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Reuters. January 2,
2020
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina’s new President Alberto Fernandez said on
Thursday that a social pact with businesses and trade unions sent a “strong
message” to creditors including the IMF that the economy must be allowed to
grow before the country can pay its debts.
The broad agreement struck last week, a core plank of the new Peronist
administration’s plans to revive the economy and rein in inflation, gives
Fernandez extra muscle in looming restructuring talks over around $100 billion
in debt.
“It is the first time where businessmen, workers and the State come together to
tell creditors that Argentina must first grow and then meet its obligations,”
Fernandez said in an interview with local station Radio 10 on Thursday.
“It’s a very strong message for the Fund and for creditors.”
Fernandez’s economic team is facing negotiations with the International
Monetary Fund and private bondholders over looming debt repayments, which the
center-left leader has said the country is not currently in a position to pay.
He argues that Argentina must be allowed to revive its anemic economy, Latin
America’s third largest, to raise the funds needed to pay off creditors.
Fernandez added in the radio interview that the relationship with the IMF was
positive and praised a “more realistic” stance from the Fund regarding the
situation in Argentina.
The IMF has said it shares Fernández’s goals for rebooting the economy, but
still needs to know his concrete economic plans before discussing a debt
restructuring. Fernandez said he expects an IMF mission to visit but gave no
precise date.
Amid creditor talks, Argentina honored payments on international bonds that
expired at the end of last month, though it has postponed payments on local
debt that had already been delayed under previous president Mauricio Macri.
Jonathan Watts. The
Guardian. January 2, 2020
At close to 90 years old, Brazil’s most venerated indigenous leader, Raoni
Metuktire, has returned to the spotlight to challenge the man he calls the
worst president of his lifetime, Jair Bolsonaro.
In an interview with the Guardian, the Kayapó chief said he wanted to speak out
about the far-right administration’s plans to allow mining in indigenous
territory and he warned that Brazil’s Amazon policies threatened global efforts
to protect nature and address the climate emergency.
“Ï have seen many presidents come and go, but none spoke so badly of indigenous
people or threatened us and the forest like this,” he said. “Since he
[Bolsonaro] became president, he has been the worst for us.”
Raoni has lived through 24 administrations since first making contact with the
world outside his rainforest home, and is at the forefront of a reinvigorated
indigenous movement in South America’s biggest nation.
Along with Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, he is leading the resistance against
government plans to open up the rainforest to land speculators, cattle
ranchers, loggers and gold miners.
With his lip disc, beads, earrings and flowing grey hair, Raoni is probably the
best-known Amazonian in the world. But he spent the first 18 or so years of his
life unknown to anyone outside his forest community.
Raoni was a young, jenipapo-painted warrior when his tribe, the Metuktire
Kayapó, was first contacted by non-indigenous invaders in the early 1950s,
according to a new book by the veteran British explorer John Hemming. The
intruders brought gifts of metal blades and beads but left behind European
diseases such as malaria, influenza and measles that decimated the population.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Raoni was among the leaders of the often deadly fight
against the BR-080 road, cattle ranchers and the Belo Monte dam. He rose to
international prominence thanks to his friendship with the rock star Sting.
In the years that followed, he was feted by world leaders and met the pope,
gaining a level of prestige and leverage that challenged the prejudices of the
many Brazilians who see indigenous people as poor and uneducated. This helped
the Kayapó to secure government recognition of their territorial rights across
a vast chain of reserves, which formed the spine of a north-south firewall
against deforestation.
“From many years ago, I fought in campaigns and appeared in the media. Then,
when we won the victory of having our lands demarcated, I stopped because
everything seemed fine, everything was tranquil,” he recalled. “But the new
president threatens indigenous people, so I came back to fight again.”
Recent government figures show Amazon deforestation has surged to the highest
level in a decade. Farmers and land-grabbers have started more fires to clear
land, which is pumping huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
disrupting the water cycle and destroying the world’s most biodiverse land
habitat. They have been emboldened by a government that has spent its first
year weakening environmental protections, encouraging loggers and heaping scorn
on conservation groups and forest dwellers.
