A U.S. food giant has been implicated in a sugarcane scandal in Brazil that has kept an entire indigenous community off its land, polluted streams and inflicted illness and death on Guarani Indians.
Headquartered in the U.S., global grain trader Bunge is deeply involved in Brazil’s burgeoning biofuels market, and sources sugarcane from farmers who have taken over the ancestral land of the Guarani.
In Brazil, there are around 46,000 Guarani today living in seven states, making them the country’s most numerous tribe. Many others live in neighbouring Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina.
A community of 225 Guarani in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, whose land was taken from them to make way for the sugarcane plantations, says the invasion of sugarcane, associated machinery and pesticides has ruined their lives over the past four years.
The Guarani once occupied a homeland of forests and plains totaling some 350,000 square kilometers in Mato Grosso do Sul, virtually all of which has been taken from them in the last 500 years. Brazil has one of the most highly-developed biofuels industries in the world. Waves of deforestation have converted the once-fertile Guarani homeland into a vast network of cattle ranches, and sugar cane plantations for Brazil’s biofuels market.
The destruction of the forest has meant that hunting and fishing are no longer possible, and there is barely enough land even to plant crops. Malnutrition is a serious problem, and since 2005 at least 53 Guarani children have died of starvation. Sugar cane plantations rely heavily on indigenous labour. Workers often work for pitiful wages under terrible conditions.
Two Guarani from Jata Yvary community have already committed suicide this year. The boys, aged 16 and 13, were found hanging from trees. A truck from the plantations used by Bunge also reportedly ran over and killed a man.
Talking to Survival International, the community said, “We Guarani don’t want sugarcane planted on our land anymore… it harms our health, including the health of our children, and elderly people, and the poison contaminates the water.”
The Guarani say pesticides sprayed from planes land on their community, and discarded machinery and crops have been left to rot in streams they rely on for water.
In a letter, they call for their “land to be demarcated… and for white people in the area to be evicted, because with them, we don’t have space to hunt and fish, and we can’t practice our traditions. We want to preserve the forest but they are destroying it, and illegally making money from it.”
Brazil’s constitution, and an agreement signed by the authorities and the Guarani, obliges the government to map out and protect all Guarani land. But this program has come practically to a stand-still, and as the Guarani wait for their land to be returned to them, they are seeing it consumed by an ever-advancing wave of sugarcane.
Survival International has written to Bunge, but the company was unapologetic, saying it would continue to source sugarcane from this ancestral Guarani land until the Brazilian authorities fully map out the area as indigenous.
Earlier this year, Raizen, a biofuels company set up by Shell and Brazilian ethanol giant COSAN, scrapped controversial plans to source sugarcane from land stolen from the Guarani after a sustained campaign by the Indians and Survival International. Raizen has agreed to stop buying sugar cane from land declared as indigenous by the Ministry of Justice, and to consult FUNAI, Brazil’s Indian affairs department, to avoid further investment or expansion in conflict areas that could be recognized as indigenous land in the future.
Survival International’s Director Stephen Corry said on November 13, “Much of Brazil’s biofuel is tainted with Indian blood. Those using it should be aware that their so-called ‘ethical’ choice is contributing to the death and utter destitution of Guarani Indians. Bunge must follow Shell’s lead and leave Guarani land, without hiding behind the excuse of waiting for official land recognition which can take decades.”
Source: Survival International.
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