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Xingu River System
Report by Amy Corbin and Ashley Tindall HistoryThe Xingu-Tapajos watershed is the place where the Culuene and other southern rivers join to form the Xingu, and is considered the place of the world’s creation by the peoples of the Upper Xingu. At the Xingu headwaters, there is a massive lake, a network of eaons (natural canals), and wooded islands. The Xingu River then descends northward to the Amazon with approximately 500 miles of rapids. The terrain shifts from cerrados (tropical savanna) in the south to the Amazon rainforest in the north. The native inhabitants of the Upper Xingu region include the Aweti, Kalapalo, Kamaiurá, Kuikuro, Matipu, Mehinako, Nahukuá, Trumai, Wauja and Yawalapiti. These communities speak their own languages, but are interconnected through trade networks, marriages and inter-village rituals. Each group is known for a specialty craft such as ceramics or stone tools, and groups gather to trade, socialize, and participate in wrestling matches. Their natural landscape is filled with physical remnants and symbols of past events that shaped the people’s history. Contemporary rituals re-enact these events: for example, humans are thought to have been created from wooden logs of the Kuarup tree that were placed in a secluded chamber made of straw, and so adolescents going through puberty and parents with newborns stay in seclusion to honor these times when personhood formed. The Kuarup remains an important wood in ceremonies, including a lengthy funeral ritual that is so well-known that the tribes are now sometimes referred to as Kuarup by people throughout the Upper Xingu region. Spirits are thought to inhabit the wild lands outside the village, generally only entering the village at times of sickness or when they are called by a shaman. The tribes are village-centered, with a central plaza that serves as a political and religious gathering place. Primary subsistence is fish and bread and porridge made from the cultivation of manioc, though the people farther north supplement these with red meat and other agriculture. Beginning with the German ethnologist Karl von den Steinen, who visited in 1884 and 1887, anthropologists and explorers encountered the numerous tribes in the area. There were small excursions into the area by slave-hunting expeditions, but in general their impact on this area was much less than other regions. As trade for metal tools increased, more Europeans arrived in the area and introduced infectious diseases to which the tribes had no immunity. The Aipatse’, Naravute, Tsuva and Kustenau peoples were all wiped out, while other tribes dramatically shrank in population.
Some concerned Brazilians, including the now famous Villas-Boas brothers, decided to demarcate the lands of the local tribes with the hope of protecting “Indians of pure culture” from the influences and impacts of the new settlers. They faced heavy opposition from ranchers and the federal government at the time, yet succeeded in re-creating a significant portion of the original Indian territories as reserves. This Indian Territory became the Indigenous Park of the Xingu in 1961. Meanwhile, the government continued a policy that regarded other tribes adjacent to the Xingu area—the Ikpeng, Kaiabi, Suyá and Yudja—as barriers to the process of colonization and road-building in the area. These groups, which have distinct cultures from those native to the Xingu watershed, were forcibly relocated to the newly-created park. Under the paternalistic yet arguably compassionate administration of Orlando Villas-Boas, the park was essentially isolated from Brazilian society and development, allowing the environment and its peoples a measure of protection that the rest of the Amazon Basin was not afforded in the twentieth century. Current Challenges and Preservation EffortsThe Indigenous Park of the Xingu, the first Indian Territory officially recognized by the Brazilian government, today sits between the Curisevo and Culuene Rivers in the modern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. Fourteen tribal groups, now with a population of approximately 4,000, continue to live in the park, with an additional 10,000 indigenous people living along the whole river system. While many languages have gone extinct, several endangered languages continue to be spoken within the park. A few of the communities whose traditional lands were adjacent to the park regained their original lands in the 1980s when some reforms to the Indian reserve system were implemented, but most tribes are confined to the limited boundaries of the park. Xingu Park is an oasis in the still remote north-central Brazil that is being invaded by massive dam projects, logging, soy and corn farming, and cattle ranching. Much of the primary forest and vegetation of the Xingu headwaters, including the Culuene tributary, has already been devastated. While the park itself is now protected, many threats to the ecosystem come from the areas surrounding the park. The scrubby grasslands of the cerrados now only remain within the Indian reserves, especially those of