Handouts we saw in class (Jan 4) - Xingu Reserve & Amazon

Relevant to The Lost City of Z


FYI: in answer to question in class today.  Amazon Watch ( http://current.com/1lou54c ) has some recent updates on the Xingu River dam project.  The government awarded a concession, and in December 2010 was said to be about to award a license.  i.e. Work continues to move forward.  This site also notes that the plan for the dam dates back to the days in which the military dictatorship was planning huge "pharaoh" projects that we talked about today in class.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/dec/14/guardianobituaries.brazil
Jan Rochas The Guardian (Obituary)

Orlando Villas Boas, who has died aged 88, was Brazil's most famous sertanista or Indianist, a pioneer who not only helped to hack landing strips out of the rainforest in central Brazil, but tried to defend the indigenous nations who lived there from the deadly consequences of the white man's advance.
... In 1941 he and three of his brothers, Claudio, Leonardo and Alvaro, joined a government expedition to open up and chart the little-known ... central Brazil. At the time Rio de Janeiro was Brazil's capital, and most of the population lived on or near the 4,000 km-long coastline. There were no roads into central Brazil and the dense tropical forests of the Mato Grosso area.
The Roncador-Xingu expedition lasted for 20 years, opening up 1,500 kms of trails, exploring 1,000 kms of rivers, including six previously unmapped ones, carving scores of airstrips out of the forest and founding over three dozen towns. The 14 indigenous nations who lived along the banks of the Xingu River had no previous contact with outside society and it fell to the Villas Boas brothers, by now the leaders, to negotiate with the Indians to allow the expedition to pass.

It was Villas Boas's first contact with a different world, a world that fascinated him for the rest of his life. He always remembered the faces of the Indians in the forest, firing arrows at them. From the start the brothers adopted the code of behaviour bequeathed by the general who laid the telegraph lines through the Amazon in the 1920s, Marshall Candido Rondon: "Die, if need be. Kill, never."
Non-aggression was not the norm in those days: most who ventured into the forest regarded the Indians as savages to be shot like animals. Villas Boas himself said: "On our expedition, the peao (labourer) with the least number of crimes had eight murders under his belt. I lived for 40 years among the Indians and never saw one of them slap another in the face. But we were the ones who were going to civilise [them]."
The Villas Boas brothers realised that the Indians had no protection against the society that would advance along the tracks opened up by the expedition, and from then on Orlando and Claudio, in particular, devoted themselves to creating an area where the indigenous nations of the Xingu area would be safe. They were joined by anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and public health doctor Noel Nutels, and the result was the Xingu National Park [1961], an area of 26,000 square kms where 15 different previously warring tribes learned to live together. They belonged to the four main language groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil: Aruwak, Karib, Gê and Tupi [Guarani]. The park was the first of its kind in the world.
. . . . . Orlando Villas Boas became the first director of the park. ...To avoid the occasional devastating epidemics of influenza, he arranged with the São Paulo Medical School under Dr Roberto Baruzzi for regular visits by health teams and programmes of vaccination. Today the population of Xingu is increasing.
. . .Over the years the park took in more tribes threatened by the invasion of their lands, including the Kreen-Akarore or Panará, whom Orlando himself had contacted in 1973 when the military regime decided to build a road through their territory. Orlando became disillusioned, saying "each time we contact a tribe, we are contributing to the destruction of what is most pure in it".
The Xingu Park was an innovation for the time; there was no indigenist movement in Brazil. But Villas Boas did not escape criticism from later anthropologists, who accused him of being paternalist and turning the park into a showcase. In the 1970s Orlando and Claudio finally left the Park, and in 1984 the first indigenous director was appointed to run it.
Orlando Villas Boas survived over 250 bouts of malaria, finally succumbing to an intestinal infection which led to a multiple organ failure. . . . He is survived by his wife and two sons, Noel and Orlando Filho, and by his unique creation, the Xingu National Park, today a green oasis surrounded by extensive areas of devastated forest.

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This BBC article doesn't have the original images.  Just click on the link here if you want to see them.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8626675.stm (BBC April 17, 2010)

A Brazilian court has overturned a ruling that could have delayed building a massive dam on an Amazon tributary.

A judge ruled bidding can go ahead next week for contracts to build the Belo Monte dam on the River Xingu. It would be the third largest dam in the world. The dam is opposed by indigenous groups and environmentalists. They say thousands

of indigenous people will be displaced and a sensitive ecosystem damaged. The government says the dam is crucial for economic development.

In a statement, campaign group Amazon Watch said "the battleis not over. We are committed to supporting Brazilian indigenous peoples who have vowed to fight to stop the BeloMonte dam, one of the most destructive projects ever undertaken in the Amazon." The proposal to build a hydro-electric dam on the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon in the state of Para, has long been a source of controversy. The initial project was abandoned in the 1990s amid widespread protests both in Brazil and around the world. ...

Environmental groups say the Belo Monte dam will cause devastation in a large area of the rainforest and threaten the survival of indigenous groups. ...[T]he lives of up to 40,000 people could be affected as 500 sq km of land would be flooded.

However, the government says whoever is awarded the project will have to pay $800m to protect the environment. The scheme has been modified to take account of fears that it would threaten the way of life of the indigenous peoples who live in the area.

When completed, Belo Monte would be the third largest hydro-electric dam in the world, after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.

It is expected to provide electricity to 23 million Brazilian homes. With Brazil's economy continuing to grow, ministers say hydro-electric plants are a vital way to ensure power supplies over the next decade - and at least 70 dams are said to be planned for the Amazon region. Critics say Belo Monte will be hugely inefficient, generating less than 10% of its capacity during the 3-4 months of the low-water season. 

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The final pages of The Lost City of Z take place within this reserve.  The Xingu dam, discussed above, is to the north of the reserve, but the book ends with a reference to another dam being built just outside this reserve.
I got the above image from:
http://www.amazonteam.org/index.php/231/The_Xingu_Indigenous_Reserve
According to this source, the vibrant agricultural economy of the area, "a lack of federal resources", and the huge area included within the reserve has made it difficult to adequately protect it from encroachment.