(Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples demand demarcation of their territories to give them legal rights over the land. Photo: courtesy Amazon Watch)
As people across the US rise up against systemic embedded racism, people are also rising up in Brazil, where the police kill an average of 17 people every day, with few consequences.
The racist and anti-poor policies of Bolsonaro—nicknamed Tropical Trump—have contributed to Brazil having the third highest rate of COVID deaths in the world, a rate rising so rapidly that Bolsonaro has stopped posting COVID data.
And in the Amazon rainforest, Bolsonaro’s racism against the Indigenous Peoples is enabling a rapid acceleration of logging in one of the Earth’s most important biodiversity and carbon sinks.
As the dry season begins, these logged areas will be burned for industrial GMO soy plantations to feed animals in the meat industry. As more forest is lost, the dry season intensifies, leading to more severe fires, in an endless loop.
The insatiable global market for meat and timber combined with rampant racism in Brazil is threatening the very existence of Amazon’s Indigenous Peoples.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
