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Photo: Maíra Irigaray / Amazon WatchHolding Brazil accountable for the Belo Monte Dam
When fully operational, Belo Monte will be the third-largest dam in the world, constructed in one of the most important ecosystems on the planet: the Amazon rainforest. It sits on the Xingu River in Pará, a state in northern Brazil. The reservoir will cover 500 square kilometers of forest and farmland—an area the size of Chicago.
For the people of the Xingu, construction of Belo Monte has meant loss of access to water, food, housing, work and transportation. At least 20,000 people have been displaced.
The government and construction consortium began to construct the dam without first consulting the people of the region, many of whom are indigenous. They flouted international human rights law, which requires the free, prior and informed consent of affected indigenous communities. Brazil also failed to comply with precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, which were intended to protect the life, health, and integrity of local communities.
Though Belo Monte began operations in May 2016, it is not yet operating at full capacity. In April 2016, a federal court suspended the dam's operating license because the consortium in charge did not complete basic sanitation works in Altamira, the city nearest to and most affected by the dam.
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Brazil inaugurated Belo Monte: There’s nothing to celebrate!
The Brazilian government grandly inaugurated the Belo Monte Dam, which sits on the Xingu River in the midst of the Amazon. As an organization that legally represents affected indigenous and riverine communities, as well as residents of the city of Altamira, we consider there to be no reason to celebrate. The dam has been built by overlooking national and international standards that safeguard the environment and human rights. GET TO KNOW MORE about this injustice through the words of our senior attorney María José Veramendi Villa!
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Photo Essay: Life in the shadow of Belo Monte
By Anna Miller, AIDA writer Deep in the Amazon in north Brazil, the world’s third largest dam towers over a once lush jungle landscape. In its far-reaching shadow live the indigenous and riverine communities who have long called the region home. They are people who have lived and grown by the bounty of the forest and the Xingu River. For most, the natural world that surrounds them is inseparable from their definition of home. But that home is changing rapidly. As the Belo Monte Dam begins operations, and its floodgates open, their world is looking and feeling very different. Large stretches of jungle have been flooded, islands completely submerged. The fish are dying, the wildlife scared away. Families have been separated, and entire communities forced from their land. The shadow cast by Belo Monte is long, and it is dark. The lifestyle of the people of the Xingu river basin has been drastically changed without their consent. Their basic human rights have been violated time and time again. The operating company’s attempts at compensation would be laughable, if they weren’t so heartbreaking. The photos that follow depict people and communities who are living amid the volatile realities of this once peaceful patch of rainforest. They are victims of the corruption, violence and abuse that have come to envelop the largest engineering project in Brazil’s history. The Xingu River is dying. Arapujá Island, visible from Altamira, has been completely stripped of life, causing radical change in river currents. Smaller islands where fishermen lived surrounded by fruit trees have been submerged by rising water levels, as the dam’s reservoirs are filled. On one day in January, the Belo Monte dam opened its floodgates without warning; the river is said to have risen more than 20 feet in an hour. Massive amounts of fish have been dying off; locals say Norte Energía even has cleanup crews that bury them, to hide the scale of the daily devastation. Downstream from the dam, the flow of the river at the Big Bend is reducing drastically; the water is becoming muddy and deoxygenated. Communities near and far—from indigenous people to riverine fishermen—are suffering the impacts, as their lives are torn from the river they know so well. As the Xingu dies, they too lose their lives—for the river itself has long been their home, their source of food and livelihood. The construction of Belo Monte has had severe impacts on the natural world, which has long been the primary food source for jungle communities. Tribes who have lived a subsistence lifestyle are finding the river and the jungle they rely on aren’t producing enough, or are too contaminated, to feed their families. Indigenous people have been driven into the nearest city, Altamira, to meet their basic needs. Some go to buy food or go to the doctor; others have succumbed to the struggle and left their village entirely. Many who come to Altamira stay at Casa Do Indio, a house built as a shelter for the recent influx of indigenous peoples. There, they stay in overcrowded rooms, lacking proper sanitation and endangering their health. Far from their homes, stripped of their dignity, they are confronted with the harsh realities of a violent and overcrowded city. As the city closest to Belo Monte, Altamira has undergone drastic changes due to the dam’s construction. Since the project began, the city’s population has grown by nearly 75 percent; 170,000 people are currently living in a city designed for far fewer. Violence has skyrocketed and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, displacing residents and demolishing longtime family homes. Even neighborhoods Norte Energía claimed would be unaffected by the dam are experiencing its impacts. The rapid growth has wreaked havoc on the city’s sewage system. Belo Monte’s operators have implemented no water or sewage treatment solutions whatsoever, and the entire city is suffering from a lack of basic sanitation. As a result, muddied and flooded streets are widespread. People are demanding answers from Brazil’s Environmental Authority, and from Norte Energía. But they’re left with only questions. The impacts of Belo Monte are not just forcing people from their land; they are tearing people away from each other. As homes are destroyed, and entire villages relocated, the individuals ripped from their lives are struggling to adapt. Communities are losing touch with their traditions; daughters are losing touch with their mothers. Karoline grew up in a rural community surrounded by her family and the rich natural world she remembers so fondly. When her family had to leave their land behind, they didn’t have many options, and were forced to split up. Her parents went to stay with relatives, and Karoline and her sister left for Altamira. Seeking opportunities, education, employment, they too have since parted ways. As a teenager, Karoline is on her own now, far from home. As a requirement of the project’s implementation, Norte Energía must comply with certain conditions, designed to benefit affected communities. They have been implemented in different forms for different situations, none of which could be described as full, adequate or culturally respectful. The Arara da Volta Grande is one of the communities that will be most impacted by Belo Monte. They live on the Big Bend of the Xingu, where the flow of the river has been substantially reduced. To compensate the community for changes to their way of life, Norte Energía is building them “better” houses. Though still within their territory, the structures are located away from the river. They are made of cement and have thick roofs that trap the jungle heat inside each little box. They are a far cry from the wooden, open, thatch-roofed homes traditional to the Arara’s culture and community. Instead of providing the Arara people with a functioning well to provide clean water, Norte Energía has given the community houses they don’t know how to live in; houses that, each and every day, would pull them further away from where they’ve always been. When we talk to members of the indigenous and riverine communities surrounding Belo Monte, we listen to the same answers to many of our questions. The dam is disrupting their way of life. It’s cutting them off from the natural world around them. It’s threatening their culture, their traditional knowledge and the very structure of their communities. Leoncio Arara, a traditional healer from the Arara da Volta Grande, says he now lives in fear. Fear of the dam breaking, of the water rushing down and flooding his home and his community; fear of the fish dying, of the clean water drying up; fear of the dissipation of his culture and the disappearance of his people, who have lived on and with this land for generations. In the once-lush jungle surrounding the massive Belo Monte dam, we see injustice everywhere we look. We see displacement and environmental devastation. What we don’t see is accountability. That’s why we've taken the case to the Inter-American System of Human Rights to have Brazil respond on an international level to the allegations of human rights violations stemming from the construction of the Belo Monte Dam. We’re dedicated to this struggle and we won’t rest until the people we represent, and all those whose lives have been affected by Belo Monte, see justice.
