anymore. We made sure of it.”
That takes living in the kind of world where you’re prepared to make sure of it too.
Washington D.C. (April 9th, 2021)- The Army Corp announced today that they will not be shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline despite it lacking the proper operating and environmental permits. This move continues to ignore the treaties and voices of the Standing Rock Tribal Nation who have been vocal about their opposition to the pipeline for over five years. The decision comes on the heels of the Standing Rock Youth Council taking over the streets of to D.C. last week with a 318-foot-long snake to deliver 400,000 petition signatures in support of shutting DAPL down to the Army Corps.
The federal judge overseeing the case announced he will be making a decision on whether he will order the pipeline to be shut down or not by April 19th, 2021. Quotes:
Joye Braun, IEN DAPL Frontline Organizer, Cheyenne River Sioux Nation Citizen: “It is imperative that the Biden administration shut down DAPL now. The Army Corps of Engineers should not twist the rule of law to favor big oil interests and further spit on the nation-to-nation relationship between tribal nations and the US Government. The Biden Administration needs to do the right thing and stop this illegal pipeline. Why allow something illegal to continue? Set the example, honor the treaties, and show that the rule of law is greater than oil corporate interests. We will no longer accept being the sacrificial lamb for corporate raping of our Mother Earth and her water.”
Maya Monroe Runnels-Black Fox, Co-chair of the Standing Rock Youth Council: “It’s been a long hard five years, but we are the defenders of the land and protectors of this water. The youth will continue on fighting these black snakes for our people and the next 7 generations to come. President Joe Biden needs to act now and keep his promise to be a climate president.”
Waniya Locke, Standing Rock Grassroots: “The Army Corps of Engineers and Biden have the authority to shut down the illegal Dakota access pipeline and protect 10 million people’s drinking water. Inaction is no longer acceptable behavior when we are in a climate crisis. Our tribal sovereignty can save 10 million people drinking water, if the Amry Corps respected our sovereignty.”
Tasina Sapa Win Smith, Cheyenne River Grassroots Collective: “The Biden administration and ACOE have declared another battle with the Oceti Sakowin First Nations people by allowing the illegal continuation of dirty oil to flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline. Biden’s inaction to protect our fragile ecosystems, natural resources, traditional medicines, and indigenous rights is a clear sign that this administration is the exact opposite of the climate leadership narrative they promised to lead during his campaign. As Indigenous people, it is our inherent right to protect our natural resources and future generations. With that said, the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people are ready to take courage by putting our unarmed bodies on the line and freedoms at risk to stop this ongoing injustice against our nation and all of Turtle Island. That is what true climate leadership takes — courage. Biden, be bold.”
###
Established in 1990, The Indigenous Environmental Network is an international environmental justice nonprofit that works with tribal grassroots organizations to build the capacity of Indigenous communities. I EN’s activities include empowering Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, the health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
This event will explore in detail the topic of greenwashing.
Around the planet, mining companies, energy producers, automakers, engineering firms, and investors are gearing up for a new industrial revolution: the “green economy” transition. Trillions of dollars in public subsidy are being redirected to support this. Climate change is a crisis, and fossil fuels must be stopped. But will this project actually help the planet?
The evidence, to be frank, isn’t good.
From north to south, east to west, “renewable” energy operations are bulldozing rare ecosystems, trampling community rights, and looking far too similar to fossil fuels for comfort. The promise of a “green” industrial economy is rapidly being revealed as an illusion meant to generate profits and prevent us from recognizing the truth: that we need fundamental, revolutionary changes in our economy and culture — not just superficial changes to our energy sources.
This event will introduce you to on-the-ground campaigns being waged around the planet, introduce various strategies for effective organizing, and rebut false solutions through readings of the new book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, and discuss philosophy of resistance. There will be opportunities to ask questions and participate in dialogue during the event.
The mainstream environmental movement is funded mainly by foundations which don’t want revolutionary change.
Radical organizations like Deep Green Resistance therefore rely on individual donors to support activism around the world, which is why Ending The Greenwashing is also a fundraiser. We’re trying to raise funds to support global community organizing via our chapters, fund mutual aid and direct action campaigns, and make our core outreach and organizational work possible.
Whether or not you are in a financial position to donate, we hope you will join us on April 17th for this event!
In this interview, DGR Latin America correspondents Michael Robles and Alejandro Balentine speak to José Alfredo del Moral García who is part of a movement called Por la Defensa de la Sierra (In Defense of the Mountain Range) in Coatepec, State of Veracruz (Mexico). Por la Defensa de la Sierra is looking to protect one of the last remaining cloud forests in the world from politicians and companies that wish to exploit the land for profit and urbanization.
Michael Robles – I am very pleased to meet you, José. I am Michael Robles and this is my friend from Colombia, Alejandro.
Alejandro Balentine – Alejandro Balentine.
José del Moral – Hello.
MR – We are here on behalf of Deep Green Resistance to interview you. Can tell us a bit about what is going on in your community. Okay, so, how are you?
JM – I’m well, though we have just received some disturbing news. One of our comrades was assaulted yesterday. She was chased down, and right now we are in a situation, a dilemma to find ways to help in this municipality; how we can help with this security issue.
AB – I see, in DGR we work and support those human and non-human people who are protecting the planet as well as all the living beings and territories that deserve to be protected. We are only just starting to be involved in Latin America as we are an organization that originated in the United States, but it is a movement for the whole world. We are pleased to be with you. Tell us a bit about what is going on in your land, what is the story behind the movement, of the resistance – to create awareness of what is happening to all of you.
JM – Yeah, well, our fight is the Fight for the Voice of the Mountain as we say here. We have become the voice of Mother Earth here in our municipality of Puerto de Veracruz in the state of Veracruz and in Mexico. Fortunately, we have found people with the same objectives on a global scale and we have made contact with Talking Wings in Canada, and we have exchanged information, more than anything else, on how we have lived our struggle because it is something, well, precious.
My life’s purpose is to fight for all living things. It has been a long fight, I have been hunted and even attacked. This makes my position here hard as there are precedents of this sort of thing in Mexico, and in this state, too. I will tell you a bit about this issue: the land we are talking about is special as it is one of the remnants of the main cloud forest in the state of Veracruz. It has such a broad and large ecosystem and it is currently considered in danger – it is categorized as a zone under risk. The Mountain provides water to many communities including local governments such as Xalapa, Cardel, and Coatepec, obviously. This one in particular is very special because around 35 waterfalls have been discovered. We consider there could be more as this zone is quite wooded and water has circulated including where houses have been built, and even more so where trees have been planted we have found water sources. “Ojo de agua” (water spring) as we call them, so we consider there could be more hidden. There are waterfalls inside caves that are such wonderful things, the ecosystem is really beautiful that one just falls in love and you feel the need to protect them. We also have, here in Coatepec, two archaeological sites and the area that is being affected the most is called Old Coatepec. It is an archaeological site that witnessed the arrival of Hernan Cortes and some French & Italian people. It is said that Napoleon’s brother passed through here, so there is a lot of history here in Coatepec. This also gives such value and wealth, both culturally and historically, to this area. We have around 90 endangered species of flora and fauna that are already catalogued. They have already been referenced under Federal law, so it can be said, they are known by federal authorities.
MR – Could you tell us more about these plants and animals?
JM – Sure, we have reptiles. We have one that we call Dragoncito del Sur (Abronia graminea) which is a type of lizard. We have another one that is actually related and is called Dragoncito de la Sierra Madre Oriental. They are very similar, only the size is different. We have another one that we call Abaniquillo del Bosque Nublado (Anolis schiedii) which is also a small type of lizard that climbs trees. There is a great variety and even though we have their scientific names pronouncing them is difficult for me. We have underwater snakes that we know as Culebra de Agua Nómada (Thamnophis eques). As far as mammals we have four species categorized as endangered such as the Tigrillo (Leopardus wiedii), a cat. We have the Tropical Porcupine (Coendou mexicanus). We also have a marsupial known as Cacomixtle (Bassariscus sumichrasti), also known as Seven Stripes. We also have, for example, fungi known as Santitos (Psilocybe barrerae). We have the Hongo del Genio (Psilocybe yungensis), Hongo del Derrumbe (Psylocybe caerulescens), Hongo de Cemita Rey (Boletus edulis) which are the most affected in this area as well as some plants that are mostly orchids (Orchidaceae), Boca del León (Antirrhinum majus), Helecho Maquique (Alsophila firma), Magnolia Chivillo (Magnolia schiedeana) which are also endangered species. We also have around thirteen trees, bushes, bromelias and eight kinds of ferns that we can add to the endangered species list in this area. All this information can be found on our Facebook page – Por la Defensa de la Sierra. On the page you can find some excellent illustrations done by our comrade Monserrat Sánchez Guzmán, who in the spirit of spreading the word and teaching, illustrated each one of the endangered animals, flowers and trees.
MR – Yes, I’ve seen some of her drawings, they are very well done and they explain why they are so special to this place. They are endemic.
JM – They are 100% endemic and we consider that the forest is a natural treasure and that lately it has become affected by a group that I will talk about later. For now, I want to talk about the history of this land.
MB – Yes, please do.
AB – What is the extent of the wooded area, approximately?
JM – The area that is being harmed, or rather violated, is around 2,000 hectares, that is twice the size of our municipality. So, the thing is, Coatepec is a municipality with a lot of history. As I said before we have two archaeological sites. We have a story regarding the jailing of one of our first presidents of Mexico, Antonio López de Santa Anna. He was a prisoner here and then he was taken to the United States for trial. Benito Juarez was here, also Venustiano Carraza. In other words, historically speaking, we have a lot to tell and moreover it has been said our land has been so fertile that, since Colonial times most crop species have been cultivated here. The land will germinate practically any kind of seed you plant here above sea level. We have everything connected to the sea, the woods, the rain forest which all have many dimensions. You have a question?
