More images of a research about the sugarcane monoculture.
Sugar cane's workers, almost slave workers, which have been working for many years, payed only with bags of food.
Here are Rosangela and her mother Rosana,
at Engenho Meia-Légua, Cortez city, Pernambuco State.
September, 2004
After more than ten years living and working on a land, as sugar cane's workers, they were surprised, banished from their houses in the middle of the night, by helicopters and armed men. They lost everything.
They started to live at the borders of the roads, in encampments, waiting for a land and fighting for the Agrarian Reform.
Click here for more pictures of the Chico Mendes Encapment
Pastoral Commission of the Land (CPT),
Assentamento Chico Mendes I,
Ribeirão city, Pernambuco State, 2004.
Mr. Nature, very angry, with all the damage
we've been doing to mother earth.
A performance of an enviromental activist, protesting at the opening
march of the VI World Social Forum, at Caracas, Venezuela.
Four Guarani's girls were playing near the indigenous fair.
They were running and playing on the sand, as little birds.
I was surprised when one of them invited me with her eyes, to play. I couldn't say no.
I lose my afternoon there.
I won a life.
This one is Angela, the most dreamer and easy opened of the four.
The Guarani People live in many brazilian's states.
Population about 35.000, in 1998.
A small group of boys were playing near,
but not with the girl's group.
That boy, a Guarani child too, was curious about us.
I didn't realize at the first moment.
But when i looked at her i saw she looking at me,
with one eye open, exactly as a mirror.
That moment, she made my portrait too.
They were hummingbirds :)
Dedicated to my friend Gregory and all the Humminbird People.
Please, visit their amazing work on Children at Risk Foundation's blog .
Much of their land has been stolen from them. This crisis has driven over 300 Guarani, mainly adolescent to kill themselves.
The Guarani-Kaiowá in Brazil suffer particularly from this, and it has led to severe depression. Three hundred and twenty Guarani-Kaiowá committed suicide between 1986 and the beginning of 2000, the youngest being just 9 years old.
They are a deeply spiritual people, who believe they were the first people to be created by the 'great father', Ñande-Ru. For the Guarani the "terra sem mal", or 'land without evil', is the resting place of the soul after death. It is essential for the soul to arrive there so it can rest peacefully.
If you would like to take some action, please visit Survival site.
Those are Pará and Angela.
Pará was the smaller from the group and she didn't wanted to leave my hand when i went out. It was so touching for me.
We'll be friends for life. Sisters souls.
"I think of the conditions in which we live -Marta Silva, Guarani woman.
abject poverty, those little houses.
We have nothing to eat and yet our people still sing with such joy, with such hope, always in search of the land without evil ...
We Indians don't want money or riches.
Do you know what we want?
We just want enough land to live on how we like."
That which creates life everywhere,
this inner sence of continuity and love.
The "Dança da nenina-moça" or "Teenage-girl's dance"
is to celebrate this possibilitys.
Heritage and evolution.
A pride to look to our past and walk to the future.
For all the womem.
Hope we won't forget it.
The Nambikwara woman dancing their "teenage-girl's ritual"
They live on the Mato Grosso State's west and Rondônia State from Brazil.
Population about 998, in 1999.
My personal tribute to Claude Lévi-Strauss,
the anthropologist and also a great photographer.
You can see this Nambikwara chief in colors here.
