Illegal Miners Threaten Brazil Indians (Guns and Diseases)

[sintax]

Illegal Miners Threaten Brazil Indians


Friday July 22, 2005 2:31 AM

By MICHAEL ASTOR

Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Wildcat miners who have entered the Yanomami Indians' Amazon reservation have brought guns and diseases that threaten the stone-age tribe, an Indian rights group warned Thursday.

Prospectors have opened five clandestine landing strips and were illegally mining for gold in at least eight spots in the rainforest reservation that straddles the border between Brazil and Venezuela, according to the Special Indigenous District Council for the Yanomami and Ye'Kuana.

``It's not hard to foresee that we are returning to a situation of social and sanitary chaos like the one we experienced at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s, when at least a fifth of the Yanomami population died from diseases brought by the prospectors,'' the council said in a letter to Brazil's government.

Anthropologists consider the Yanomami one of the most isolated indigenous groups remaining in the modern times and the best remaining example of Stone Age human society. About 15,000 Yanomami Indians live on the 24 million acre reservation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5158485,00.html

[bahrbearian]

1. They are Lucky it's only Gold right now.

Wait till they find Oil.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Sounds like 1492

and Columbus.

[emcguffie]

3. This is nothing new --

-- it's been going on for ages. But I'm delighted to see some AP writer writing it.

It's really quite astonishing what has been going on in the rainforest.

And with the Mapuche, almost no point in talking about it. They passed laws against the goldminers, but then the goldminers come in and nobody does anything about enforcing the law, so....

[madeline_con]

4. Don't these people have poison darts?

Seriously.

[emcguffie]

6. I honestly do not know.

The sad thing in Brazil is that Brazil makes all this territory "indigenous" territory, and then does nothing to protect the people who live there from invaders.

I think one of the worst events was with a gold rush, where miners kept going in even though they were not supposed to, and they brought diseases that killed lots of Indians.

They also seduce the girls. Trade canned food for sex, and after a little while the Indians stop growing their food, and the girls are prostitutes. Of course, when it starts, they don't mind, because they have different notions about sexuality than we do.

Completely destroys a culture/society in a couple of years.

[burrowowl]

5. Been going on for decades

and not to say anything about the destruction of the Amazon Forest, the lungs of the earth and the killing of human beings, where is the RW, oops, they are stem cells, sorry.

[1932]

7. I hope the Yanomani get rich off their mines.