MR – Who were the original settlers of this territory before the Conquest?
JM – It is said to be the Nahuas. The archaeological vestiges are of Olmec origin. Here in Coatepec, we assume that in the south the Olmecs lived and in the north, the Nahuas. It is said that Maximiliano de Habsburgo lived some kilometers away in a community called Mahuixtlán. There he had a big parcel of land and it is said that the natives during their struggle, their resistance, chased this emperor away because he was stealing land, stealing water, stealing many things. So people organized and drove him away. In 1984, Coatepec again had civil unrest when water supplies were privatized and piped to take it to other places like Mexico City. Because of this a committee was formed and organized. People from many communities started to come here to the Municipal Capital, expressed their concerns and they were granted an agreement by decree that forests would be left untouched. Also, water, even though it is belongs to everybody, would be quantified to be distributed among the communities. Coatepec is on high-ground and all the micro-watersheds as well as important basins flow in this part of Coatepec. Then all of the water sources meet along a river that travels through Jalcomulco, and then onto José Cardel, and then Chachalaca and finally the sea. Therefore, all the communities that depend on this river whose source is here in Coatepec are also affected and we have had the opportunity to speak with groups that are protecting the water, the rivers, and they are very favourably disposed to helping us out. We support them with the distribution of information and with whatever else we can. However, their struggle is a slightly distinct from ours as an hydroelectric plant is to be built here and the headwaters will be taken away.
Go ahead, speak.
RM – Alejandro, do you have a question?
AB – It is very interesting how you describe this land, how it’s full of life, water, diversity. It is fertile and it is important to always be conscious of it so it can be kept that way. It is rich but it is also a struggle for the people and species that live there, isn’t it? Because, as you said, other people want to steal it.
MR – Yes, it is truly a treasure.
AB – Exactly, it is like a treasure.
JM – It is a treasure, really, that’s why there is such outrage, such unrest, such struggle. That’s why we say we are the Voice of the Mountain because she can’t speak for herself. She can only speak to those of us who are more aware because of environmental knowledge, judgment or conscience. There is a pre-Hispanic heritage that has been constantly sacked and violated by people who are ignorant of history. Their own history and the history of our municipality echoes from its very core. So, we have Nature, as Alejandro said, this treasure that everyone wants to visit and be there with their families, but no one wants to be held accountable, no one wants to preserve, no one wants to keep conserving that history of the land. That is the unrest and outage of many, and I say many because we have noticed when we gather for a demonstration, a “plantón” (occupation). We say here, a plantón (this word is also related to the word “plant”) we use it symbolically as it means “to be planted.” So when we gather for a plantón, we have noticed a lot of people arrive, even through social media there are people supporting us. They even sent food during our last gathering. So, it was surprising that people who wouldn’t even consider it before, now turn up and check what’s happening in the park. They now turn their heads to see what’s happening and have decided “hey, we do not want that.” We want the outsiders to go away, we want the people who are killing this place to be thrown out. There has been a lot of interest by the inhabitants and that is something that we could not achieve before.
Now, what is the current threat and what lies behind it? Right here, coming straight from all the history I told you about before, the constant threat has always been land occupation. Who is behind this? Well, some politicians with bad intentions who make promises, stir up trouble and divide the people. Since January, 2019, militiamen occupied different pieces of land in a zone called Jinicuil Manso. They cut down the woods with the purpose of urbanizing them. Due to this, the Coatepec society as well as the landowners, looked to the government for aid so that this ecocide could be averted. The response was not what was hoped for and these invaders have intensified their actions, justifying their actions by claiming ownership of these 2,000 hectares. Apparently, there was only one person who owned the two thousand hectares, so it has been said that for over forty years he was the owner. There are many persons or owners that have valid documentation and they say that there are Federal funds that have been paid over to them to keep the woods healthy. How is it that for the last 15 or 20 years, Federal projects have been consistently carried out there every 4 years? Now out of nowhere comes someone claiming “I am the owner of these two-thousand hectares. I am the landowner.” I mean, it is inconceivable that a single person is the owner of those two-thousand hectares. I mean, it’s inconceivable to anybody who lives in this municipality that someone has title to all that land.
AB – What are they doing there? I mean, specifically this individual who claims ownership, what is he or she doing in those 2,000 hectares?
JM – They want to build suburbs, streets. They want to build streets, they want to cut the forest down to build houses, stores, whatever they want – they do not cherish life…
AB – Urbanization?
JM – Yes, urbanization. We have given ourselves the task of investigating. We know they have also investigated, so we have given ourselves the task of asking questions and finding out. We know that they are people with economic power. They disguise themselves as low-income individuals, having no land and no house. We have found out that they own other houses and other plots of land which they have stolen in a similar fashion. This is bad situation, and it doesn’t make sense that the municipal, state and federal government act in their favor. I say act in their favor because we have employed investigative lawyers in order to find out why land rights are being handed over to these individuals when there are owners already. The municipality also has areas where water is sequestered for purification and use for the townsfolk. So we say it doesn’t make sense that now they act as if they don’t know who we are or who the owners are and give it all away to other people.
Now, this is not just any group, they are militiamen whose identity we have looked into. They are known as the Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos (The Independent Organization of Agricultural Laborers and Farmers). It is a group that escaped from Chiapas after an armed conflict against the Zapatistas. We know they also are responsible for the assassination of comrade Galeano. During confrontations that’s what they did, and, after investigations and findings they started to fragment. Some of them came here, Veracruz, and they came with the intention of stealing the land. Also, several landowners that we know of have been threatened, assaulted physically, verbally and psychologically. We have a comrade that lives up there and he has been kicked out of his house, it has been stripped away from him – they have left him on the streets and they won’t allow him to go home. They are malicious and that’s what troubles us. We are a very quiet community. We always have a lot of positive energy, or to put it another way we are always thinking about the common good and do no harm.
Then these groups arrive saying “We’ll give it to them. We’ll give them grants. We’ll take away from the rich” (meaning the landowners, meaning us). As defenders of this area we have been called foreigners, been called gringos, been called everything. It is not right that as landowners and as citizens of this town we are the ones that have to protect it because the government does nothing. Some weeks ago, the President of the Mexican Republic, Andrés Manuel [López Obrador] had promised during a speech that he would come to talk to the landowners, sit with us and discuss the matter. Well, he came and he just didn’t allow us to speak. They just sent government employees who we found out later were dismissed and relocated to other positions. In other words, nothing happened. And the investigation file that we have demanded to this day hasn’t been received by our lawyers or the landowners. In other words, they have done nothing. So everything is done out of sight. We know that our municipality’s current political party was paid to sign fake documents. They fraudulently created documents to make themselves appear as the landowners. We have asked for an audience with the State Governor, Cuitláhuac García Jiménez. We have not had any response. We have also asked for an audience with the president of the Republic and we have not yet received a positive response.
We are ridiculed by those who are there to protect the people. So, there’s is another discussion to be had: Which “people”? Who are these people? We have been labeled as priistas (militants from the PRI party), panistas (PAN party), everything. Even here, a PAN government, we have been labeled as morenistas (MORENA party) and the Morenistas have labeled us as priistas and panistas. Nobody really wants to face up to and solve the issue. We have given ourselves the task of spreading the word, bringing news to each of the inhabitants of this place and to those outside about this issue because we want them to unite as one voice and to say ‘Stop this! Stop cutting down the trees. Stop this ecocide! Enough of promises and of campaign commitments that are never delivered.’
Any questions?
AB – From what you’re saying I see the hypocrisy and cynicism of the governments that call themselves progressive. I am Colombian and when all Latin America celebrated López’ victory I know that the president portrayed an image of a progressive and supposedly he is in conversations with different social sectors. But in the end, he either can’t deliver or has given in to certain private interests. This seems to happen in different supposedly progressive governments in Latin America. It is very sad, but it is the way it is. I believe we should denounce that hypocrisy and make what they do known and make the lack of a proper response from this supposed government known because it should be there to protect these important lands.
JM – Yes, most importantly to be more conscious of so many things in the world that are being exhausted very quickly. Countries have been invaded so that their natural wealth can be stolen. In Coatepec, and perhaps I speak also for Jalcomulco, there have been many attempts to steal water, to undermine the ecosystem. People here have dedicated their lives to planting and harvesting coffee. We found out about contracts with international companies, and later we saw small planes spraying many places and the harvest ceased. The crops started to disappear and we had to resort to other crops. An international company entered our land and they wanted to sell us coffee when we know their chemicals only nurture their crops and that don’t work for our crops. Many things like that have happened around here. Coatepec was a great producer of oranges, bananas and coffee. Companies would arrive and introduce plagues and oranges were taken away from us, then bananas, then coffee. We considered this natural wealth as very important for ecotourism but now it just can’t be done. They are introducing people that aren’t from this land and they are cutting trees down and eliminating our last collective hope of subsistence – economically speaking. There are people who live up there, 100% farmers from generation to generation and they live off the land. There were agreements that said “look, if your land is about 8 hectares, 2 or 3 will be for you and the other ones will be part of the forest. We’ll pay you for forest preservation.” That’s a way to earn a living, isn’t? What I mean, it was a really good deal for them. What happened? Well, these people come, cut trees down, fine owners (because of course law is enforced for that) due to the government programs that were in existence. Therefore, those who are acting and destroying aren’t punished or kicked out. Nothing is done to them. They are even supported to do so, and, well, this is the reason of such outrage.
MR – Do they have a set timeframe? When will the building start or has anything of the sort been announced? Or is it just being done surreptitiously little by little?
