Governor of RR says that malnutrition does not exist only in the state and defends that indigenous people become cultured – 01/29/2023 – Panel

For the governor of Roraima, Antonio Denarium (PP), the crisis affecting the Yanomami is not exclusive to the state, it is restricted to some groups and has been happening in the same way for decades.

The Lula government (PT) declared a public health emergency on the 20th, after the president received images of indigenous people with severe malnutrition. He paid a visit to Roraima the next day, which highlighted the explosion in cases of malnutrition, diseases associated with hunger (such as diarrhea and respiratory infections) and malaria in Yanomami territory.

Denarium tells the Panel that the responsibility for this scenario does not lie with the Government of Roraima, but with all the last presidents, not just Jair Bolsonaro (PL), with whom he is an ally. “Publicity was given to a problem that has been recurring for 20 years”, he assesses. “They are creating a fact that is not new”.

He also says that the indigenous people should get together to start exploring their areas, fertile in minerals, and cites the example of casinos installed in indigenous reserves in the USA.

“Imagine you are unemployed, poor, starving, sick. Inside your house there is a Picasso painting worth US$ 1 billion. What would you do? Sell it. Then you take the money and improve your quality of life. Just like the American Indians “, he says, who says he has visited similar places in New York.

“The casinos in the US are all within an indigenous area. The luxury hotels near New York are all within an indigenous area. The indigenous earn royalties”, he adds.

Denarium (whose name is Antonio Oliverio Garcia de Almeida and who chose to add politically the nickname that refers to money) says that the piece of land in Roraima is the richest in the world —”it has the entire periodic table”— and highlights a project for law being discussed in Congress that authorizes agricultural, mineral and hydroelectric exploration in indigenous areas, provided that with the agreement of the communities.

Pointed out as an ally of mining, Denarium claims that there are 50,000 families who depend on him in Roraima and who cannot remain unemployed. He contests that the activity is harming the health of the Yanomami, arguing that there is indigenous malnutrition in places without mining.

Regarding the bill he passed to prohibit the destruction of equipment seized from illegal mining, he says that the idea was not to favor them, but to pass on the machines for family farming, possibly to the indigenous people themselves, even though this was not mentioned in the text. .

“When you talk about malnutrition, you have it all over Brazil. If you go to São Paulo, there are children with malnutrition. And I’m talking about the normal, non-indigenous population. If you go to Bahia, which has a road and everything, they live practically within the city I was watching a report about Pataxó Indians with malnutrition. Here in Roraima, 80% of the indigenous people are already acculturated, that is, they have a good relationship with white people”, he says.

“The Cufa [Central Única das Favelas] is delivering food baskets here. You see in the queues, in the videos they publish, there are no malnourished people. Everybody neat, everything neat. The problem is localized, not generalized”, he adds.

Denarium says that the responsibility for the health of indigenous communities, especially isolated ones, lies with the federal government. “I have 260 schools in indigenous communities. They want to be lawyers, teachers, doctors. I think it’s right. They [indígenas] they have to acculturate, they can no longer stay in the middle of the forest, looking like an animal. They have to be there properly, with a road, a school, a health center, doing their own farming, producing cassava, flour”, he argues.

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