“Poison rained down on us for years.”
“Poison rained down on us for years. We are constantly threatened by the growth of agribusiness.”
The people and lands of Brazil are facing a legacy of destruction. Four years of Bolsonaro’s aggressive anti-environmental presidential agenda sparked skyrocketing levels of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, rural conflicts and contemporary slave labour.
Friends of the Earth Europe have produced a series of short videos in collaboration with Amigos da Terra Brasil, showcasing the testimonies of frontline activists and communities affected by this corporate devastation of the region.
The videos are part of an ongoing campaign to call for the European Union to drop negotiations for a free trade agreement with Mercosur which would increase pressure on the region and further erode the precarious environmental and human rights situation on the ground.
“As well as leaving us vulnerable, [the EU-Mercosur deal] removes the international rights we have as indigenous people.”
The full video series is available on our YouTube.
Speakers include:
- Graciela Stornini de Almeida from the Landless Movement (Movimento Sem Terra). She is from a community nearby Porto Alegre, which is affected by illegal pesticide spraying. The pesticide spraying has severely affected the livelihood of the community members, with increasing health problems and it has polluted their natural environment, land and water sources.
- Emiliano Maldonado is a human rights lawyer who has been supporting Graciela and her community to litigate against pesticide abuse. He also legally advises Civil Society Organisations, on cases related to land grabbing and illegal mining. He is part of the Rede Nacional de Advogadas e Advogados Populares- RENAP (Network working of human rights and environmental lawyers working with Civil Society Organisations in Brazil.
- Kreta Kaingang is an indigenous representative from APIB (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil), Brazil’s largest indigenous association, which represents many of the country’s 900,000 Indigenous people. Kretã is from the Mangueirinha Indigenous Land, an area of Atlantic Forest in the interior of Paraná, constantly threatened by loggers.
- Luana Hanauer is from Amigos de la Tierra Brasil. She is a young activist and economist who wrote a report about the EU-Mercosur deal in 2020. She works on violations around mineral extraction and accompanies communities who have been affected by the Brumadinho dam disaster.
Organisations interested in sharing the videos can reach out to Julie Zalcman for unbranded video files at julie.zalcman@foeeurope.org.
The videos have also been produced with subtitles in Portuguese, Spanish, French and German.
We think you’d also like:
Stop the EU-Mercosur trade deal
The EU is close to finalising a climate-wrecking trade deal with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – known collectively as Mercosur. But there’s still time to stop it.