JM – The buildings are already there, and they are being done by those people. They are laying out the streets, building stores, building houses. They started by placing some tents. Others would start with sticks and tarps and they progressed little by little. By the time we realized, there was a house there already. They started to bring in sheeting and materials. It is not all the time but sporadically. For example, the landowners and ourselves perform watches and we have asked the National Guard to be present so the destruction is halted. Every time a landowner cuts down a tree they get fined for using this federal resource. We asked for the National Guard to be with us (something that they do not consistently do) and the perpetrators just make sure that they carry on bringing materials and cutting and building when the Guard isn’t around. So, it has been in stages, but even the pyramids have been sacked due to this dream, this idea that inside of them there’s gold. Mounds have been brought down as well as some pyramids and they have placed their tents there.
MR – What a tragedy! It has been happening little by little in the shadows and they have been gaining ground and they have also sought political backing.
JM – Exactly. Now, who’s behind, politically, this Central Independiente de Obreros? There are two parties that we know of. In fact, you can go to the official website and it shows that they are under command of Panistas and the Partido Verde Ecologista (Green Party). They are the ones who support that group politically and probably economically and they have greeted them with open doors to perform this ecocide.
AB – What have been the strategies that you have applied to oppose this? Resistance? Awareness raising? Protests? How can you defend yourselves?
JM – Well, we consider that it is fundamental to spread the word. We have a local radio station which is the Teocelo Community Radio. We are constantly in communication with them. So, if something happens, we immediately talk to them, they broadcast live and we give them the news of what is going on. A few journalists have also shown up. Many of them have been assaulted. They have been chased away. Some of them have been assaulted and their cameras taken off them because they don’t want the news to spread.
We also know the land very well so we can take alternative routes and still take pictures of the whole process. Every weekend, they throw huge parties with huge feasts where we have seen a lot of people who are not from here and its they who throw their parties here. So, we make ourselves aware of what is going on and then we spread the word. We have pictures of how they pollute the river and how they use it for waste disposal. What was once life, what was once a clean river, full of life, is now nothing but sewage. That’s what outrages us.
What we are also doing is resisting through our movement, “Por la Defensa”, we have been interviewed for different media outlets such as Jornada Veracruz, El Socialista, Radio Teocelo, Radio Huaya and have spread the news. This is pretty much what we are dedicating ourselves to, telling people where we stand on these matters and all the actions that we are carrying out. We do it just as our comrade Montserrat does through her illustrations. We do so through videos that I have sent to Michael – they are on the Facebook page. You can also find information on Youtube as “Por la Defensa.” We have participated in international and national gatherings such as Talking Wings and even through Max [Wilbert]. We have also participated via some comrades, spokeswomen of our struggle who fight under the name of Mujeres Zapatistas and, well, all of us have spread the voice of the Mountain and we have shared it with everyone. We consider it important because the more people who know about this, the more people can take the matter into their own hands. Globally, we also thank those people who have created links to sign petitions and make other countries aware of the situation. Such is the case in Switzerland and the United States that have helped to spread the news to our compatriots abroad, not only in Veracruz and Mexico.
MR – Yes, that’s very good and that takes us to our next question – what can the people from Mexico and abroad do to support The Voice of the Mountain?
JM – Well, our actions, which we share, are always focused on supporting, on spreading information, on being the spokespeople of the land, Mother Earth. Everyone should request a meeting with leaders, not only from Mexico but from around the world so we can stop this. I believe we are involved in a process to save the land. There is no turning back, it is now or never. That is what we and what I personally believe; we have arrived at a point of no return. It is now or never! Because there is only one life, we only live once. We have to enjoy life as a whole race not only as a few people, don’t you think? Let’s pay our respects to the land. If you consider it important to spread the word, then you’re welcome to do so. If you think there is another way you consider could help then you can contact us on social media: on Facebook, on Instagram, “Por la Defensa de la Sierra” and we can reach and decide what might be best. We can not only spread the word about our struggle, we can also be spokespeople for other struggles around the world.
AB – These people who are threatening the forest and your community, I imagine that they perceive it as a nuisance that news of this issue is spreading and that leads to their aggressiveness and threats. The violence has escalated against you. You must keep being a thorn on their side until they go away, until they leave your land. Do you think that would dissuade them? Because as we see through history, spreading the word sometimes is not enough, but sometimes it could be. I mean, it has to be a combination of different strategies.
JM – Well, for example, the first time we gathered for a plantón the world turned upside down. They wanted to punish us for gathering people together when it is prohibited because of the pandemic. However, the town mayor allows all the townsfolk to make a pilgrimage and hold a mass in church. His arguments are illogical, but we noticed something: at the beginning of our struggle, we were told not to say anything, that we should stay on the sidelines because it would be counter-productive to spread it around. The landowners started to get scared and there is something here that I would like to highlight: there’s the landowners and the movement. We as a movement wanted to partner with the landowners and help them spread the word on this particular issue. Four of us started the movement and then we started to grow. We were then told not to spread the word around because it would be counter-productive, legally speaking. We would say, how is something that is public knowledge be counter-productive or be legally harmful? It is illogical. Yet we respected the landowners decision during that time until we realized that their land was going to be taken away when the Mexican Secretariat for Agrarian, Land and Urban Development (SEDATU) arrived and said that they would establish boundaries in order give away their land and this is when we recognized that it was time to start spreading the word. We started to spread around as much information as possible; we copied documents, who was the sole owner, what was the urbanization project and we started to disseminate the information.
The lives that are in danger, the rivers, the trees, the mammals, we started to disseminate everything we had, and we had to make everyone aware of it. Then we started to share the videos and many other things. Eventually the second plantón took place. We were surprised to find out the crowd was bigger. There were people present that said, “I disagree with the forests being cut down” “I disagree with the pollution of rivers” “I disagree with the murders.” We started to have many more Voices of the Mountain and that encouraged us to keep spreading the word until we can do so no more. Yes, we are running towards danger. Yes, in Mexico there have been missing comrades who have fought in favor of the land, but this is not only in Mexico, it is around the world. What we want is to spread information about what is unfair and whatever is against life itself. That’s why it is important for us to spread the word.
Today, we received some news saying that Veracruz’ judicial branch president was relieved of her position, probably because of legal non-compliance. This is because she acted illegally, and word got out. In our case, we want to get to all organizations of all kinds so they know and become aware and take action in these matters because we are tired when a politician comes in and messes around with the needs of the people. We are tired of being promised land, being promised a wholesome life. Mexico has a great cultural diversity and it is not really fit for only one Nation project but for several kinds of Nation projects. We want to keep spreading the news until it is heard on every corner, that it echoes from the last tree and plant and animal so they feel safe knowing that there are people reporting what’s going on here.
MR – Thank you very much for such important work. I don’t know if you have more questions, Alejandro?
AB – Yes, actually, I wanted to ask, when you mentioned about this person that has self-proclaimed ownership of these two-thousand hectares – does it mean that you have information about this person. Do you know who it is? Or do you keep that information to yourselves as a safety measure?
JM – Let me double check that information. I didn’t consider we would talk about this person because he is a senior citizen that we think was brainwashed and was promised a lot of things. His name is Francisco Ruiz, the self-proclaimed landowner of the two-thousand hectares.
AB – Is it a natural person or does he represent a company?
JM – We do not know if he is a farmer or not, but he is not from here. He provided a fake address and we asked around. We were told that nobody knows him, they don’t even know who he is. We showed a picture of him and they said “we don’t know him, he’s not from here.” We continued investigating. He has a brother named Valerio Ruiz. I know they are from another place, another municipality and that they only put their names to become owners of that land, but they have nothing to do with Coatepec.
AB – Have you asked the Coatepec authorities? What answers have been given to you? What is the reason for this happening?
JM – We have been promised answers to our questions. Up until now we have had no answers. There was a meeting, on July 10th there was a convention to give the land to these people. Obviously as landowners and citizens we opposed the agreement because it would require the trees to be cut down, passing through where life thrives and we didn’t want any more setbacks. We chose not to let it through and we went to the meeting which was in session at that very moment and we were asked absurdities such as, “if you are the owner, how many trees are on your land?” There are people who have records of their trees and harvest and so they can give that information, but there are also farmers who say, “well, sir, I just sowed maize and I have delivered the harvest, I have already sold it” and it’s like, I don’t know, it’s just not logical. If you didn’t have that information then you couldn’t participate and the meeting was orchestrated by the mayor. There were meetings which ended up being outrageous because we were labeled as ignorant, labeled as demagogues, labeled as Morenistas, while all us who are defending the land including the landowners were labeled as invaders. Till this day we have received nothing substantial. We are told they will provide answers tomorrow, in two weeks, in a month, and just like that there are no answers from the municipality or the state. We have no way to establish contact with the Coatepec citizens and if we do, we are sent to the mayor and the mayor only talks about what will benefit him. He doesn’t listen to the voice of the people, he actually just listens to the voice of the politicians and it seems pointless to explain their interests.
As a community, as owners nothing has been given to us and when we go to court for support there really isn’t anything. Both parties must show up: the owners and the pseudo-owner of the land. When the latter doesn’t show up, we are simply told that there can be no audience because he didn’t come. But it could happen that if we don’t appear to court one day, they could say to him: “if you are the only person interested then we shall make a ruling.” Both results and actions are quite ambiguous. Nothing is clear. That’s why we are spreading the word around. We don’t have any other choice but to do so. People find out about what is happening, what is being carried out and they can’t really organize. They can’t really choose a way through, or say we have done this and that, because both the landowners and citizens aren’t aware of the issue so the perpetrators feel they can do what they want. When the spread of the information began, we managed to achieve a stalemate because nothing else could be done by the perpetrators. Therefore, there are many versions from the self-proclaimed owner, the mayor and from us who are in the movement. We protect ourselves in accordance to what the true landowners report to us as they are the ones who have direct contact with the issue. We spread the information and we perform watches and we do investigations, but the most tangible stuff is with the landowners.
AB – Thank you very much for your work. You are very brave.
