Collaboration : Diego Santos

The  II Brazilian Seminar for  Fighting Environmental Racism , that happened in Fortaleza , at the end of March, has ended with  positive results.  Tania Pacheco,  FASE’s  consultant  and the Seminar’s organizer, speaks about the event’s conquests and shows how  environmental racism  relates to  urban conflicts , including shantytown’s (favelas) removal.

Ibase – What is environmental racism and what is its relation with urban conflicts?

Tania Pacheco – We define environmental racism as “the social and environmental injustices that  fall  ruthlessly over  vulnerable  ethnical  groups ( or groups that were made vulnerable by  the capitalism’s  action) and other communities that are discriminated by their origin or color”.  These injustices are democratically distributed amongst populations in the fields and in the cities and we may say that they can be found  in the very origin of the urban conflicts that we see today in a growing and for many, threatening way.

If we have in mind, for example, that Brazil has today a 83% urban population  and if we consider its territory’s  immensity, an obvious question imposes itself : Why only   17% of the Brazilian man and women remain in the field? The painfully simple answer is: because since the beginning of our colonization,  capital has expelled them from their original territories, from their fields, forests and lands and has forced them to search in other places a mostly precarious survival, in which they are submitted to an almost mandatory exclusion.

Ibase – How this expulsion takes place?

Tania Pacheco – In the present development model expansion’s processes, indigenous people, quilombo’s remainders (descendants of former slaves), those who live from the rivers,  small scale fishers  and a series of other traditional communities are summarily   deprived  of their citizenship rights.  Their lands are confiscated (and with them their relatives, friends, ways of living, religious practices, culture and traditions).

In many occasions these people are still used during some time “in name of the progress and development”, to help in the destruction of ecosystems such as the manguezais, to extract the roots of the same trees that used to shelter and feed them. In order to survive they are forced to participate of the “wasted land” policy that is needed to build the basic structure for the great monoculture projects, for instance.

In a second stage of the production process, they become “disposable man power”; they become unwanted who have to be ‘made invisible’, either by violence or by sheer expulsion.  From this point on, for some, specially for indigenous people, suicide will be the solution. But for the majority of these environmental refugees, the search for survival in urban centers (greater or smaller) turns to be the only alternative.

Some decades ago it was usual to see in Brazilian hinterland, and specially in the Northeast, the traditional loud speaker’s services at the Parish Church plaza being used to help to gather cheap manpower to the “Wonderful South”, were they would work in menial jobs, mainly in the constructions. Today even this is a thing of the past. But legions of internal migrants continue to make their travel. Not anymore pursuing the dream of surviving in the big city and possibly returning to their lands in condition to live with dignity and /or assist their relatives, but as no-citizens turned outcasts, excluded and marginalized.

The city will not anymore receive them with pretense open arms, but, on the contrary, will take them as undesirables that will join the shantytown’s crowds or the people who live in deteriorated urban areas defiled by garbage mountains and deposits of toxic refusals.  For many what is left is mendicancy, prostitution, drugs, destitution of the last remains of citizenship. All this in the middle of a public opinion and a state apparatus that see them a priori as criminals – specially if they are black. For the women a distinctive  denomination: they are the mothers of future criminals.

Ibase – Therefore, it is possible to make a relation between shantytown’s removal and environmental racism…

Tania Pacheco – Yes. The day before yesterday, following up in the internet the comments on Dandara, an occupation in course in Belo Horizonte city, I was specially shocked by a revealing comment posted in YouTube.

A woman commented the fact with visible hate, saying in a given moment: “You do not study, you live of menial jobs, you put your offspring in the world without conditions to raise them, in spite of  birth control governmental programs. You cannot learn to make the simple gesture of taking a contraceptive- which is given for free! One child is not enough for you: you have to make at least three! And each one of a different father! They love to live of governmental small grains, of the Bolsa Família ‘alms”, and on top of this they want what belongs to others, since they cannot take care of their own lives. Those who are honest and hard-working purchase things and to not steal! The city is full of projects and NGOs that offer everything to you and your little beasts”. After some other phrases like these, she concluded: “Soon  violence will be rampant in this BH occupation!”