the Xavante and Bakairi Indians. Increased population has polluted the headwaters of the tributary rivers. In the 1980s, recreational and commercial hunters and fisherman entered the area, followed loggers and large commercial farming enterprises, which now dominate the local economy. Today, the entire Xingu river system is slated for massive hydroelectric dam development. Though dams have been discussed since the 1980s, environmental review and community resistance have stalled their implementation, including a protest by the Kayapó in 1989 that prevented the state electric company Eletronorte from constructing a six-dam complex on the Xingu and its tributary, the Iriri River. The company then turned its attention to the Belo Monte dam on the main stem of the Xingu, which would be Brazil’s largest hydroelectric complex and the world’s third largest. Belo Monte would flood 440 sq km and displace 16,000 people, drying up the river around its “Big Bend,” home to 450 indigenous people. In 2005, after Senate approval of the project, a lawsuit was filed by federal attorneys claiming that the project should not be approved because indigenous communities were not consulted, as required by Brazil’s constitution. This lawsuit has so far prevented the project from moving forward. Now, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s recently announced Plan for Growth Acceleration (PAC) specifically targets hydroelectric projects for swift approval. The PAC covers all kinds of public works projects, but focuses much of its attention on the Amazon Basin and on energy generation. The “Light for All” program established a goal of generating enough electricity to serve 16 cities and 133,000 people in north-central Brazil. With the momentum of PAC, the federal government recently granted the Brazilian company Paranatinga Energy S/A permission to move forward with the Paranatinga II project. The primary concern with Paranatinga II is cultural, for the dam would flood the area where the Kuarup live seven kilometers south of the dam. The Institute of National History and Art (IPHAN) and the National Foundation of the Indian (FUNAI), which governs the Park, have identified several sacred sites associated with the mythology of the Upper Xingu peoples that may be inundated once the dam in built. Paranatinga S/A is currently in consultation with FUNAI to discuss this issue. (For other sacred places threatened by dam flooding, see our reports on Rainbow Bridge in Utah and Shasta Dam in California.) The tribes of the upper Xingu area are also deeply concerned that the dams would pollute the water with oil. The Indigenous Movement in Defense of the Rio Xingu has sought assurances from Paranatinga Energy that oil used in that dam would not pollute the Culuene. Paranatinga responded with a letter claiming that the Culuene River would not be polluted and that the fish and animals would be protected. Much larger in size, Belo Monte’s proposed design includes fish “stairs,” designed to help migrating fish make their journey upriver. Tribes and the university-based Institute for Advanced Amazonian Studies (NAEA) question whether the fish stairs will permit adequate numbers of spawning fish through the dam. Due to low water levels three months of the year, Belo Monte would have to cease operations and water would be stored in another proposed dam—the upstream Babaquara Dam—which as originally designed would flood 6,000 square miles of rainforest. Other controversial hydroelectric dam projects on Amazonian Rivers include two on the Madeira River (Santo Antônio and Jirau Hydroelectric Power Plants) and one on the Tapajós River (São Luís). The federal Environment Ministry (IBAMA) ruled that it did not have enough information on the environmental impacts of the Madeira dams to approve them, prompting President Lula to demand that IBAMA give provisional approval to the projects. The Belo Monte and Madeira dam projects, the largest under consideration at 11,182 MW and 6,450 MW respectively, are worrisome not just on their own, but because their approval would mean the loosening of standards for environmental and cultural damage, according to Glenn Switkes of the International Rivers Network (IRN). One place in which the consequences of dams can already be seen is the Tucuruí Dam, where 32,000 families were displaced in 1984 and some remaining families now live on an island in the middle of the dam’s lake. They have been cut off from electricity, health care, and education, seized by a malaria epidemic, and deprived of their traditional livelihood based on fishing. Protests, most recently in May 2007, continue to be held to demand a hearing with the private companies, federal agencies and the State Government of Para to address residents’ issues. In total, it is estimated that one million Brazilians have been affected by dam construction. The greater Rio Xingu area is also being rapidly deforested for commercial timber and to create more farm acreage to meet the demand for corn and soy products (a demand recently spurred by the growing movement for bio-fuels). Due to poor official leadership and a paltry budget for the