JM – More than being brave, I think that as humans we must know that life comes from Nature. Culture comes from Nature. Everything comes from her and we go back to her. We have to be more conscious of that and thank you very much.
Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples.
Featured image: Aerial view of Biopalma’s Castanheira mill and palm plantation just a few meters away from the Acará River, in Tomé-Açu municipality, in northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Wilson Paz for Mongabay.
Producers say their supply chains are green and sustainable, but prosecutors cite a long record of land grabbing, deforestation, pollution, and human rights violations
Palm oil, a crop synonymous with deforestation and community conflicts in Southeast Asia, is making inroads in the Brazilian Amazon, where the same issues are playing out.
Indigenous and traditional communities say the plantations in their midst are polluting their water, poisoning their soil, and driving away fish and game.
Scientists have found high levels of agrochemical residues in these communities — though still within Brazil’s legal limits — while prosecutors are pursuing legal cases against the companies for allegedly violating Indigenous and traditional communities’ rights and damaging the environment.
Studies based on satellite imagery also disprove the companies’ claims that they only plant on already deforested land.
TOMÉ-AÇU, Brazil — Guided by an Indigenous leader, we drove down dusty roads in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve, a “green island” encircled by oil palm plantations in the Brazilian Amazon.
Uniform rows of oil palms cover huge swaths of land here in the northeast of the state of Pará, once home to a vibrant expanse of rainforest. Our Mongabay reporting team was there to discover if the palm oil business, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is sustainable and ecologically responsible, as industry representatives told us.
Federal prosecutors have pursued the country’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years, alleging the companies are contaminating rivers, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples, charges the companies deny.
The stories of abuse we heard from our guide seemed almost unbelievable. After hearing dozens of claims of water contamination in the Indigenous villages, the local chief, Lúcio Tembé, led us to a mill run by Biopalma da Amazônia — Brazil’s top palm oil producer and exporter — close to the Acará River, which meanders through the forest for almost 400 kilometers (250 miles) before spilling out into the Amazon gulf.
“Look,” Tembé said, “they will throw [palm oil] residue in the river!”
Leaving our car, we watched from the riverbank, filming as unmarked trucks, and then a man with a shovel, dumped waste into the waterway. Tembé told us that the dark brown residue was a toxic sludge of organic materials, insecticides and herbicides from local palm oil mills. Every day, dozens of trucks dump this waste into the Acará River, he added.
Industry representatives would later tell us that such things do not happen, and that palm oil production isn’t harmful to human health or to the environment. But the dumping we saw, as well as the rapid onset of coughing, shortness of breath, nausea and headaches when we inhaled the fumes from palm trees doused with pesticides, was enough to convince us that these claims were worth pursuing.
Over the past year we investigated allegations made by local communities of widespread abuses by palm oil companies in Brazil, discovering what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities.
“The oil palm only brought a lot of problems. First of all, it brought destruction of our fauna, our flora, our rivers,” Tembé said as he looked out over the Turé River, close to the Turé-Mariquita reserve, an Indigenous territory about 250 km (150 mi) south of the city of Belém on Brazil’s north coast. “This water isn’t clean. But in the past we drank it. This river and the forest around it were like a supermarket for the population; it was where we fished, where we hunted.”
The rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities are protected under Brazil’s Constitution and international accords to which Brazil is a signatory. The Constitution also establishes that all Brazilians have the right to an “ecologically balanced environment.”
But laws issued by Pará state have often overshadowed these commitments in practice. Biopalma’s mill and one of its plantations lie adjacent to the Acará River and were constructed without a buffer zone as is required by law, according to documents seen by Mongabay.
Since 2014, federal prosecutors have faced a legal battle to approve a forensic investigation into pesticide contamination and the socioenvironmental and health impacts in Biopalma’s production zone in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve. “These are not minor problems faced by Indigenous peoples,” Felício Pontes Júnior, one of the federal prosecutors, wrote in a legal filing in the case. “The defendant [Biopalma] is aware of the Indigenous complaints.”
The claims date back to 2012, when Indigenous and traditional communities first raised the alarm. When the lawsuit was filed, a judge rapidly issued an injunction allowing a forensic investigation, but this was later overturned by another judge. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office appealed and a final ruling is yet to be issued.
“The company says it has no impact. So, if it says it doesn’t have [an impact] and we say it does, let’s do the forensic report,” Pontes Júnior told Mongabay in a phone interview in January.
A troubled industry booms
Palm oil has become ubiquitous in consumer societies. It’s one of the primary vegetable oils produced and traded worldwide. That’s partly because of its immense versatility: 80% of its production is channeled into the food industry, where it’s a key ingredient in consumer products made by conglomerates like Unilever and Nestlé.
Though most of us will never see it in its raw state, many of us will eat it in some form today. Various derivatives of palm oil are found in chocolate, ice cream, cookies, margarine and countless other products. It’s found in hygiene, beauty and cleaning items and even at the gas pump in the form of biodiesel. Rich in vitamins A and E and the best substitute for trans fats, which were banned in the United States in 2018, it is the oil of choice of global capitalism.
But researchers are growing increasingly concerned over the socioenvironmental crises its popularity has brought to many rural communities in tropical nations. The damage done to rainforests, wildlife, Indigenous peoples and water supplies in Malaysia and Indonesia, which together account for 85% of global palm oil production, is well documented, as are problems in Africa, where the industry has grown in recent years. Less studied and publicized to date are its impacts in the Brazilian Amazon.
Though Brazil accounts for just 1% of global palm oil production (about 540,000 tons in 2020), the industry is spreading rapidly here. Oil palm coverage in northern Pará — today responsible for about 90% of Brazilian production — increased almost five-fold to 236,000 hectares (583,169 acres) between 2010 and 2019. While national production dipped slightly in 2018, production in Pará rose by 47,653 tons (3.2%) over the same period.
Despite a push by the government of then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to stimulate palm oil production in 2010 by mandating its use as a biofuel, almost all Brazilian production is still used in the food industry, mostly as a soybean oil substitute. Lula also launched a national biodiesel program in 2004, and a sustainable palm oil production program in 2010, which further stoked demand.
When it was launched, the sustainability policy aimed to guarantee the supply of biofuel while protecting the environment by banning deforestation in native forest areas for the expansion of corporate plantations.
Pará has the highest deforestation rate in Brazil. Although cattle ranching and soy cultivation are the top drivers of deforestation, there are increasingly concerns about the damage associated with palm oil in the region. Researchers expect a massive expansion of the Amazon oil palm crop by 2030, driven by a government target to double the proportion of biodiesel used in the country and phase out fossil fuels.
Most of Brazil’s palm oil production is controlled by eight companies. The top producer, Biopalma, was a subsidiary of Brazilian mining giant Vale, which is responsible for the two most catastrophic environmental disasters in Brazil’s history in terms of affected area. As part of a divestment plan, Vale sold Biopalma at the end of 2020 to Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF), an energy company. In a document sent to Brazil’s antitrust regulator, Cade, BBF said all its oil palm is used for power generation.
Brazil exported almost 90,000 tons of palm oil in 2017, mostly to Colombia, the European Union, the U.S. and Mexico, according to Trase, a research group run by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the NGO Global Canopy. Biopalma accounted for almost three-quarters of these exports. The company, which has operated in Pará since 2007, has announced an ambitious goal of becoming the largest palm oil producer in the Americas.
‘Poisoned’ water
As the palm oil industry expands in Brazil, the threat of water contamination has become a growing concern. We visited Turé-Mariquita in the Amazon’s dry season, when companies spray agrochemicals in huge quantities. Activists say that in the rainy season, when river levels rise substantially and flood the land, all the accumulated toxins enter the river system, polluting the water and killing fish and other aquatic life.
We weren’t the first visitors to experience the impact of the oil palm plantations. Researchers Jamilli Medeiros de Oliveira da Silva and Brian Garvey told us how they had bathed in a stream near the Acará River where it flowed past a pesticide-drenched field.
“Our skin itched and we stayed sick for two, three weeks,” says Garvey, a researcher with the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland. “Several studies show that the water is contaminated. We witnessed them [Biopalma staff] dumping poison just a few meters from the river.”
A 2014 analysis by a federal laboratory under the umbrella of the Ministry of Health identified banned pesticides like endosulfan in rivers and streams near oil palm plantations in the Acará region. Researchers collected data from 18 aquatic locations and identified the presence of pesticides in 80% of samples collected during the rainy season, with some agrochemicals linked to hormonal disorders and cancer.
There’s no lack of anecdotal evidence regarding pesticide poisoning. “My husband’s aunt died of cancer,” Indigenous leader Uhu Tembé told Mongabay in the Yriwar village. “We say that’s because of this [oil palm-linked pollution], because these diseases didn’t exist in our village before. And today there is a lot of disease in our village … In the summer, we have a lot of headaches because that’s when they [the companies] throw poison.”
Cíntia Tembé, another resident of the Turé-Mariquita reserve, speaks of witnessing a previously healthy young man, whose job it had been to spray chemicals over the oil palms, fall ill and die in the local hospital. “He arrived there with exaggerated pain in the abdomen,” she said at his home in the Arar Zena’i village. “It was terrible. Blood started to come out of his ear, nose, eyes … as if something had burst inside him.”
Brazil is the largest consumer of agrochemicals on the planet, purchasing about a fifth of all pesticides produced globally. Dr. Peter Clausing, a toxicologist at the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) in Germany, said four out of nine pesticides approved for use in oil palm plantations in Brazil are listed as “highly hazardous.” Two of them — glufosinate-ammonium and methomyl — are banned in the European Union.
Waste generated during palm oil production contains a considerable amount of organic nutrients and heavy metals that can contaminate rivers, pollute the air and generate greenhouse gases. The effluent is typically released into rivers as a cheap and easy disposal method, according to Clausing.
Alleged palm oil residue being dumped in the Acará River, close to Biopalma’s Castanheira mill in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.
