The_Other_Admin
18th March 2005, 11:13
DOURADOS, Brazil (Reuters) - Geria's ribs bulge from her emaciated body, but she is alive and luckier than the dozens of Indian children who are starving to death each month on Brazil's federal reservations.
The 20-month-old Kaiowa Indian girl weighed just 11 pounds -- about average for a 3-month-old -- when federal workers took her a month ago to a feeding clinic near the farming town of Dourados in Mato Grosso do Sul state.
Other Indian children in this area known as Brazil's bread basket were not so lucky. At least 14 have died this year on the Dourados reservation, the latest on Thursday.
Called "Brazil's Somalia" and "a concentration camp" by press and politicians, its overcrowded villages are a symbol of Indian poverty in this modernizing country of 180 million, where 40 percent of adults are now overweight.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces pressure to overhaul failing Indian agencies to achieve his promise of wiping out malnutrition, which affects about a third of Brazilians, by 2006.
For Indians, who live on 318 reserves ranging from vast Amazon tracts to the 12-square-mile reserve near Dourados, the causes of malnutrition can be overcrowding, the breakdown of families and the absence of federal government -- which under Brazil's constitution is responsible for the welfare of Indians who are officially wards of the state.
Infant mortality is up to six times the national average in some tribes in Brazil's interior, although there are almost no infant deaths among more affluent coastal Indians.
As cultural traditions disappear among Dourados' 11,500 Guarani, Kaiowa and Terena Indians, alcoholism and depression often take their place.
"The reservation breeds malnutrition," said Tiburcio Fernandes, as he knelt by his 6-month-old daughter's grave.
He buried Kelly three weeks ago among the corn, manioc and okra plants behind his brick shack in the village of Bororo.
Kelly's problems began when her mother went hungry and ran out of breast milk. She had five other children to support.
Fernandes, 49, delayed taking Kelly to the nearby clinic. Many Indians first use holymen's prayers. They distrust the over-crowded local hospital. Several Indian children went there with diarrhea in February and died of infections.
Sacks of commercial seeds and fertilizer from the government are stacked in his house. He does not know how to use them and there is no one to advise him. Government tractors to plant them broke down last year.
BLAME GAME
Lula rushed food and benefits to Mato Grosso do Sul after February press reports of malnutrition. Health agency Funasa delivered firewood so Indians could cook handouts.
"Indian children are dying in the same ways as they did 40 years ago," says Marilia Troquez, who runs the Dourados feeding clinic. "Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for this."
Indians in Brazil's interior were confined to reservations last century. Their territories were turned into farms which are now driving vigorous economic growth with boom crops like soy. Some moved to slums near cities like Sao Paulo where they still suffer malnutrition.
A rise in Brazil's Indian population from 400,000 in the late 1980s to over 700,000 in more than 200 tribes now due to better medical care has put pressure on reservations. There were an estimated 5 million Indians when Europeans fist landed in 1500.
More land is one solution and some Mato Grosso do Sul Indians have seized farms at gunpoint.
Dourados' ranchers fear Indians could claim their properties as ancestral lands -- as is their right under Brazil's constitution -- if they can prove it in court.
Some locals still call Indians "bugres," or savages. But there are signs centuries of fear are fading. Dourados' Unigran university grants over 60 Indian scholarships a year and is building a reservation child care and literacy center.
"The Indians' problems are only going to be resolved when whites change their views," said Jairo de Osti, head of Dourados' chamber of commerce.
Among the Indians themselves, there are huge wealth divisions and unequal land distribution. Some families own nearly 100 acres. Fernandes has 1.2 acre (0.5 hectare).
Many illegally rent land to farmers rather than grow food.
"You could spend millions in there, and put in 100 tractors and it would do nothing without land redistribution and trained people," says Israel Bernardo, local director of the government agency responsible for Indian affairs.
Fernandes' 15-year-old daughter Sulene drops her head when asked about school. She married 16 months ago and has a baby. She sees her husband three days every two months when he gets back from the sugarcane plantation where most men work for about $4 a day. Many become alcoholics, some contract tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases.
Luciano Arevalo, a leader of the Bororo village says his people have to wean themselves off government dependence.