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Belo Monte: the river may be dying but the search for justice never will
“The river is dead!” exclaimed Raimundo as we navigated in his motorboat from Altamira toward the big bend of the Xingu River. From my perch in Raimundo’s boat, it was easy to see how bleak the landscape surrounding Altamira—the northern Brazilian city closest to the construction of the Belo Monte Dam—has become. The big island of Arapujá, located across from Altamira, has been completely deforested, causing a radical change in the currents of the river. Many of the smaller islands, previously inhabited by fishermen, are now completely submerged, only the tops of trees visible above the rising water. I visited Altamira, and the indigenous and riverine communities nearby, with colleagues from Justiça Global. We came to update our case, and to inform those affected by Belo Monte of a new hope for justice: in December, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights opened the case against Brazil for human rights violations caused by the dam. In January, Norte Energía, the company charged with the construction and operation of Belo Monte, opened the dam’s floodgates without warning communities living downstream. They say the Xingu grew seven meters in just an hour. In some communities, the rising water flooded their riverside land, taking with it canoes, boats and items of clothing. Destroying lives The boat took us to a spot in the river where a large island once stood with a house in the middle. Raimundo Nonato had lived there. He raised animals and dedicated his life to fishing. It had been the perfect place to bathe in the river. It was there, in 2013, that Antonia Melo, leader of Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Siempre, baptized me as a defender of these waters. Now the island is under water, and all that remains to be seen are the tops of some fruit trees. Leoncio Arara, an indigenous man from the community Arara da Volta Grande, says his community lives in fear of the river’s expected growth, the loss of their culture and way of life, and from the recent death of 16 tons of fish. They have seen cracks in the dike of the dam’s bypass channel and fear it will break, as the Fundão mining waste dam did in Minas Gerais. On our tour of the area, we also noticed discolored patches on the dike, which should certainly be a sign of alarm. Leoncio said the fear keeps him up at night. On the indigenous lands of the Arara da Volta Grande and Paquiçamba, the life of inhabitants has changed radically. They must now travel to the city (Altamira) to sell their harvest and to buy food. The changing environment has drastrically reduced opportunities for fishing and hunting, rendering their traditional subsistence lifestyle inadequate. Leoncio says that his peoples’ traditional knowledge and community life are being lost. Their homes are different, as is the formation of their village. Norte Energía has carelessly constructed houses that conflict with their culture, because of the location and materials used. Their community lacks even a well from which to retrieve drinking water, a condition that should have been met more than five years ago. Pain, injustice and struggle On our trip, we spent nine days in the area around the Belo Monte dam. We listened to so many stories of pain and injustice: of indigenous children that died from bad medical care in villages without access to the city; of indigenous people who left their villages to seek shelter in the city and now live in the overcrowded Casa del Indio, surrounded by filth and, often, conflicting ethnic groups. We relived the stories of tireless struggle, like that of Socorro Arara, an indigenous woman whose home was destroyed, along with those of her relatives. Socorro and her family all had to haggle with the company, as if their basic human rights were negotiable. Some received very little money in compensation, others the option of a prefabricated house in a neighborhood far from the river. Socorro’s parents live in one of those neighborhoods. Behind their new cement house, they built a small home with the wood they were able to save from their destroyed home. It is there that they really live, by the light of small kerosene lamps, sleeping in hammocks. Electricity is not part of their lives. Residents of Altamira live surrounded by the ironies of the third largest dam in the world. On February 28, Altamira and various cities in the state of Para were left without electricity. The cutoff, described by the receptionist at our hotel as routine, was due to testing on one of the dam’s turbines. There’s not much time now until the Belo Monte begins operation. If, for the countries of the region, Belo Monte represents the cherished dream of development, for me it represents a nightmare from which I’m dying to awake. It’s a nightmare of pain and human rights violations, in which a beautiful, living river is quickly fading away. Going with it are the lives and the dreams of those who have long depended upon its clean and healthy waters. Human rights are not negotiable. The victims of Belo Monte need justice now! It is that dream of justice that I hope, one day soon, becomes reality. -- I wrote these lines in honor of all the people who have dedicated their lives to defending our rivers and our life.
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