“My sister died of cancer because she drank water from the [Turé] river,” Emídio Tembé, chief of the Tekena’i Indigenous village, told Mongabay in 2019, during our visit to the Turé-Mariquita reserve. “She died of cancer [three] years ago due to poisoned water,” he added, referring to the pesticides sprayed by Biopalma. “It’s been nine years since we could not drink water from the river because it’s polluted with poison.”
When Biopalma began planting its oil palm crop in the Turé-Mariquita area in 2010, residents told us, locals experienced a mysterious wave of chronic, debilitating, and sometimes fatal, symptoms: headaches, itching, skin rashes and blisters, diarrhea and stomach ailments. Many of the health complaints arose shortly after drinking from or bathing in local streams and coincided with the annual pesticide-spraying season.
The accounts of the impact of oil palm pesticides on Indigenous and traditional communities are supported by a 2017 study that found traces of three pesticides (two of them typically listed among those used in oil palm cultivation) in the major streams and wells used by the Tembé people in Turé-Mariquita.
According to research from the University of Brasília (UnB), the number of reported cases of skin disorders in 2011 and 2012 increased considerably. “About a year after planting, there were many complaints of skin diseases and headaches. It was quite intense for about six months,” a local health worker told the researchers. “In 2005, the rates of skin diseases, diarrhea, flu and headaches were almost zero.”
Among the pesticides found in surface and underground water in the reserve were glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate has been shown to be carcinogenic and has been banned or restricted in more than 20 nations, although not in Brazil. Also detected in samples of surface water and sediment taken by the researchers was the insecticide endosulfan, a persistent organic pollutant banned in Brazil in 2010.
“The most important scientific finding of this study is the identification for the first time, at least as far as we know from the scientific literature, of glyphosate-based herbicide residues in environmental water samples, both superficial and underground, in an Indigenous reserve surrounded by oil palm,” Sandra Damiani, the UnB researcher who conducted the study, told Mongabay. “In addition, our data also corroborates the presence of residues of other organic contaminants in the environment, this time not only in water, but also in sediment samples collected in the same water bodies studied.”
Damiani said they found contaminant residues in all six sampled streams and 40% of the wells sampled. Residue presence in groundwater samples was considered “particularly worrying” because these water sources are the only alternative to streams for Indigenous people in the area.
“We noticed a very large increase [in the number] of water wells after the company arrived,” Damiani told Mongabay. “And the presence of residues in the wells was a surprise, and it was something that caught our attention and requires great care because the [Indigenous] population uses either the stream directly or underground wells. If both have contaminants, what will they do?”
The maximum levels of glyphosate and endosulfan residues found in the water by the researchers were 45.5 micrograms per liter (μg/L) and 0.03 μg/L, respectively. While these are within the legal bounds in Brazil, they are well above the much stricter levels set by the European Union. “This is a controversial discussion,” Rosivaldo Mendes, a researcher at the laboratory that analyzed the samples, told Mongabay. “For me, the safe limit is having nothing [in the water].”
Following the disclosure of her findings to the authorities, Damiani says, she was told that the companies agreed to not use pesticides around Indigenous reserves in the future.
BBF, the energy company that acquired Biopalma, said in a statement it was unable to assess the accuracy of the academic studies since it did not have access to the results of the analysis. The company said it “faithfully complies with the environmental standards and procedures applicable to palm oil production and is unaware of the situation reported in such a study.”
Legally, the glyphosate limit for drinkable water in Brazil is 500 μg/L. “Water is [only] considered unsafe if it is above [this level],” Mendes said, adding he disagrees with this parameter.
Brazilian legislation sets no limits for any pesticide residue found in sediments, even though they could potentially contaminate crops and pose a public health risk. Damiani’s sampled sediments were found to contain DDT and its degradation products at levels that greatly exceed the thresholds established by the National Environment Council, a regulatory body. DDT is banned in more than 40 countries, including Brazil and the U.S. There is no national limit on sediment contamination with endosulfan.
Damiani said they found residues of at least one contaminant in almost a third of the 33 samples collected in the Turé-Mariquita reserve, with a much higher percentage for glyphosate-based herbicides in water collected during the dry season. Two-thirds of the groundwater samples and more than a third of surface samples contained traces of glyphosate-based herbicides.
Research from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) also detected glyphosate in water samples collected in the municipality of Tailândia, another key oil palm cluster in Pará’s northeast. The 2018 study also found atrazine, a widely used weedkiller, and the presence of aquatic plants, indicative of water pollution from nitrogen-, phosphorus- and potassium-based fertilizers. Its use is not allowed for palm oil in Brazil but family farmers often refer to atrazine as one of the main pesticides used in palm crops, researchers told Mongabay.
In this region, the top palm oil producers are Agropalma, the country’s second-largest producer and exporter, and Belem Bioenergia Brasil (BBB).
Agropalma is the only Brazilian company certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world’s leading palm oil sustainability certification scheme. It is a subsidiary of the Brazil-based Alfa conglomerate, a major player in the finance, insurance, agribusiness, building materials, communications, leather and hotel sectors.
BBB previously counted Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, the firm at the center of the Lava Jato corruption scandal that landed former president Lula in jail, as one of its main shareholders. It is now controlled by Portuguese oil company Galp and Ecotauá Participações, a holding company.
The UFPA study, led by Rosa Helena Ribeiro Cruz, collected nine water samples in the tributaries of sub-basins of the Anuerá and Aui-Açu rivers. The toxicological tests, carried out by the same laboratory that analyzed the samples collected in the Turé-Mariquita reserve, found “significant levels of glyphosate,” but still within the regulatory limits, from two collection points in the outflowing streams from BBB’s plantations, Cruz said.
Atrazine within Brazil’s regulatory limit of 2 μg/L was also detected at two points — outflowing streams from BBB site and in a community closer to Agropalma’s plantations, the researcher noted — including an intersection between oil palm, corn and soybean crops. Banned in the EU, the herbicide is still often detected in water samples two decades after its use was prohibited. Atrazine is quite toxic, and potentially carcinogenic to humans, and persists in the environment, especially in water bodies.
“There is no way to say that there is no water contamination,” Cruz said. “We came to the conclusion that this pesticide glyphosate is being used. But as they are pesticides that are under the ground, in the water, it will be diluted.” She added that no previous data on river contamination for Tailândia were available.
No traces of pesticides were detected from collection points inside Agropalma’s plantations, where the researchers were escorted by company minders.
“BBB didn’t let us enter the company [plantation area], only Agropalma. But we were accompanied all the time,” Cruz told Mongabay, adding that the collection points were chosen by the company. “Two people were assigned to accompany us and at the same point where we did the collection, they did it too. But then there is this doubt: I don’t know if they really took us to the points where there is leaching into the soil… They wanted us to do my analysis inside their laboratory, they wanted us to stay inside Agropalma, paying for [our] lunch, coffee, dinner, all support, but we didn’t accept it.”
Agropalma’s director of sustainability, Tulio Dias Brito, said the company does not use atrazine. He also challenged the research, claiming that the points where Cruz detected atrazine do not have any connection with Agropalma’s area.
“They are far from Agropalma and … they are upstream… So, there is no way, even if I had sprayed… an atrazine truck at a stream of Agropalma, it would not reach this point,” Brito told Mongabay in an interview in February.
Geographer Daniel Sombra, coordinator at UFPA’s Laboratory of Environmental Analysis and Cartographic Representations, disagrees. Although the natural watercourse is upstream, he said, it could also flow downstream, given the high level of variation of the tides of the Amazon rivers.
“[This point] is 2 km upstream on the Aiu-Açu river… It may be that they [the pesticides] came from upstream plantations, which are from other properties, including family farms cultivating oil palm, some linked to BBB. But it is not impossible that the effects deposited downstream could move 2 km upwards,” noted Sombra, who built the maps for Cruz’ thesis. “So, it is undetermined whether it really came from upstream or downstream. The fact is: the pesticides collected are typical residues of palm monoculture.”
Brito also challenged the research’s allegations about the presence of aquatic plants as indicative of water pollution from nitrogen-, phosphorus- and potassium-based fertilizers, claiming that the photos from the study didn’t show any macrophyte superpopulation; the existence of many factors in the area could have triggered macrophyte growth, including sun incidence and a nearby road, while laboratory testing for these substances was lacking. Brito also argued that none of the collection points are close to Agropalma, adding that other factors should be taken into account.
Brito says Agropalma has collected water samples from the outflowing streams and within its area as well to check the presence of phosphorus and nitrogen at eight pre-selected points since 2015, as one of the requirements of the Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG), an industry group. The results of the sampling are recorded and published in the company’s annual sustainability report.
“When comparing streams that cross the palm plantation, we compare them with streams that only cross primary forests,” Brito said. “The species composition is not exactly the same: some populations are favored, others are disadvantaged, but the ecological function is fulfilled. And the water quality is adequate, it is good.”
Moreover, he said that Agropalma has monitored watercourses within its farms in partnership with NGO Conservation International and UFPA’s department of biological sciences, which monitor water quality and aquatic fauna on company property. “So far, we have not received any indication of contamination,” he noted. He also cited a UFPA study that found that oil palm plantations “appear to be one of the least deleterious for native fauna” compared to the different options available for use of soil in the Amazon basin.
According to Brito, Agropalma only uses herbicides, mostly glyphosate, but is testing other compounds. “Our mission is not to use [glyphosate] anymore,” he said. “But it is very difficult because we have to keep the crown of the plants clean. And we also publish every year the amount of active ingredients that we use.”
Smallholders quoted in Cruz’s research said that glyphosate, known locally as mata-mato, was the main pesticide used in oil palm cultivation in Tailândia, even though they said the risks are unknown.
Brito said Agropalma only provides glyphosate after carrying out the due training with farmers.
