“Lhe mother of Brazil is indigenous». With these words Sonia Guajajara, Brazilian minister of indigenous peoples, appointed by President Lula last January 11, has shown the way. The fight for native rights and against climate change cannot fail to incorporate the battle of women and for women as well. “When I speak in universities or at conferences, I am still looked at with suspicion. We need a cultural change.”. Against the same distrust he also fights Alessandra Korap, 38, environmental activist, representative of the Munduruku people whose name she took on, awarded in April with the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Nobel Prize for the environment, and already winner of the Kennedy Prize for human rights in 2020.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
Alessandra represents 14,000 people who live in the median region of the Tapajós River, a tributary of the Amazon River, in the state of Pará. Today it is a point of reference all over the world: he fights for the Amazon rainforest, for rivers, for children.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku: «Brazil is deeply macho»
From her home in the village of Praia do Índio, she tells iO Donna that she has encountered the same difficulties as the minister. Not only is Brazilian society deeply macho, but prejudice against women is strong in indigenous communities where traditionally men decide.
It is the warriors, the caciques (traditional leaders of the tribes) and the pajés, ie the priests vested with divine powers, who deal with the whites, with the government, with the mining and agri-food industry. That is, with predators who attack the integrity of territories, destroy, kill. One fact speaks for all: in the four years of the Bolsonaro government, the rate of deforestation has increased by 75 percent (Greenpeace).
“Our people are under siege,” says Alessandra. The absence of supervision in hard-to-reach areas creates a free zone where the law of the fittest applies. So the companies sow soybeans, the garimpeiros, illegal gold seekers, pollute by dispersing mercury, hydroelectric plants compromise the ecosystem.
The Rise of Brazilian Women
In this fight, female leaders are still few, but they are determined to undermine stereotypes from within, transmitting female emancipation to the younger ones not as a goal but as an acquired right. Like the certainty of having a voice that is finally being heard. With hers, Alessandra stopped the Anglo American mining industry, blocking 27 new mines and saving 162,000 hectares of rainforest from drillinghome to her community and thousands of animals, a feat that earned her a Goldman Award.
Has being a woman hindered you?
I have been an activist since 2015, when the announced São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric dam threatened my village. The men had mobilized. Women were not allowed to participate in the assemblies, but I introduced myself anyway. I was on the sidelines, silent. There was another girl, Maria Leusa, an indigenous warrior. She encouraged me, she said to me: “You have to talk”. It was a great challenge, because we women cannot ignore the decisions of the caciques, especially in negotiations with strangers . But gradually I won the trust of the bosses.
How did she do it?
My desire to know earned me the respect of men. They understood that I acted in everyone’s name. That I studied, but only to inform others. Because my voice is collective, right from the start. Like the Goldman award, which belongs to all the Munduruku people.
How does it help younger activists?
I encourage girls not to give up, even when they are preconceived in their communities. “Don’t give up,” I say. “Talk to other women, decide together with them”. The fight is for everyone, for our children, for the Tapajós River, for biodiversity”.
What is the added value of women’s contribution to the collective battle?
When men go hunting, they run and kill with arrows. Before going out, women observe from all sides, checking the details. Before picking up their children, they make sure the monkeys have food and the parrot has water. Women take care of the whole world.
What are the priorities in the battle for women’s empowerment in native peoples and, more generally, in Brazil?
To truly emancipate ourselves, we cannot pretend to decide alone, we must abandon individualistic thinking to assume a perspective of collective resistance and conquest. Without other women, but also without men, we are not truly free.
What is he fighting against now?
Against the construction of the Ferrogrão railway, the “soy train”, the cause of the deforestation of 230,000 hectares. Against the river ports that prevent us from fishing. Against the garimpo, the illicit extraction of gold, which concerns you too because among the buyers of this metal, the result of illegal practices, there are also Italian companies.
What are the harms of the garimpo?
To extract the gold, the garimpeiros use mercury which is prohibited: it pollutes and causes neurological damage and malformations. They polluted the river and the fish, they poisoned the children. In Italy do you know that your jewels come from destruction?
Alessandra Korap never lowers her gaze. She has been repeatedly threatened with death just because she claims the lands that legitimately belong to her people and she defends the right to a life without danger. His message warns us: we have not yet understood that the indigenous people are fighting for us. They are the first line in the defense of the greatest good, the good of all: the planet. The forest is not an abstract entity, we are the forest.
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