Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts

2012/10/10

I support the Indigenous Cause

Copyright © Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.
Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.

The model of development that Brazil was rising in the last years could have some strong positive points, but some issues related with the environment, sustainability, violence and disrespect of the Indigenous and Traditional Communities rights (as the Quilombolas - historic afro-brazilian communities) are just going worst.

Last July and August I traveled about 4000km on the Brazilian east boarder, between Bahia' South state and the North of Espírito Santo, visiting many Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities (Quilombolas). I was shooting for a research that will be published soon. The main picture is really bad. I also met and interviewed anthropologists, professors at universities and researchers, and what I've seen is disappointment when not revolt.
A meeting formed by a large national group of anthropologists to write a collective manifest for the government was recent planned to happen in Florianópolis. I'll updated about.

You've probably heard about Belo Monte Dam and other projects in the Amazon area, troubles with deforestation, monoculture, and lands issues in the country. The Brazilian Association of Judges for Democracy (www.ajd.org.br) released a campaign named "I Support the Indigenous Cause" and are asking for signatures.

I support the Indigenous Cause
Against the PEC 215 (proposed constitutional amendment)
Demarcation of the Indigenous Lands
Urgency in Court Decisions

There are more detailed information rolling the bar on this link.
I Support the Indigenous Cause
Check the link for other languages:
Português / Español / Français / Italiano / English

If you agree, you can sign the petition that will be sent to the Supreme Court,
the President of the Republic, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Please, share the campaign with your contacts.

________________________

Eu Apoio a Causa Indígena

Photo: > Kayapó women were singing and dancing their traditions during the Indigenous National Festival, 2012. Bertioga, SP, Brazil.

2010/10/17

Out My Window - interative 360º documentary!

Out My Window is the first major global of HIGHRISE super cool multi-media collaborative documentary experiment at the National Film Board of Canada, directed by Katerina Cizek.
And I'm in!

Highrise is a project about the human experience in vertical suburbs, "exploring the state of our urban planet told by people who look out on the world from highrise windows... residents who harness the human spirit — and the power of the community...". These concepts approximated one of their editors, Heather Frise, to my documentary work at Prestes Maia Occupation (at São Paulo, Brazil), that was showed at this blog (and Flickr).

I contributed with some of my Archival Photos, images I took at the occupation during 2005 to 2007, that are showed on the "Neighbours" and "Highrise Squat", both pieces of Ivaneti's story. Sadly, I was just arriving in China (2009) when they first contacted me asking to make the records and new photos for Ivaneti's story, but couldn't follow them. Another photographer in São Paulo, Julio Bittencourt, that also worked at the P. Maia Occupation and knew the people did it, and his images looks so great!

The project worth a visit! Check it here.
Loved!

2010/08/09

International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

Take a moment to participate in the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples.
Send a letter to the White House in support of the United States endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
See this link from the Indian Law Resource Center.

Endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

> photo: Xavante People, at the Indigenous National Festival.

2010/08/02

yanomami ritual

For the Yanomami, urihi, the forest-land, is not a mere inert space for economic exploration (of what we call 'nature'). It is a living entity, part of a complex cosmological dynamic of exchanges between humans and non-humans. As such, it today finds itself threatened by the reckless predation of whites. In the view of their leader:

"The forest-land will only die if it is destroyed by whites. Then, the creeks will disappear, the land will crumble, the trees will dry and the stones of the mountains will shatter under the heat. The xapiripë spirits who live in the mountain ranges and play in the forest will eventually flee. Their fathers, the shamans, will not be able to summon them to protect us. The forest-land will become dry and empty. The shamans will no longer be able to deter the smoke-epidemics and the malefic beings who make us ill. And so everyone will die."

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami

Information by: ISA
>> photo of Yanomami shamans at the Indigenous National Festival, Bertioga, Brazil.

Please sign the letter to the Brazilian Senate and help.
They still need many signatures:
Rainforest Foundation / petition

_________

Saiba mais e participe assinando no link abaixo:
Instituto Socioambiental: Saúde Indígena

2010/07/29

yanomami alert

"Healthcare programs for indigenous peoples in Brazil are overseen by a federal agency, called FUNASA, under the Ministry of Health. In Northern Brazil, the Yanomami have denounced an alarming increase in malaria cases, exacerbated by illegal gold mining. Currently, medical assistance is not getting to the communities because of bureaucratic hurdles around the approval of airstrips in the Yanomami Area – something that has never been a problem either there or elsewhere. Indeed, many of the scandals involving FUNASA have taken place within the Yanomami health program. In the Javari Valley, a vast indigenous area in the western Amazon, hepatitis and malaria epidemics are ravaging the Kanamari, Matis, Marubo Tsohom-dyapa, and Korubo, as well as isolated groups that live in the region. "

For these and other reasons, indigenous organizations, organizations on human rights, racial equality and policies for women are mobilizing for what the Senate does not change the Bill of Conversion and vote before the 4th of August, when expiry of the term MP 483.

We hope that through a new, independent government office, indigenous healthcare will receive the attention it deserves.

Please sign the letter to the Brazilian Senate

Learn more and participate by sending the signing the petition at the link!
We need a lot of signatures and we have only four days.
Thank you!

http://www.change.org/rainforest_foundation/petitions/view/indigenous_healthcare_under_threat_in_brazil

>> photo of Yanomami people at the Indigenous National Festival, Bertioga, Brazil.

2009/06/12

mourning chant to Peru

Copyright © Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.
Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.