In a statement, Gilberto Cabral, a BBB spokesman, said the company observes “the best practices applicable in environmental terms” and “without substantial change in land use.” According to him, the trees were planted between 2011 and 2015 in areas that had been used as pastures or areas that were already degraded before 2005.
However, he noted, Tailândia’s land is also used by independent palm producers and by producers of other crops, such as corn and soybeans, “with recurrent use of pesticides in all areas sown.”
As a means of environmental monitoring, Cabral said, the company periodically analyzes surface waters, upstream and downstream, and underground, in order to detect any changes.
“The company strictly observes the dosages and other instructions expressed on the labels and package inserts of the few pesticides it uses, since we prioritize preventive, mechanical (brushing) and biological (Bacillus thuringiensis) means of control on a large scale,” he wrote.
Roberto Yokoyama, the head of the Brazilian Association of Palm Oil Producers (Abrapalma), said if the contamination of watercourses has indeed occurred in Pará, there should be an official investigation.
Yokoyama challenged Cruz’ research, claiming the levels of atrazine found in watercourses and the fertilization period were misrepresented. He also challenged the methodology used by the researcher and argued that the study did not present evidence that proved palm oil plantations were the source.
“The data and results that the master’s thesis presents, in fact, do not indicate that oil palm plantations were responsible for the application of atrazine and glyphosate in their plantations,” Yokoyama wrote.
Aerial view of palm crops in Tomé-Açu municipality, in northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 11, 2019. Image by Wilson Paz for Mongabay.
Scientific evidence of health impacts
Several studies provide evidence of the harmful health impacts of the contaminants found in Turé-Mariquita and Tailândia. Endosulfan levels of 0.01 μg/L (a third of the concentration found in the water in Damiani’s study), for example, have been shown to be lethal to fish. Studies also detected serious health issues linked to exposure to DDT, diuron and glyphosate-based herbicide residues. There is also growing evidence for atrazine’s carcinogenic potential.
Brazil banned the use of endosulfan in 2010 and DDT in phases from 1985 to 2009, citing their high toxicity and the capacity for bioaccumulation and persistence in the environment. Both are considered persistent organic pollutants under the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty.
It’s thought the DDT found in the Turé-Mariquita samples may have originated from its widespread use to control malaria-bearing mosquitos in the Amazon.
At least seven herbicides and 16 insecticides are currently used in oil palm cultivation in Brazil and other countries that grow the crop. Damiani notes the lack of transparency regarding agrochemicals used by Brazilian palm oil companies, as well as the amounts and periods of application — a lack of publicly available data that could potentially conceal much higher exposure of Amazonian communities to oil palm pesticides.
Damiani obtained access to pesticide data collected by prosecutors from Biopalma and other palm oil firms. “Scientific research corroborates the Tembé’s claims,” she said. But “this data we obtained is [just] a snapshot of a reality that requires more frequent monitoring.”
Another study in 2014 by the Instituto Evandro Chagas (IEC), the federal laboratory that carried out the testing for Damiani’s and Cruz’ studies, found endosulfan residues and cyanobacteria, but no pesticide residues, in another oil palm-growing area. According to Mendes, the lab researcher, further systematic analysis of the impacts of oil palm plantations’ pesticide use in Pará is needed, but previous attempts to secure funding have failed.
While the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve’s residents can point to Damiani’s study to corroborate their claims, their neighbors, including in the Tembé Indigenous Reserve, have voiced similar contamination and disease concerns, but lack any scientific evidence to support their accounts.
Their ancestral lands abut oil palm plantations owned and operated by BBB. The reserve’s Indigenous inhabitants say BBB is shirking its obligations by denying the existence of a tributary of the Acará-Mirim River that runs inside one of their oil palm plantations. Mongabay visited the area and verified the existence of a river inside the property.
In the nearby village of Acará-Mirim, Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, has set up a water supply system at the center of the community. But it doesn’t reach Nazaré Coutinho Pereira’s house by the banks of the Acará-Mirim River. “We keep drinking this water because there’s no [other] option,” Pereira said. “We consume a lot of water to drink, to wash, [but] the body always becomes itchy and we need to take medicine.
“[When] we fill a can with this water, in a few hours we can see a finger of mud in the bottom of the pan,” she added. Come the rainy season, she said, “all the poisons, all the dirt comes … dead animals on top, oxen, horse, they throw everything in the river … and we drink the juice from it all.”
Pereira said she has experienced symptoms including diarrhea after drinking the once-clean river water, something that didn’t happen in the past. “I feel my stomach get big, it gets full, unwilling to eat,” she said. “I also have urinary infections very often.” Residents who drink from Funai’s water supply also describe similar symptoms, she added.
In a statement, BBB denied the use of pesticides, saying it only used “mineral fertilizers that contribute to the growth of plants, both cultivated and native.” The company acknowledged the existence of a river called “Rio Pequeno” near its farm, but said that its plantations “are within a regulatory distance from this water body.”
It added its technicians are investigating the situation, including “rigorous analysis of all water bodies near the plantations.” The company said it received on February 18 a complaint from the Tembé Indigenous Association of Vale do Acará about the carrying of liquid effluents, distributed in the planting plots as complementary organic fertilizer, for streams that flow into the river that serves the community in which they live.
A decade-long legal battle
Local communities have frequently pursued legal action against Brazil’s major palm oil players. Biopalma has been targeted by the Tembé people of the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve and by small farmers and Afro slave-descendant quilombola communities.
The Tembé say they were not properly consultated before Biopalma’s oil palm venture got up and running. “We were not listened to for this project; when we saw it, the project was already established around our territory,” Lúcio Tembé, chief of the Turé Indigenous village, said. Pontes Júnior, the federal prosecutor, points to a loophole in Brazilian law that requires a buffer zone of 10 km (6 mi) and a socio-environmental impact study for ventures around conservation areas, but not around Indigenous reserves.
For large development projects, like dams, such a buffer zone is also mandatory for Indigenous reserves, given the potentially harmful impacts of these types of developments. But palm oil plantations are considered an “agrosilvopastoral culture” with “low polluting and degrading potential” by the state environmental council, and so are not required to go through the same licensing process, instead qualifying for a simplified licensing process.
Brazil is a party to international conventions that require consultation with, and consent by, Indigenous and traditional communities who will be impacted by major development projects. In this case, however, there was no prior consultation, and the impact was not assessed, Pontes Júnior said. “Everything depends on [getting] this forensic report. From this forensic report, a series of other actions will be triggered… [But] without this forensic report I have my hands tied in this action,” he said.
In a statement, the Federal Circuit Court for the First Region in Brasília said a ruling may be made in March.
Another enabling factor in the oil palm industry’s environmental violations can be found in the plantation licensing process. In Pará, the state government didn’t acknowledge the presence of Indigenous or traditional communities when granting licenses for oil palm cultivation, prosecutors say.
The Turé-Mariquita reserve, for example, was demarcated in 1991, 16 years before Biopalma arrived in the region. The Tembé themselves have been present in Pará since the second half of the 19th century, when they were forced to migrate from neighboring Maranhão state.
Since their first recorded contact with Portuguese colonizers in 1615 in Maranhão, the Tembé have had to face forced proselytization by missionaries, slavery, infectious diseases, persecution, conflict, and extreme droughts that devastated the land. A branch of the Tupi-Guarani family, they called themselves Tenetehara but in the migration process came to be called the Tembé in Pará; those who remained in Maranhão are called the Guajajara.
The presence of several quilombola settlements, or quilombos, also dating back more than a century was similarly ignored during the licensing process. State and federal prosecutors say this renders the process invalid, given the lack of attention paid to the impacts on these communities. Pontes Júnior and state prosecutors Eliane Cristina Pinto Moreira and Raimundo Moraes have also called on the Pará state environmental council, Coema, to reform its palm oil licensing policy to introduce more regulation, but the requests have been rejected.
Researchers at UFPA have found that Biopalma’s Castanheira processing mill, next to the Acará River, received two separate licenses — one from the municipality of Acará and one from the state — yet neither defines any buffer zone requirements. “The conditions are ridiculous, i.e., annual reports of activities, something that the legislation already establishes… The environmental authority simply relies on the companies’ self-monitoring procedures,” lead researcher Elielson Pereira da Silva told Mongabay. He added that the environment secretary in Acará had only shown him the documents on condition he not make any copies or photograph them.
In a statement, Pará’s Secretariat of Environment and Sustainability (Semas-PA) said
it carried out inspections from May to December 2019 in six municipalities, including Acará and Tomé Açu, and at the time “there were no violations of current environmental standards.”
In relation to the pollution of watercourses, Semas-PA said it plans to inspect the area; there are also scheduled inspections for Tailândia’s oil palm farms, but monitoring rivers and streams within Indigenous Reserves is the responsibility of the federal government, it added.
Brazil’s Ministry of Health, Funai, and the municipalities of Acará and Tailândia did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
‘Desperate’ strategy to be heard
Brazilian companies like Biopalma portray their operations as sustainable to consumers in Latin America, Europe and the U.S. But palm oil companies the world over have long been accused of destroying traditional livelihoods, leaving poverty and social deprivation in their wake. In Pará, the industry has left many Indigenous and traditional residents feeling estranged from their culture, which is deeply intertwined with the natural world.
By 2019, Biopalma’s plantations had encircled the Tembé’s lands, and local resistance morphed into campaigns of direct action against the company. Tired of nearly a decade of fruitless campaigning for compensation through official channels, the Tembé took direct action, seizing company vehicles in the hope of forcing Biopalma to hear their concerns. Uhu Tembé, an Indigenous leader, told Mongabay how she and her husband seized a Biopalma tractor during the protest and used it to bulldoze oil palm trees near the village of Yriwar in the Turé-Mariquita reserve.
On November 12, 2019, Indigenous leader Uhu Tembé told Mongabay in village of Yriwar in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve how she and her husband seized a Biopalma tractor during a protest and used it to bulldoze oil palm trees near hear house. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.