"Our old ways are finished," said Arevalo. "We need to help ourselves ."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050315/lf_nm/brazil_indians_dc
The 20-month-old Kaiowa Indian girl weighed just 11 pounds -- about average for a 3-month-old -- when federal workers took her a month ago to a feeding clinic near the farming town of Dourados in Mato Grosso do Sul state.
Other Indian children in this area known as Brazil's bread basket were not so lucky. At least 14 have died this year on the Dourados reservation, the latest on Thursday.
Called "Brazil's Somalia" and "a concentration camp" by press and politicians, its overcrowded villages are a symbol of Indian poverty in this modernizing country of 180 million, where 40 percent of adults are now overweight.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces pressure to overhaul failing Indian agencies to achieve his promise of wiping out malnutrition, which affects about a third of Brazilians, by 2006.
For Indians, who live on 318 reserves ranging from vast Amazon tracts to the 12-square-mile reserve near Dourados, the causes of malnutrition can be overcrowding, the breakdown of families and the absence of federal government -- which under Brazil's constitution is responsible for the welfare of Indians who are officially wards of the state.
Infant mortality is up to six times the national average in some tribes in Brazil's interior, although there are almost no infant deaths among more affluent coastal Indians.
As cultural traditions disappear among Dourados' 11,500 Guarani, Kaiowa and Terena Indians, alcoholism and depression often take their place.
"The reservation breeds malnutrition," said Tiburcio Fernandes, as he knelt by his 6-month-old daughter's grave.
He buried Kelly three weeks ago among the corn, manioc and okra plants behind his brick shack in the village of Bororo.
Kelly's problems began when her mother went hungry and ran out of breast milk. She had five other children to support.
Fernandes, 49, delayed taking Kelly to the nearby clinic. Many Indians first use holymen's prayers. They distrust the over-crowded local hospital. Several Indian children went there with diarrhea in February and died of infections.
Sacks of commercial seeds and fertilizer from the government are stacked in his house. He does not know how to use them and there is no one to advise him. Government tractors to plant them broke down last year.
BLAME GAME
Lula rushed food and benefits to Mato Grosso do Sul after February press reports of malnutrition. Health agency Funasa delivered firewood so Indians could cook handouts.
"Indian children are dying in the same ways as they did 40 years ago," says Marilia Troquez, who runs the Dourados feeding clinic. "Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for this."
Indians in Brazil's interior were confined to reservations last century. Their territories were turned into farms which are now driving vigorous economic growth with boom crops like soy. Some moved to slums near cities like Sao Paulo where they still suffer malnutrition.
A rise in Brazil's Indian population from 400,000 in the late 1980s to over 700,000 in more than 200 tribes now due to better medical care has put pressure on reservations. There were an estimated 5 million Indians when Europeans fist landed in 1500.
More land is one solution and some Mato Grosso do Sul Indians have seized farms at gunpoint.
Dourados' ranchers fear Indians could claim their properties as ancestral lands -- as is their right under Brazil's constitution -- if they can prove it in court.
Some locals still call Indians "bugres," or savages. But there are signs centuries of fear are fading. Dourados' Unigran university grants over 60 Indian scholarships a year and is building a reservation child care and literacy center.
"The Indians' problems are only going to be resolved when whites change their views," said Jairo de Osti, head of Dourados' chamber of commerce.
Among the Indians themselves, there are huge wealth divisions and unequal land distribution. Some families own nearly 100 acres. Fernandes has 1.2 acre (0.5 hectare).
Many illegally rent land to farmers rather than grow food.
"You could spend millions in there, and put in 100 tractors and it would do nothing without land redistribution and trained people," says Israel Bernardo, local director of the government agency responsible for Indian affairs.
Fernandes' 15-year-old daughter Sulene drops her head when asked about school. She married 16 months ago and has a baby. She sees her husband three days every two months when he gets back from the sugarcane plantation where most men work for about $4 a day. Many become alcoholics, some contract tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases.
Luciano Arevalo, a leader of the Bororo village says his people have to wean themselves off government dependence.
"Our old ways are finished," said Arevalo. "We need to help ourselves ."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050315/lf_nm/brazil_indians_dc