
The Amazon Popular Jurists Training School in Lábrea, part of the Amazon Welfare project, has published as a conclusion a “Letter of the peoples of the waters and the Amazon rainforest” that we reproduce.
From December 1 to 8, 2024, the Amazon Popular Jurists Training School brought together local leaders in Lábrea (Amazon, Brazil) in an immersion to consolidate a new generation of defenders of territorial and socio-environmental rights.
Approximately 70 people participated in the School, which included discussions ranging from the role of the State, law and social movements, but also the importance of communities mobilizing and strengthening themselves. The meeting facilitated the exchange of experiences, with visits to the Novo Paraíso Village (Apurinã people) and the riverside community of Praia do Pirão.
To carry out the School, Cáritas Brasileira had the support of the Prelature of Labrea, the Federal University of Rondônia (UNIR) and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). The bishop emeritus of Lábrea, the Augustinian Recollect Jesus Moraza, accompanied the deliberations.
The initiative is part of the Amazon Welfare: Resilient Communities project, whose main mission is to strengthen Amazonian communities to protect their territories, combat climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
The project is a partnership between Cáritas Brasileira and Cáritas Germany and is financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of the German Government (BMZ).
Cry of the peoples of the Amazon: for life, justice and resistance
We, the riverside, indigenous, quilombola, water and Amazon rainforest peoples, gathered in Labrea, land of the testimony of Sister Cleusa, martyr of the Amazon, between December 1st and 8th, 2024, at the Amazon Popular Jurists Training School, came before all of society, before the State and before the Churches, to reaffirm our convictions in community values, human rights, and the strength of the organization and resistance of the peoples.
On all sides, the face of violence reveals its perversity. Economic and political powers intersect in the “new coronels of rainforest”, and this materializes in arbitrary ways in which public powers are exercised, in the absence of public policies, in threats to community forms of life and in complicity with large projects, especially those that destroy nature.
The reality has been challenging, especially in the southwestern region of the Amazon, in the municipalities of Tapauá, Canutama, Lábrea, Humaitá, Pauini, Sena Madureira and Porto Velho. In addition to the destructive advance of agribusiness, the right to demarcate territories is being denied.
To a large extent, the State either fails to act to enforce these rights and is silent, or even acts in favor of various aggressions, financing deforestation, changing laws that legitimize land grabbing or purposefully failing to monitor illegal actions, crimes and abuses of authority.
The control and inspection bodies either do not effectively exist in this region, or if they do exist, they are not structured and functioning. Some municipalities in the region stand out, in the top positions, at the national level, in the ranking of deforestation, fire, land grabbing and violence. Meanwhile, we are witnessing the advance of destruction throughout the Amazon, the subordination of political powers to economic groups and, therefore, the violation of rights by those who should promote them.
The growth of agribusiness driven by AMACRO’s development policies, the paving of the BR-319 highway and the administrative inertia in the management and allocation of public lands fuel and legitimize extremely serious situations of violence against indigenous peoples, native peoples and traditional communities, with alarming reports of verbal and physical threats, aggression, invasion of territories and other unspeakable acts of violence. In addition, local public authorities also normalize this entire situation of neglect and injustice.
The speeches and narratives of so many leaders gathered throughout this week gave voice, form and testimony to an unacceptable reality, in which impunity is becoming naturalized, the powers of inspection in general are far from reality and the very justice system that should respond to these cries from society, groups and community peoples, is absent and often ineffective.
However, gathered here during this week of training for popular legal agents, we reflect on the need to believe in the principles, values and rights that, with much struggle and organization, came to be guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of 1988. We also analyzed how much these rights have been violated, and even denied or revoked, in the name of some interests and projects.
The feeling of indignation mobilizes us in this sense, to draw the attention of institutions, public bodies and political agents, with the aim of creating awareness regarding these problems, and more than that, to commit themselves to a large task force to understand and recognize this reality, as well as to face it with concrete actions.
As representatives of communities, groups and indigenous peoples, riverside peoples, we are doing our part, however, we do not have the structures and resources that the Public Authorities have, and that, in a planned way, would have the objective conditions to solve most of all these problems.
Thus, in response to Pope Francis’ appeal to us not to be indifferent to the cries coming from the rivers, forests and the people who live in them, especially in the Amazon, we join our voices to the cries against injustice and exploitation.
Inspired by Christianity, by the same indignation witnessed in the Bible, as it was with Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament (Ex 11:8; Amos 2:8), and with Jesus in the New Testament (Mk 3:5), updated in the recommendation of Pope Francis who reaffirms that it is not healthy to become accustomed to evil, nor to numb our social conscience in the face of the trail of dilapidation and death in the Amazon (document Dear Amazon), we denounce the various and distinct aggressions and plans of death against the Forest, the rivers and their people and we call upon the State, the Institutions, the specific Public Agencies, and the National Congress:
“Enough of so much death and destruction! Enough of so much loss and suffering! We do not need a development that violates our rights and worsens injustices. Traditional peoples and communities deserve and demand respect, and to that end they need to be heard and not silenced.
May institutions act primarily to benefit public interests, and may the promotion and protection of life with dignity for all be, beyond the letter of the law, promises and speeches, realized in the daily lives of traditional peoples and communities, in the countryside and in the cities.”
Labrea, the Amazon, Brazil, December 8, 2024.