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Prospectors' bodies retrieved in Amazon
Several dozen killed in clashes with Indians
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:24 a.m. ET April 19, 2004


Amazon Colonists Amazon Colonists. Thousands of miners have moved on to reservations set aside for native Amazonians. This encroachment has led to fatal conflicts.

Mining in the Rainforest
PORTO VELHO, Brazil - Police began retrieving the bodies of 26 diamond prospectors killed in a mysterious clash with Indians in the Amazon jungle, and the state's governor said that the death toll could rise.

The bodies of another 30 prospectors could still be inside the reservation in northwest Brazil, also victims of the attack that saw Cinta Larga Indians apparently massacre dozens of prospectors on April 7.

Four days later, the first three bodies were found and taken out of the reservation. On Sunday, more federal police were flown into the state to help with the removal of bodies and seal off the Indians� reservation so miners would not return. They set to work clearing areas of the jungle to allow helicopters to land.

"Unfortunately many other bodies will be found," said Rondonia state Gov. Ivo Cassol. "This is due to the slowness of the federal agencies."

Firmino Aparecido, the city police chief of Espigao d�Oeste, about 60 miles from the reservation, said the miners were all shot to death. Some news reports said some of the victims had been clubbed to death, then hacked to pieces. Other were reportedly beheaded.

Tensions between prospectors and Indians have flared often in recent years, but little was known about the reasons for the latest violence. In the past, some chiefs have charged prospectors for access to the reservation even though Brazilian law forbids mining there.

The bodies of the dead were spread around a half-mile area, Aparecido said Saturday. Citing information from local prospectors, he said the bodies of at least another 30 prospectors could still be somewhere inside the reservation, home to some 1,300 Indians and South America's largest diamond reserves.

The 6.7 million acre reservation, which is under federal jurisdiction and off limits to state police, is some 370 miles southeast of Porto Velho, capital of Rondonia state.

The Cinta Larga, hunters with a strong warrior tradition, lived in relative isolation until the early 1960s, when the first prospectors and loggers started to enter traditional Indian lands in search of diamonds and gold and timber.

"Recovery will be a difficult and unpleasant task," said Roberto Lustosa, of the Federal Indian Bureau. "Many of the bodies have been partially eaten by wild animals and all are decomposed after more than 10 days in the jungle."

In recent years, tensions between prospectors and Indians have flared as more and more prospectors have sought riches in the vast jungle region.

In March 2002, authorities forcibly removed some 3,000 prospectors who had invaded the reservation. Two months earlier, police found the remains of seven people suspected to be prospectors and arrows nearby. In January 2003, federal police evicted some 5,000 prospectors.

Between 1999 and 2002, the bodies of 30 prospectors have been found inside the Roosevelt reservation, according to the Federal Indian Bureau.

Aparecido said the approximately 100 Cinta Larga Indians who lived in Espigao d�Oeste have left the city, fearing reprisals.

� 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



Bloomberg
Brazilian Indians Kill 41 Miners in Amazon Dispute
April 19, 2004 15:36 EDT
Guillermo Parra-Bernal

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- The death toll in a massacre of independent diamond miners on an Amazon Indian reservation rose to 41, authorities said, adding to the unrest of land seizures and strikes that are eroding support for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Cinta Larga Indians in the northwestern state of Rondonia killed the invading diamond miners to keep control of an area where the world's biggest diamond reserve is located, Eranildo Costa Luna, spokesman for the state's governor's office, said in a telephone interview. About 29 bodies have been recovered, Costa said. Witnesses have reported the location of a dozen more bodies, and about 20 more miners have probably been killed since April 7, Costa said.

Lula is facing a wave of protests from union leaders, peasant organizations and Indians, some of his oldest supporters, as he cuts government spending to control inflation. Land conflicts have become the president's most pressing problem and threaten to erode support for Lula's Workers' Party, which faces elections in 5,500 cities across Brazil in October, said economists such as UBS AG's Victoria Werneck.

Rondonia state Governor Ivo Cassol criticized the federal government for blocking the entry of federal police into the reserve after receiving word of a conflict, Costa said from Porto Velho, Rondonia's capital. At stake is a region where $2 billion in diamonds have been extracted illegally in the past four years, Rondonia state legislator Haroldo Campos said in a telephone interview.

Lula's Popularity br>
All resources on an Indian reservation by law belong to the tribe, and Indians, armed with automatic weapons and rifles, are resisting incursions by non-Indian miners.

Lula, whose popularity sank to a record low of 34 percent this month after his government got ensnarled in corruption allegations, called on workers and peasants to stop protests and halt farm invasions. Peasant groups stepped up seizures of private-owned land by fivefold in the weeks following the allegations, made public in February.

``Those who go radical never end up ok,'' Lula said during his bimonthly radio program. ``People cannot just lose their good sense.'' br>
Riot police used tear gas and clubs to force dozens of squatters from several empty buildings in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, this weekend. Federal police officers have been on strike for more than seven weeks, disrupting air traffic and slowing the entrance of imports into Brazil.

Pressure

Lula is under growing pressure from his core supporters to ease spending cuts, push down interest rates faster and halt debt payments. The president, a former union leader who led workers' marches across the country in the 1970's and the 1980's, will likely stand by his spending-reduction policies at the risk of becoming more unpopular, said Alexandre Barros of Brasilia-based political risk consultants Early Warning.

``Brazil is a very poor country and doesn't have money to do it all,'' Barros said in a telephone interview. ``The government, though, has to choose priorities -- the argument that there's no money can be relative.''

A group of about 70 Indians halted a lower house plenary session today and demanded they meet with Lula to discuss the federal government's policy for Indian reservations, Agencia Globo reported. Brazilians celebrate the Day of the Indian across the country.

The Rondonia conflict is the second this year involving Indians, who backed Lula in the 2002 presidential election on hopes he would improve living standards and protect their rights. In January, about 4,000 Macuxis, Uapixanas and Ingaricos aborigines blocked road access to the northwestern state of Acre for two weeks, prompting gasoline and food supplies to dwindle.

Rondonia has about 1.5 million inhabitants, of which 8,000 are Indians. There are about 360,000 Indians in Brazil, out of its total population of 177 million people.




CONTENT COPYRIGHT the Associated Press and Bloomberg. THIS CONTENT IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES.



 

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