Beautiful Brazil: scratch the surface and you'll find a darker side
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- Published on Tuesday, 01 April 2014 20:20
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The Dark Side of Brazil
To many, Brazil is a country of sun-kissed beaches, Carnival, and soccer superstars. Little do they know that behind this colorful and lively image is a shameful story of persecution that started five hundred years ago during Brazil’s colonization, and continues to this day.
When the first Europeans arrived in Brazil in 1500 there were up to 11 million tribal people. Five centuries of murder, torture, disease and exploitation saw their population plummet to 100,000 by the 1950s. The persecution continues; today five tribes number fewer than five people, the smallest just one individual.
Gold miners brought massacre and disease to the Yanomami in the 1980s. One in... every five Indians died before worldwide protest forced the government to evict the miners.
With all eyes on Brazil in the run-up to the FIFA 2014 World Cup, Survival International has launched a campaign to reveal the Dark Side of Brazil, remembering the many tribes, now extinct, on whose lands cities like Rio and Manaus were built and who have been conveniently airbrushed out of Brazil’s history. Survival is also working to expose the source of Brazil’s new-found wealth – the ongoing dispossession of tribes and the theft of their lands for mines, dams, army bases and other industrial projects.
As Brazil presents itself as a multi-cultural democracy and claims to host a World Cup ‘for everyone’, we ask you to join our campaign to help Brazil's Indians. Through our campaigns you can hold the Brazilian government to account for its actions and put an end to the annihilation of its first peoples. Real ‘progress’ starts with recognizing the diversity of tribal peoples and respecting their human rights.
Your support really does make a difference. Only last week Guarani of Pyelito Kuê community celebrated their return to 500 hectares of their ancestral territory after the government recognized this territory as Guarani land. Tribes like the Guarani have a future only because of your actions.
As World Cup fever grows, please don't forget that Brazil has a dark side... Help us stop more innocent tribes being annihilated in the name of 'progress'.
The tribal viewpoint
To find out what Brazil’s Indians make of the Dark Side of Brazil, read Survival director, Stephen Corry’s review of The Falling Sky – the first book written by an Amazon shaman.
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