Even before entering office, Bolsonaro frequently abused indigenous groups as
an obstacle to economic development. “It’s a shame the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t
been as efficient as the (North) Americans who exterminated the Indians,” he
said in 1998. Now in power, he has promised to halt demarcation of new reserves
and to open up territories to mining and agriculture businesses.
Anthropologists have warned these actions will result in the genocide of
uncontacted tribes.
Among the greatest threats is encroachment and environmental destruction by
Brazil’s tens of thousands of garimpeiros (artisanal gold miners). Almost all
are illegal, but Bolsonaro has expressed far more support for this group than
previous state leaders. For him it is partly a personal issue. Bolsonaro’s
father was a part-time gold miner, and the president has said he himself panned
for gold while serving in the army.
“Bolsonaro is a garimpeiro. It explains the way he thinks, always trying to
explore more land,” said Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. “He has a sickness in his
head. He doesn’t think about others, or about the future.”
An author, shaman and environmentalist, Kopenawa is arguably the most prominent
intellectual voice of the more than 300 different indigenous groups in Brazil.
His book The Falling Sky outlines the very different cosmology of traditional
forest peoples and warns that humankind is breaking the forest pillars that
hold up the sky – an allusion that stretches beyond the climate crisis.
He said that in the past year Yanomami lands (which stretch across Brazil’s
border with Venezuela) had been invaded by the biggest wave of illegal miners
since the 1980s. “They are poisoning our rivers, killing our fish, and our
people are starting to get sick with malaria again,” he told the Guardian.
Quietly spoken but defiant, Kopenawa said the problem was greater than
Bolsonaro. Although the president had made matters worse, he said, mining
companies from Canada, China and Japan were behind the push for resources. “Our
politicians are selling our wealth. This brings no benefit to our people, just
destruction. Who is getting rich? It’s the foreigners. The big companies are
behind this.”
The threats are not just to the forest. Raoni has two bodyguards and is a
target for attention-seeking nationalists who are trying to ingratiate
themselves with Bolsonaro.
At a recent gathering of forest defenders in Altamira, a small group of land
grabbers and farmers attempted to disrupt proceedings by surging towards the
top table, prodding and shouting in the face of a young indigenous woman who
was speaking about the killings of her people. Raoni wagged his finger
reprovingly, a sign for half a dozen Kayapó warriors to push the intruders back
to their seats.
The scuffle prompted exaggerated claims on rightwing social media that Raoni
had “ordered an attack”. In fact, it was a defence – and a reminder of what has
been happening across the Amazon for decades.
The jostling is now in the courts. The academic who organised the disruption
has filed a criminal accusation against the Kayapó chief. The organisers of the
event had already lodged a complaint against the protest organisers for making
threats. Raoni said the fracas should not distract from the more important
issue of how to save the Amazon.
“I was very sad at what happened. The people who want to destroy the forest
came to disrupt things. I felt it was important to talk so I asked people to
hold them back.”
The landowners were much quieter from that moment on. Civil society organisers
claimed this as a victory for the majority in Brazil who want to protect the
rainforest. They hope to build alliances across the Amazon and throughout the
world to counter the threat posed by Bolsonaro and extractive industries.
There are signs this may be happening under the leadership of Raoni, Kopenawa
and others. Indigenous tribes once fought each other as well as riverine
settlers and quilombolas (descendants of runaway slaves who moved into the
forest). Today, however, many of these different groups are allied against
tree-clearing and river-poisoning intruders.
Raoni invited people across the world to join a peaceful resistance against the
forces threatening indigenous territory, the Amazon and the world.
“They have the money and the guns. We don’t have that. I don’t have that,” he
said after the interview. But with temperatures climbing and the forest under
increasing threat, he said, it was necessary to act to help Brazil and avert a
grimmer future for people around the globe.
“Nature is essential for us to breathe,” he said. “I hope people, not just in
Brazil, will take my hand and join our forces to save nature, the forest and
everything inside it, including the animals and the people.”
