MPT will investigate Yanomami exploitation – 05/17/2023 – Market

The MPT (Ministério Público do Trabalho) is going to investigate the exploitation of groups of Yanomami in extracting piassava in the region of the middle Rio Negro, based on a series of recent reports published by Sheet.

The material will be included in a procedure already opened by the MPT, as evidence for the investigation and as a basis for new steps to be taken in the region.

A first step will be to listen to different Yanomami leaders who represent villages on the indigenous land on the Amazon side, within the provisions of convention number 169 of the ILO (International Labor Organization). Brazil is a signatory to the convention, which establishes the need for consultation with traditional peoples, for 20 years.

In addition to investigating labor relations in the extraction of piassaba, the MPT will include the subject among the priority guidelines of the WG (working group) on indigenous peoples.

Information about the measures to be adopted after the publication of the reports were passed on by Jorsinei Dourado do Nascimento, regional labor attorney in Amazonas and Roraima and deputy national coordinator of the WG Indigenous Peoples of the MPT.

“There is a procedure, and the reports bring more recent facts. What the reports show will be included in this procedure”, said the prosecutor. “The extractivism carried out by the indigenous people feeds an entire production chain. Whoever exploits this labor needs to be held accountable.”

This is the second procedure of its kind opened by the MPT in recent years. In 2014, MPT, MPF (Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office) and labor auditors carried out actions to rescue workers in conditions of slavery in piaçabais on the middle Rio Negro. The action resulted in convictions of middlemen by the Labor Court.

The exploitation of Yanomamis, within a rudimentary model of indebtedness of indigenous and non-indigenous people who work in piaçabais, takes place in the midst of a Funai (National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples) blackout in the region.

The blackout was consolidated in 2018, with the dismantling of a Funai CTL (local technical coordination) that operated in Barcelos (AM) to serve the Yanomami. The dismantling deepened in the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government and continues in the Lula (PT) government, with only one substitute coordinator, one permanent employee and one outsourced worker working at the agency’s unit in Barcelos.

A Sheet questioned Funai and the MPI (Ministry of Indigenous Peoples) about the existence of measures to contain the exploitation of Yanomamis in piaçaba. There was no response at the time of publication.

The report went to the region of Barcelos, traveled along the Negro and Padauiri rivers for four days and observed the exploitation of Yanomami carrying out extractive activities.

On Saturday (13), the newspaper showed that Yanomamis from villages in the indigenous land on the Amazon side –the territory is also in Roraima– make long journeys to communities outside the demarcated area, to meet with bosses or little bosses working in those places.

Aviamento is the provision of basic supplies – such as flour and biscuits – and fuel so that workers can stay for weeks in the piaçaba fields, extracting the fiber used in the manufacture of brooms. Payment to bosses is made with the piaçaba itself, which generates indebtedness throughout the process.

This system is a legacy of the rubber booms of the 19th and 20th centuries. Little has changed over the decades, and includes indigenous people (both Yanomami and other ethnic groups) and non-indigenous people.

In addition to days spent on boats with low-power engines and debt, the Yanomamis create a relationship of dependency with the communities, including working together with indigenous peoples of other ethnic groups –especially the Barés– and with non-indigenous people in Piaçabais.

There are indications that part of the piaçaba extracted and destined for bosses in communities, such as Nova Jerusalem, on the Padauiri River, a tributary of the Negro River, comes from the Yanomami Indigenous Land. The fiber is collected by those who do not live in the villages of the demarcated territory.

There is discrimination against the Yanomami in the communities on the tributaries of the Rio Negro. And incidence of Chagas disease among indigenous people, associated with work in fiber extraction.

On Sunday (14), a second report showed that groups articulated to represent the Piaçaba Yanomami and to access the fiber of the territory. The main organization is a cooperative led by bosses, which claims to have Yanomami among its members. Groceries were sent to the edge of the indigenous land without Funai’s approval.

The Aracá-Padauiri Indigenous Land, where piassava exploitation takes place in an aviamento model, never came close to being demarcated, as shown by a report published on Monday (15). The demarcation process has been in progress for 16 years at Funai. The territory is adjacent to Yanomami land.

“That area is very distant, isolated, with a lot of risk. It is very difficult to go there for errands, only with the PF and the Army. There is great difficulty in identifying this piassava production chain”, stated attorney Nascimento. “Any non-indigenous intervention must take into account the ILO convention.”

According to the member of the MPT, the extraction done is not for personal consumption, but for entrepreneurs who explore the use of piassaba. “A chain economically exploits an activity, and needs to be held accountable up to the final consumer. There is already jurisprudence in this regard. It is necessary to guarantee health, safety at work and fair and adequate remuneration.”

Nascimento also said that debt bondage is prohibited in Brazil and “refers to conditions analogous to slavery”. “This is unnatural.”

“This is not a common investigation, as in an urban or rural environment. It is about an environment doubly affected, because there are cultural issues of the indigenous people”, stated the prosecutor.