Girls in these communities face sexual abuse and forced prostitution, resulting in high incidence of rape cases and HIV transmission. The Peruvian Minister of Education Moran Quero has crassly attributed the rape of 500 Awajún girls to “cultural practice.”
The Peruvian government engages in little more than handwringing when it comes to oppression of these communities, because it defends the powerful capitalist interests that profit off of the illegal mining, logging and drug trafficking that plague the Amazon region.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro did not even bother to hide his initiatives to uproot indigenous communities in the Amazon. According to Sage Journals Home:
Under the ultraconservative Bolsonaro government, the State has been taken over by elites with rural and extractive capital who plan on exploiting the Amazon rain forest at any cost and see indigenous peoples as an obstacle to their goal. The military also has a noteworthy position in this offensive, which strikes at the heart of what are considered human rights.
The organization Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL 2020) referred to Bolsonaro’s policies as one “without indigenous people,” that is, genocide.
Bolsonaro’s successor, Workers Party (PT) President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announced with great fanfare his intention to pursue a new policy in the Amazon region dedicated to protecting the environment and the indigenous populations. While his government has managed to reduce the rate of deforestation by half, the area controlled by illegal mining actually increased by seven percent last year.
With environmental and indigenous agencies confronting scant resources, the Amazonas mission has largely been delegated to the Brazilian military, which has a long record of oppressing indigenous populations. This includes the massacre of nearly 10,000 indigenous people in the Amazonas region under the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
The history of unaddressed abuse and crimes committed against indigenous peoples constitutes a compelling indictment of the capitalist system. It is up to the international working class, in building socialism, to end these crimes.
Only the socialist conversion of the capitalist economy will permit respect of indigenous languages and culture, while providing full economic rights, universal education and proper housing.
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 12:14:00
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