“We have been asking for [Biopalma’s] help for a long time to clean the area so we can plant; they never answered. Then we decided to get their machinery to do it ourselves … because we’ve been asking them for ten years,” Uhu said, pointing to the tractor that sat outside her home for three months. “We are cleaning it up here to plant our cassava, corn, rice. We don’t eat this here,” she added, pointing to oil palms. “They did not respect our land, our area. That’s why we feel outraged.”
Frustration with palm oil companies has grown across the region over the last years, and the seizure of company property by the Turé-Mariquita residents is not an isolated case.
Like the Indigenous communities, the quilombolas have also protested against Biopalma, blocking roads to call for development assistance. But such actions may have provoked violence, including the murder of a quilombola leader in 2018, and an arson attack on the home of another.
The Mongabay team visited the village of Acará-Mirim in the neighboring Tembé Indigenous Reserve the day after residents had seized tractors and a car from BBB. Indigenous leader Valdevan Evangelista dos Santos Tembé said their goal was to force a dialogue with the company, and that they would return the vehicles once an agreement was reached. In the meantime, residents used the machinery to prepare the area to plant crops.
“All Indigenous leaders in Acará-Mirim and Cuxiu-Mirim villages agreed to do this protest. We agreed to put on war paint [over] our bodies, take our bows and arrows and seize the company’s … tractors,” Valdevan Tembé said. “What was our objective? To bring the company’s manager to our village to talk to us and sign an agreement. We would only give them back their machines after they start the construction works they promised us.”
The protests have had some successes. For Valdevan Tembé and his neighbors, BBB committed to conducting a social and environmental impact study to determine if the plantations had damaged the Indigenous communities. BBB said the study was contracted and is being carried out at the moment, with completion expected for the first semester of this year to be “the basis for the adoption of measures to mitigate any impacts.”
BBB also made some improvements to the road requested by the Acará-Mirim villagers, Lúcio Tembé said.
The Mongabay team visited the village of Acará-Mirim in the Tembé Indigenous Reserve the day after residents had seized tractors and a car from palm oil company Belem Bionergia Brasil (BBB). On November 14, 2019, Indigenous leader Valdevan Evangelista dos Santos Tembé said their goal was to force a dialogue with the company, and that they would return the vehicles once an agreement was reached. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.
In Turé-Mariquita, Biopalma went to court to get its machines back. The villagers handed them back three months after seizing them, with the company agreeing to pay each community 30,000 reais (about $5,600) quarterly for three years to finance local development projects, according to Urutaw Turiwar Tembé, chief of the Yriwar Indigenous village. “It is not enough for us, but it was what they gave us. We fought for more, but we failed,” he said.
But none of these projects have been completed so far, Urutaw Tembé said, due to higher costs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. According to him, instead of paying the quarterly amount, Biopalma only paid annually.
The Indigenous have tried to seal a new deal to replace the amount for the obligation for carrying out the projects, regardless of the amount but “it became very complicated to negotiate” after Biopalma’s sale to BBF, Urutaw Tembé noted.
In a statement, BBF said its relationship with Indigenous communities close to palm plantation areas “is always maintained in a spirit of technical and social cooperation” under agreements made last year that included providing clean drinking water, ensuring food security, and educational and cultural schemes.
November 2015 saw the first major mobilization of Indigenous people, quilombolas, ribeirinhos (traditional riverside dwellers) and residents of neighboring communities against the palm oil firms. About 140 people came together and occupied Biopalma’s Vera Cruz headquarters, paralyzing the company for 11 days.
The protest began when Biopalma started operating a ferry on the Acará River, close to the Vila Formosa quilombola community. The quilombolas asked if they could also use the company ferry to travel to other communities or even to the city, but were rebuffed, leading to the occupation. Days later, a judge intervened and the protesters left peacefully. Biopalma denounced the occupation, alleging its property had been looted, and a judge in Acará ordered the arrest of the leaders of the associations involved in the occupation. One quilombola leader was jailed for eight months.
However, in a counterargument of appeal signed in early 2020 in defense of the Tembé’s November 2019 protests against Biopalma, federal prosecutor Felipe Moura de Palha e Silva said the demonstration was a legitimate act of Indigenous resistance made in response “to the years of illicit conduct by the company, which severely damages their health,” and was carried out “in a desperate attempt to at least be heard [in] a dispute over Indigenous rights.”
The prosecutor encouraged both sides in the conflict to engage in mediation over Biopalma’s omission of environmental impacts and the need for corrective environmental licensing, among other points of contention. “For these issues, the company omits and tries to criminalize the demonstration of the Indigenous people through lawfare and police procedures,” Silva wrote.
In a statement, Biopalma said it filed a repossession suit given “the repeated undue seizures of agricultural machinery” through “serious threats like wielding melee weapons against Biopalma employees.”
Fewer game animals, more pests
The arrival of the oil palm plantations in the Amazon has driven out the wildlife that Indigenous and traditional communities often hunt for food and ushered in an influx of disease-carrying insects and venomous snakes, the communities say.
Before the plantations encircled the reserve, “we [easily] found, very close to here, paca, armadillo, a lot of fish,” said Nazaré Coutinho Pereira from Acará-Mirim village. “Hunting has changed because there are no more [animals]. It is difficult for us to find [animals to hunt] … There’s nothing else [left], neither hunting nor fish.”
In Yriwar village, residents say game animals like tapir and tortoise have disappeared since Biopalma arrived. And even when they do catch animals, they are afraid to eat them due to the risk of pesticide poisoning. The few animals that remain, such as foxes, reportedly also suffer symptoms such as hair loss, while many others have been found dead from no obvious cause, according to Lúcio Tembé.
The cultivation of oil palms close to Indigenous reserves affects livelihoods and lifestyle quality in other ways beyond depriving residents of hunting and fishing. Urutaw Tembé said they have seen an increase in the number of insects and snakes.
The plantations “touched our territory [and] didn’t respect the buffer zone. This has brought us a lot of damage today: insects, lizards … that we had never seen [before]. Venomous snakes, many snake species … flies, flies that bother us. It ends up hurting the children’s bodies, triggering allergies,” he said.
According to Indigenous residents, the swarms of pests are caused by the loss of native vegetation and the large number of rodents attracted by fallen palm leaves. The snakes, in turn, are drawn by the abundance of the rodents, posing a serious health threat to residents, for whom the nearest clinic is an hour’s drive away and the closest hospital about four hours away.
Urutaw Tembé also complained about the damage caused by the planting of pueraria (Pueraria phaseoloides), a crop in the pea family that is used by the oil palm companies to fix nitrogen in the soil, control weeds, and reduce erosion. The Tembé say it attracts insects during the dry season that burrow beneath the skin, causing rashes.
Indigenous chief Lúcio Tembé poses for a photograph in front of Biopalma’s Castanheira mill, just a few meters away from the Acará River, in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.
Forests replaced by palm crops
Biopalma has said in the past that it established its plantations only on already cleared land, but Indigenous residents and researchers dispute this.
Sandra Damiani from UnB, who investigated the pesticide use in the area, said she found evidence of about 300 hectares (740 acres) of deforestation for oil palm around Turé-Mariquita, where old-growth forests were felled as loggers first encroached, followed by agricultural settlers, a mining company whose pipeline crosses the reserve, and finally by Biopalma.
Studies have shown that the conversion of forests into oil palm plantations is a major problem, not only locally, but across northeast Pará. Research suggests between 9% and 39% of oil palm production occurred in deforested areas in Pará between 1989 and 2014, raising concerns about future expansion. This casts into doubt Biopalma’s claim, and that of other companies, that their oil palm production stems only from previously cleared land.
The use of heavy machinery on the plantations also has an impact on biodiversity by scaring off game animals, Damiani said. The reduction in both abundance and diversity of animals was noticed immediately by Indigenous people after the planting of palm oil crops bordering their land, she said. Numerous bird species, for example, were no longer seen after the conversion to oil palm.
The native vegetation in the now-deforested territory outside the Indigenous reserve was important for the community to collect non-timber forest products, including herbs and honey that are used as medicines, vines for making of utensils, seeds for handicrafts, and fruits such as pequiá (Caryocar villosum), uxi (Endopleura uchi), bacuri (Platonia insignis) and bacaba (Oenocarpus bacaba).
The Indigenous people initially welcomed the increased access to urban centers that the new roads laid by Biopalma facilitated. But the roads also increased exposure to outsiders, making them feel that they were losing control of their territory. Another consequence of more roads has been an increase in illegal logging in the area. Numerous studies in the Amazon have identified road construction as an important vector of deforestation, and the Mongabay team regularly saw trucks loaded with timber passing through the area.
In a statement, BBF said it has identified “the role of illegal deforestation gangs in areas close to its farms” since it took control of Biopalma in November 2020 and had reported the allegations to the authorities. It added that palm oil crops were “planted in the parcels of land authorized under the terms of the applicable environmental legislation.”
Truck loaded with palm oil fruits in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.
Deforestation in quilombola areas is also occurring as the direct result of oil palm expansion. Nearly 4,800 hectares (11,900 acres) of forest was cleared between 2007 and 2018 to make way for oil palms in the municipality of Acará, according to research by Jamilli Medeiros de Oliveira da Silva at São Paulo State University (UNESP). The study looked at satellite imagery from Mapbiomas — a network of NGOs, universities and tech firms that include Google — and crosschecked them with NASA’s Landsat 5 and 8 data.
This further disproves the companies’ and government’s claims that oil palm plantations were established only on previously cleared land.
In 2010, the federal government launched an agroecological zoning program for palm oil cultivation in deforested areas in the states that make up the Brazilian Amazon. Called ZAE-Dendê, it offered benefits to palm oil companies for meeting certain sustainability requirements. But as Damiani and da Silva found in their research, some areas were deforested and overlapped onto traditional quilombola communities.
