Energy giant Shell's new Brazilian joint-venture partner is producing biofuels from land taken from an impoverished Indian tribe. Last month, Shell signed a $12 billion deal to produce biofuels from sugar cane with Brazilian biofuels giant Cosan. But some of Cosan’s sugar cane is grown on land officially recognised as belonging to Guarani Indians.
A Brazilian prosecutor with constitutional powers to defend indigenous rights in court, has written to Shell warning that its involvement in the joint venture "jeopardises the company’s commitment to biodiversity and sustainability."
The film Birdwatchers brought the Guarani’s plight worldwide attention in 2008, and one of the film’s stars, Ambrosio Vilhalva, is from the community affected by Cosan’s activities. Speaking of the sugar cane plantations that have swallowed much of his tribe’s lands, Vilhalva said, "The sugar cane plantations are finishing off the Indians. Our lands are getting smaller and smaller. The plantations are killing the Indians."
Earlier this month, a top expert on indigenous rights in a report to the UN Human Rights Council said he was "deeply concerned about the allegations of violence against the Guarani people and the severe impact that the aggressive policy of governments in the past to sell large tracts of traditional lands to non-indigenous farmers has had on the Guarani communities."
The Guarani were one of the first peoples contacted after Europeans arrived in South America around 500 years ago. In Brazil, there are today around 46,000 Guarani living in seven states, making them the country’s most numerous tribe. Many others live in neighbouring Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina.
For as long as they can remember, the Guarani have been searching – searching for a place revealed to them by their ancestors where people live free from pain and suffering, which they call ‘the land without evil’. Over hundreds of years, the Guarani have travelled vast distances in search of this land.
This permanent quest is indicative of the unique character of the Guarani, a ‘difference’ about them which has often been noted by outsiders. Today, this manifests itself in a more tragic way: profoundly affected by the loss of almost all their land in the last century, the Guarani suffer a wave of suicide unequalled in South America.
They are squeezed onto tiny patches of land surrounded by cattle ranches and vast fields of soya and sugar cane. Some have no land at all, and live camped by roadsides. The Guarani suffer violent attacks whenever they attempt to return to their ancestral territories. Their leaders are frequently targeted by gunmen and dozens have been assassinated.
Survival International’s Director, Stephen Corry, said, "‘Shell is threatening to aggravate what is already one of the most critical situations of all Indian peoples in Brazil. Now the company knows what its Brazilian partner is up to, we hope they won’t want to be implicated in the theft of the Guarani’s land."
Survival has written to Shell about Cosan’s activities, which clearly breach Shell’s Statement of General Business Principles. The Guarani issue is the only one that Survival is currently raising with Shell. However, Shell's explorations in the Peruvian Amazon in the 1980s led to loggers making 'first contact' with the Nahua tribe, more than half of who died as a result.
An official from Shell Brasil Ltda told this writer, "We are aware of the issue and have discussed it with Cosan, our partner in the proposed joint venture in Brazil. We have also explained in a recent letter to Survival International the action being taken to find a way forward. This includes discussing possible solutions with the Attorney General in Mato Grosso do Sul and FUNAI – the government body that protects the rights of indigenous people."
[All photographs used with this article are stills from the film Birdwatchers.]
