Watch the rhetoric and lies

A horrible and yet all to common story out of the Amazon last week. After being convicted and sentenced to 30 years for ordering the assassination of Nun, Missionary and environmentalist Dororthy Stang, the farmer Vitalmiro Moura was acquitted on appeal. What most point to as further proof to the long and blatant tradition of impunity enjoyed by the wealthy in Brazil, this article by the Associated press speaks to another issue that has also long plagued the Amazon region but is usually ignored by the international community. Regretfully it is something that is happening in other parts of the world, too.

Environmentalists in the Amazon region have long been accused of working for foreign governments to usurp control of the Amazon from Brazil. We’re demonized here as a tactic to deflect attention from the activies of thieves and their illegal and destruction opeartions. And what better way to obfuscate the situation in the hearts of most citizens here than to create a foreign threat? In Brazil, many have been forced to believe that environmentalists wish to steal the Amazon for richer countries to plunder. That’s right. I work with non governmental organizations that were created by the U.N or the United States, or Europe (depending on the version of the myth), with the specific task of claiming ownership over 6 million square kilometers of tropical forest, so that Bush et.al can watch their financial portfolios grow. Sound absurd? Of course it is.

It is just as absurd as what many in North America believe in regards to the issue of global warming. At first it was argued that Environmentalists are little communist foot-soldiers looking to steal the developed world’s wealth and redistribute it to poorer nations - the tool to do so would be the Kyoto Protocol. More recently, the conspiracy focuses on an elaborate get rich scheme concocted by the one man who couldn´t manage to get elected President against a doornob in 2000. You see some similarities with these and the conspiracies in Brazil? Most will. Your more entrenched and scholastically challenged right wing rogues will be left scratching their heads.

I raise this not only because I attended Dorothy’s memorial in 2006, and I have worked in this region (under some of the most stressful conditions) for over 10 years, and that I’m sincerely
worried about those who I know that continue with great efforts in the Amazon; I bring this up because this idea of lying to demonize environmentalists to either protect the status quo or two win cheap political shots is not only incredibly stupid, but it can prove deadly. The debate in north America is getting uglier and more caustic. I’ve seen Juliano Fatino call peaceful environmentalists “terrorists”; the blogosphere is filled with conservative generated hate and conspiracies aimed at painting the environmental movement as “anti-human”, “unpatriotic” and DANGEROUS. However, the danger is not in what environmentalists do, but what can come when some pro-gun nutjob believes environmentalists are a threat to his nation and personal liberties.