Adriano Venturieri, the researcher who led the palm oil agroecological zoning program, said the quilombola communities were not considered because their presence was not formally acknowledged at the time. He added the program may be updated at any time to include this data.
Quilombolas affected
Like the Indigenous communities impacted by the plantations, the quilombola communities in Acará — the third-largest palm oil-producing municipality in Brazil —complain about similar issues arising from the plantations, including deforestation, reduced water levels in their streams, and pesticide pollution.
“They wanted to plant oil palm here. We did not allow it,” José Renato Gomes de Gusmão told Mongabay at his home in 19 de Massaranduba, a quilombola village in the Tomé-Açu region. “People who live close [to the palm plantations] got sick [with] too much poison. The waters are gone, with so much poison that they throw. The streams are all gone.
“I don’t like it,” he added. “The palm brought a lot of income, a lot of jobs… [But] it is not healthy.”
Researchers Brian Garvey and Jamilli Medeiros de Oliveira da Silva said they heard similar stories of water contamination in quilombola communities close to the Acará River. In 2016, a palm oil spill in the river left a yellow slick on the water’s surface for more than a week. Quilombola communities including Vila Formosa village, where the protest over Biopalma’s ferry began, were devastated as the fish they relied on died out. Since then, fish catches have declined, and even the river dolphins have disappeared, residents say.
In 2019, two palm oil spills near Agropalma’s plantations in Tailândia polluted the Acará River and its tributaries. The company’s director of sustainability, Tulio Dias Brito, said all of the oil was collected and the impact was “virtually nonexistent.”
“We have the floating barriers that surround oil in the river … We managed to surround the oil there and we managed to collect it to the last drop,” he told Mongabay. “No fish, no tree died. So, there was no environmental impact. Although the volume was a few tons of hollow oil, which is a relatively large volume, the environmental impact was zero, objectively speaking … We have all the proof: the photo before, the photo after.”
Elielson da Silva from UFPA visited the area in the days after the second oil spill in October 2019 and documented the environmental impacts, including water contamination and the death of animals and fish. “There was contamination. I was there. I photographed people, I witnessed the [damages of the] oil spill,” he told Mongabay, adding that residents said that there were three oil spills that year.
Water contamination issues derived from both pesticides and oil spills have been faced by quilombola communities close to Agropalma’s concession for several decades, but the situation worsens each year, especially the degree of fish contamination, a quilombola, who talked on condition of anonymity after receiving death threats, told Mongabay.
“The water is muddy, it’s dark; it’s so dark that we cannot have any visibility,” the source said.
After the 2019 oil spills, the source noted, one of the main impacts was scarcity of fish. The fishes are only coming back now, the source noted. “The fish eat the palm oil; it fills its belly. Then you go fishing, when you open the fish, where its tripe ends from its gills, everything is full of oil palm… The oil hardens inside the fish… The fish dies with that inside.”
Photographs from an environmental inspection released by Tailândia municipality and seen by Mongabay corroborate the allegations of negative environmental impacts from Agropalma’s oil spill. The document, dated May 2019, ordered that steps be taken to repair the rivers and streams.
In a statement, Semas-PA said it had recorded an infraction notice against Agropalma, without providing further details.
Palm fruits stored on the road in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.
Community-wide impacts
During our investigation, we witnessed how the oil palm plantations impact the daily lives of people living in the wider Pará community — at a school, for example, which was surrounded by palm trees. Although the companies say the agrochemicals they use are not toxic, this particular school endured a forced three-day closure while the firm was spraying, residents told Mongabay.
“There was no class for three days [and] no one could pass through the area,” said Alex de Oliveira Pimentel, a local farmer. “[The company] said [the pesticide used] was organic, [that] it wasn’t unhealthy… But the requirement was that nobody could pass through the area for 48 hours.”
Aerial view of a school completely surrounded by oil palm plantations in Tomé-Açu municipality, in northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 13, 2019. Image by Wilson Paz for Mongabay.
Beyond the contamination of the soil and water, Pimentel said farmers have lost their crops due to the spread of pests and disease from the palm plantations, including butterfly infestations destroying fruit crops like dragon fruit and cashew.
When the big agribusiness companies first came to the Tomé-Açu region, they approached several small farmers with an offer to lease their lands for oil palm cultivation. Some resisted, unwilling to turn over their land to grow a then-unknown crop.
Among them was José Edimilson Ramos Rodrigues, one of many farmers in his community who rejected the lease offer. But that has not stopped the community from feeling the impact of the plantations, which now surround them. The residents have regularly complained about water contamination, reduced fish catches, and animal deaths since the oil palms were planted close to the river.
Rodrigues said he has noticed some changes in local crops, including a vine that now grows in coconut trees and which he said didn’t exist before. He said the damage done far outweighs any benefits from the lease offer. “There’s no way. What we must do is try to avoid … so that it won’t happen again,” he said.
Lax agrochemical controls
The spread of pesticide use in Indigenous and traditional communities has once again shone a light on the lax regulatory climate governing the sales and use of harmful chemicals in Brazil. Only one company is officially approved by Pará state to sell pesticides in Tailândia, but a thriving illegal market has flourished, selling glyphosate under the local name mata-mato. The farmers’ union in Tailândia, Sintraf, told UFPA researcher Rosa Helena Ribeiro Cruz that the palm oil companies do not dispose of the packaging properly, opening the possibility for misuse later on. Proper package disposal is regulated by a federal law, which holds the farmer, vendor and manufacturer legally responsible for any such misuse.
Tailândia’s farmers also said they were initially given personal protective equipment by Agropalma and BBB, but the supplies were short-lived, even though people began falling ill due to the use of pesticides.
Brito, the Agropalma director, denied all the accusations. According to him, the company collects the agrochemical packaging, which is incinerated. He said Agropalma also controls all glyphosate provided to farmers and provides appropriate safety equipment.
Cabral, BBB spokesman, said it is common for farmers to plant other crops in areas adjacent to palm groves, which are managed separately. Pesticide packaging supplied by the company is “inert and recyclable” and is collected by local companies after use; the use of appropriate safety equipment is also inspected, he added.
Sintraf also told Cruz that the use of pesticides by the palm oil firms had led many local farmers to adopt new practices, heavily reliant on agrochemical use, and abandon their traditional farming methods. This has compounded the pollution of rivers, as up to half the farmers in some communities have switched to using pesticides.
The Ministry of Health launched a health surveillance program in the 1990s for people exposed to pesticides, but the system failed to produce any reports for Tailândia, Cruz noted.
For some federal prosecutors, the problems caused by the palm oil industry’s inroads into the Amazon over the past decade are a repeat of what they witnessed with the cattle, soy and mining sectors and all development projects.
“The palm oil [sector] doesn’t differ at all from the other monocultures established here in the Amazon,” prosecutor Felipe Moura de Palha e Silva told Mongabay. “The modus operandi follows a primer as well, which is a primer for violating the rights of communities.”
In Tomé-Açú, game animals and fish were once plentiful. Now only oil palm trees grow, in some cases within meters of the Indigenous reserves.
“The palm oil company left us in a space like an egg … Only the company profits,” said Urutaw Tembé, pointing to oil palms just a few feet from his home in Yriwar village. “We are dying with pesticides, with water contamination. How does a company like this come from outside to enrich [itself] on our land? We don’t accept it … We will keep fighting.”
Karla Mendes is a staff contributing editor for Mongabay in Brazil. Find her on Twitter: @karlamendes
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Fort McDermitt, Nevada — Opposition to lithium mining is growing in native communities in Nevada. On Monday, the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe formally resolved to cancel a Project Engagement Agreement with mining company Lithium Nevada, citing threats to land, water, wildlife, hunting and gathering areas, and sacred sites.
The Tribal Council also agreed to initiate a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management for violations of federal law in permitting the Thacker Pass lithium mine project to proceed.
These moves, from a tribal council which was previously supportive or neutral towards the mine, come after pressure from traditionalists in the Fort McDermitt community. On March 22, these traditionalists brought a petition to the tribal government asking that they “stop all partnerships with any mining company and to file a lawsuit against Lithium Nevada Corp LNC, Lithium America, Jindalee Resources Limited and any other company associated to stop the development of the proposed Lithium Mine at Thacker Pass, Nevada.”
The group cited violations of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and other laws.
Opposition to the Thacker Pass mine has been growing since January 15th, when the Bureau of Land Management approved the federal permit for the project and—on the same day—a protest camp was established on the proposed mine site. Members of the Fort McDermitt tribe have played an important role in resupplying and overseeing the camp, which is located on their traditional lands. Over the past two months, community members, elders, families, and spiritual leaders have spent time at Thacker Pass engaging in ceremony, including a 273-mile prayer walk ending at the site, and visitors have come from many nearby reservations.
The Thacker Pass mine is also broadly opposed by residents of Orovada and King’s River, two nearby unincorporated communities. One rancher has filed a lawsuit, citing impacts to groundwater, streams, and to threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, and a local community group, “Thacker Pass Concerned Citizens,” has formed with the majority of members expressing opposition or serious concerns. A coalition of four environmental groups has also filed a lawsuit against the project, and the group “Protect Thacker Pass” setup the protect camp nearly three months ago.
The lithium industry is booming worldwide as governments shift subsidies towards electric vehicles, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries, and towards wind and solar power which often require battery storage for periods when wind stops and nighttime or clouds block the sun.
There are numerous proposed lithium mine projects in Nevada and the United States. The petition filed Monday night also mentions Jindalee Resources, an Australian mining company currently exploring for lithium deposits just north of the Oregon border, near Fort McDermitt. Another proposed lithium mine located at Rhyolite Ridge, further south in Nevada, has attracted major opposition due to an endangered wildflower on the site.
