Freixo: Tourism is a response to environmental threats – 02/14/2023 – Daily life

The new president of Embratur (Brazilian Agency for the International Promotion of Tourism) intends to intensify tourism in areas of environmental preservation that currently suffer from a high incidence of illegal and harmful activities for the locals, such as gold mining.

The intention, says former congressman Marcelo Freixo, now at the head of the agency, is to create alternatives for places like the Yanomami region, as a way of combating criminal actions —which have taken root as a local economic engine.

“Where there is illegal mining, you have to take it out. What economic activity will replace it? Because if there is none, what about the city, the market and the generation of jobs? Tourism can now replace the illegalities of the economy that today threaten the environment and traditional peoples”, says Freixo to Sheet.

According to him, the Yanomami crisis shows that there is no way to carry out sustainable mining inside indigenous lands, as proposed by the Bolsonaro government (PL). “Tourism enters as a modality of possible answer [à crise]to generate economic growth”, he says.

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has been conducting a mega-operation to expel mining from the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima.

Actions to repress illegal activity have been promoting an exodus of miners from the region, which also increases the fear that these invaders migrate to other areas of soil exploration, or even flee to other countries.

The growth and consolidation of illegal mining in Yanomami land, permitted and encouraged by the Jair Bolsonaro government, has provoked a humanitarian, sanitary and health crisis among the indigenous people, with an explosion in cases of malaria, severe malnutrition and respiratory infections.

Yanomamis from communities in regions such as Surucucu and Auaris found themselves pushed and pressured by invaders, and some villages were co-opted by prospecting activity. The indigenous people have shrunk their plantations, and they don’t have potable water to drink or shower. The game was chased away. They cannot fish.

On the 20th of last month, the Lula government declared a state of emergency in public health, with medical assistance actions in the indigenous land. Afterwards, the government began Operation Liberation, to remove the invaders from the territory, with the participation of agents from Ibama, Funai, the National Public Security Force and the Armed Forces. The operation should last between six months and a year.

Allied to the operation is a movement, which the petista has been leading since he was elected, to use the Amazon to try to reposition Brazil on the global stage. The country distanced itself from important powers such as France, among other factors due to its negligent policy with the climate crisis.

“When Brazil is promoted, the Brazil that will protect the Amazon is promoted, and people want to know the forest. But people don’t want to know a devastated forest, but a preserved one. When we talk about ecotourism, it is a political posture”, says Freixo.

The minister says, however, that it has not yet been decided where Embratur will promote actions aimed at ecotourism, nor when. Freixo states that he will talk to ministers Sônia Guajajara (Indigenous Peoples) and Silvio Almeida (Human Rights) to understand which communities —not only indigenous, but also quilombolas, for example— have the profile and wish to participate in actions of this type.

Freixo also says that a climate and environment management will be created within the agency.

According to the former deputy, there are currently talks with the BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development), vice-president Geraldo Alckmin (PSB), Sebrae (Brazilian Support Service for Micro and Small Companies) and Apex (Agência Brasileira de Promoção de Exportações e Investimentos) to create tools to increase Embratur’s budget —which, in his assessment, is currently insufficient for the portfolio’s needs.

Still according to Freixo, so far there are two more advanced measures within the agency.

One is in partnership with the Ministry of Racial Equality, for a memorial inspired by the Holocaust memorial (in Germany) to be installed at Cais do Valongo, in Rio de Janeiro, the place that received the most enslaved Africans in all of Brazil.

The other, together with Regional Development, is a mapping of the country’s tourist attractions and the shortage of labor in these regions, for the development of local professional training programs in tourism.

The government will relaunch Marca Brasil, a tourism promotion program created by Lula, but paralyzed by Bolsonaro in 2019, when the “Brazil, visit and love us” campaign was announced in its place.

The idea ended up being criticized for the possible association of tourism with sexual exploitation. “There is a part of the world that does not want to be confused with tourism that generates the possibility of sexual exploitation, as if all the diplomatic problems with important countries were not enough. [que o antigo governo gerou]”, Freixo concluded.