I confess that  this “ You and you little beasts ”, that transported me directly to the age of the slave quarters (senzalas) , almost  made me lost my temper. But the truth is that these conceptions are common sense amongst the majority of the so called middle class, that continues to be enslavers in the interactions they maintain with the female domestic servants.

And the final comment would close my answer, if the day  before yesterday, 14, a 17yo boy called Felipe dos Santos Correia de Lima, a worker – student , would not have been killed with a shot in his head at 11 AM by policemen who entered shooting in the Maré shantytown. The Observatório das Favelas, that dedicated its editorial to this case, ended its comments with a phrase that, sadly, is true and stinging: “This is not news”.

Ibase – If we go back in history, when this kind of racism emerges?

Tania Pacheco – This question has an easy short answer: when the Portuguese arrives here and started the so called indigenous genocide.

Ibase – In your opinion, how it is possible to face the environmental racism?

Tania Pacheco – A macro answer that is part of the utopia we pursue: this is possible by means of a political, social and cultural revolution that would change our civilizing patterns and took down the capitalist system that subdues and make us non humans. Something obvious but difficult. In the practice, we are taking small steps in this direction. The struggle of the Fight Against Environmental Racism Work Group is one of them. Created in the Environmental Justice Brazilian Network, in 2005, it is composed by dozens of committed entities and persons in all country.  We take action by campaigns, denouncements and support to affected groups.

At the same time we are concerned with the production of diversified materials to sensitize and contribute to the new vision of the Brazil we want.  We want to give our contribution against all forms of institutional or environmental racism, building a counter hegemonic discourse that helps to combat the orchestration promoted by the media apparatus. To do this, it is essential to dismantle the ‘logic” that is present in the Opinion section of the press, expressed by intellectuals who use their academic credentials to ideologically legitimize a state of things  that is completely not  legitimate, in the name of  ‘private property’ , ‘development ‘ and ‘progress’.

Ibase – The second edition of the National Seminar has brought some novelties?  What has advanced in the discussion and the proposals since the first seminar?

Tania Pacheco – First of all, we are leaving the  II Brazilian Seminar against the Environmental Racism  strengthened . As positive points we can quote the adhesion of many committed entities and persons – they will be partners in the unfolding of this struggle. The political reorganization of the Work Group, now under a strong Collegiate Coordination, will surely contribute to this.

Besides, it was fundamental to count on the presence of people who put their own lives at risk in these struggles. To give some examples, I can quote, among them, Crispim dos Santos, combatant  under death threat, who integrates the struggle in the Quilombo de São Francisco do Paraguaçu, Bahia; Angelina de Carvalho Pereira, from the  Peasant Women Movement, a militant in  Acre; José Cardoso, articulator of the National Movement of  Collectors of  Materials to be Recycled . Without forgetting even for a minute the Anacé indigenous people, who  hosted us in our last day of work and shared with us their land, their indignation, their food and their dreams . This was without doubt an injection of courage, strength and challenge for all of us.

Ibase – One of the results was also the Letter of Fortaleza. Could you talk about the importance of this document?

Tania Pacheco – When we were writing it, we were focusing  not  the production of an academic  analysis of the context , but  the  reaching  of an agreement on a true letter of principles that could be  a milestone for our Working Group’s options, commitments  and directions  from now on.

Ibase – What are the future unfoldings?

Tania Pacheco – The building of the Environmental Racism Map continues to be one of our targets both as strategy and  tool for struggle. The alliance with other Latin American movements already initiated with the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, a peruvian ONG, is other goal to be reached, since the fight against  environmental racism goes beyond our frontiers.  Besides this, much struggle, much search for new partnerships and above all much indignation –an ingredient that I think fundamental to maintain us alive and human.

Published on April, 17th, 2009

http://www.ibase.br/modules.php?name=Conteudo&pid=2622

Translation: Madza Ednir