administration of Xingu Park, there has been rampant illegal logging in the park. The tribes have demanded that the local government be held accountable for its failure to stop the logging, and have resorted to violent confrontations with the logging companies in the absence of government enforcement of laws. The limited territory available to park inhabitants, the increasing need for resources to produce products demanded by the outside world, and skepticism on the part of local people about economic development schemes are all factors to be considered in the planning of sustainable development. The administration of President Lula, who was elected on a social justice platform, has claimed that it will pay attention to the environment and indigenous rights, and its appointment of environmentalist Marina Silva to head the Environment Ministry was intended to reassure activists of his commitment. While Silva has made some promising moves, environmentalists also have been dismayed by the Environment Ministry’s recent approval of controversial public works projects, such as the Madeira River dams. In recent years, the Xingu tribes have united to form several associations to protect their common interests. These associations must walk a careful line between working with Brazilian government and the external policy world, while reconciling their methods with the traditional leadership system within each village. To begin to confront the effects on park land from land use outside the park, the Xingu Indigenous Land Association and the Socio-environmental Institute (ISA) have established the Borders Project, which attempts to map encroaching deforestation and identify new vectors of activity heading towards the park. It also trains the staff of the posts and maintains the physical boundary markers of the park. Another sign of progress occurred in late 2006, when the Federal Minister of Justice recognized ten new indigenous reserves, a decision that returned control over more than a million hectares of their original territory to tribes. There have been several successful lawsuits by tribes petitioning to have their traditional lands included in the park boundaries. Merely designating borders, however, does not put a stop to the forbidden activities; enforcement of the laws is a continual concern. To this end, a network of eleven vigilance posts has been established to control entry into the park. However, many other communities continue to wait for recognition of their land rights, including the people of the Upper Xingu. Until those are won, and they have the right to negotiate or prohibit development on their lands, there will likely continue to be violent encounters between the impoverished and politically marginalized indigenous Brazilians and the powerful companies and government contractors working to exploit Brazil’s “final frontier.” What You Can DoFollow the developments leading toward the 2008 meeting of indigenous people in Altamira to protest the Xingu dams, and encourage international media to cover this event. Support the non-governmental organizations below. Resources
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Six smaller rivers feed the great Xingu River that runs through central Brazil northward to the Amazon River. The Xingu is a vital part of the complex ecosystem that sustains the world’s largest rainforests and a great diversity of cultures. The government of Brazil seeks to use this natural resource to generate massive amounts of hydroelectric power, planning more than 70 large dams, and dozens of smaller ones throughout the central and northern parts of the country. One of these is the proposed Paranatinga II dam. Located on the Culuene River, a tributary of the Xingu, Paranatinga II would destroy an area sacred to 14 tribal groups. The same tribes also oppose the much larger proposed dam downstream, Belo Monte, which would displace indigenous communities. A June 2007 declaration by tribal groups states: “We indigenous peoples wish to live and to breathe the Xingu River. Its waters are the source of our life and we don’t want to die. We will not give up on life and we will not abandon our struggle.”
In the 1940s, the Brazilian government began promoting settlement of its western provinces through its “March to the West” campaign, with the goal of exploiting the Amazon Basin’s vast natural resources, especially rubber and gold. The “March to the West” led to encounters with many indigenous tribes that had never before been contacted by Europeans. The government also built an Air Force base on the Culuene River; the new airstrips increased access to the remote area and the spread of infectious diseases continued, including a massive measles outbreak that caused 114 deaths in 1954. In addition, goldpanners and ranchers harassed, abused and murdered many of the indigenous peoples, causing some communities to flee the area. In 1884, when Karl von den Steinen began to map the peoples of the Amazon system, the estimated population of the upper Xingu River was 3,000; by 1965, a study reported only 542 remaining. |
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