Image: Ashaninka man watching fireworks at the Indigenous National Party, at Bertioga.

A week ago (June, 5), many people have died in clashes in Peru between the security forces and indigenous people in the Amazon region. Those killed included tribesmen and policemen. The violence took place as security forces tried to end a road blockade, a highway near the town of Bagua.
Peru is witnessing violent clashes between indigenous groups desperately trying to protect the Amazon and the government, who has pushed through legislation allowing intensive mining, logging and large scale farming in the rainforest.
If government and extractive industries have their way, the Peruvian rainforest and its people will suffer massive devastation.

More info about , here:
Laws criticized by Peru's indigenous groups

Sign the urgent petition below (from AVAAZ.org)
and support the courageous struggle of the indigenous peoples to protect the Amazon — a prominent and well respected Latin American politician will deliver it to President Alan Garcia on our behalf.

English: Protect Indigenous Rights - Save the Amazon

Português: Proteja os direitos indígenas e a Amazônia

Espanol: ¡Por los derechos indígenas y la Amazonia!

Also available in other languages, please check the links.

2008/12/19

the cycle

Many mothers and grandparents of young people who were sexually exploited share a history in common: rear children and grandchildren who never knew their own father.
At BR-163, several cities were born of goldmines and activities that attracted outsiders, temporary workers with no local ties. It is a cycle that repeats itself.

Young girls become pregnant from men that never return. The children are reared without a family structure, and are often abandoned with grandparents or sold to networks operating in other states or countries.

Many of the children sexually exploited in the region are sons and daughters of this vicious cycle.

Check out my website, the BR-163 Highway's gallerie, for more images and information.

2008/12/18

young victim

At BR-163, the young girl was hesitant to report how, as to the age of 15, after being sexually exploited by a year, she managed to escape by the back window from a brothel, with 8 months pregnant, rescued by her own mother.

Gender and race are themselves aspects structuring the logic of the market for sex.
Projects already implemented show that the vast majority of victims of sexual exploitation, tourism and trafficking are the female, black, mulatto and mestizo.

A former authoritarian and sexist culture still existing in the Brazilian society creates inequality in the relationship between gender and promotes an image of women as mere sexual object, subject to be purchased or used. The crystallization of this strengthen the concept of a female body offered as a supply, something natural - for both adults as for children and adolescents.

2008/11/18

consuME

Copyright © Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.
Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.

During a research about the sexual commercial exploitation of children and adolescents on Brazilian roadways , this set of images was born as a perpendicular set from my documentation of the issue.
Those images, old billboards around the BR-163 Highway, were always calling me, sending me subtle messages, like whispers that I couldn't silence.

According the Brazilian ANDI's documents (Childhood and Adolescence Rights News Agency Network), the consumerist pressure exerted by the media, mainly by the advertising industry, impose patterns of consumer behavior often inaccessible to a large population, and especially the children and youth. The search for such patterns represent in many cases one of the factors for approval among children and adolescents and networks of sexual exploitation.

2008/11/07

voiceless

Many rural households are affected by the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents on the Brazilian roads. Most times, they are sons and daughters of peasants who migrate from rural areas, and end up being exploited on the highways.

It is a portion of the population socially vulnerable, voiceless and without access to basic rights of citizenship. At the root of the problem are poverty and social exclusion: unemployment, malnutrition and hunger, the destruction of the family, the poorly educated family, and children and teenagers out of school.

The networks that take advantage of activity, linked to pornography, sex tourism and child sexual exploitation, is usually organized within the country, in cities with 5 thousand and 100 thousand inhabitants.

2008/11/03

vulnerability

The service stations are the most vulnerable sites to sexual exploitation of children and adolescents on Brazilian roadways.

The conditions of the offered services at these places reflect the very bad situation of the drive truckers, and also a silent complicity in relation to sexual exploitation.

Indirectly, the owners of service stations benefit it as a source of income for their business.

2008/10/28

clients

Drive truckers are the most frequently clients of the children and teenagers living
in sexual commercial exploitation situation at the Brazilian roads.
Responsible for transporting more than 60% of all freight moved in the country, these professionals spend most of their life in the driver's seat of the truck.

According a large national research developed by Childhood - Brasil with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, drive-truckers consider themselves marginalized, eat and sleep poorly and stop at places with lack of infrastructure.
More than a third of them admitted having participated directly in a situation of sexual exploitation of child or adolescent, often with no clear idea of what this means.

Check out my website, the BR-163 Highway's gallerie, for more images and information.

2008/07/22

Prestes Maia | Opening in Los Angeles August 9th

Solo Exhibition
Prestes Maia:
Opening August 9 6pm to 8pm

August 9 to October 3 2008

Alegria Gallery
2737 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323.454.4200
9to5 MF

A Diary of Exclusion

The Alegria Gallery, from Art and Shelter, will be exhibiting a group of photographs from the Prestes Maia essay. These images are fragments of a visual diary that I have been keeping at the Prestes Maia occupation at the heart of the city of Sao Paulo, during almost three years (2005 to 2007).
The site was considered the largest vertical occupation in Latin America. The building was an old textile factory abandoned more than 20 years ago, and the owners owe millions in taxes to the municipal government. Some 2.000 people were living there, members of the Downtown Homeless Movement, which is led by 10 women from various occupied sites in the city. The groups, well organized and articulated are formed by thousands of people who formerly lived on the street, in squares or under bridges and overpasses. Like an army without shelter, they founded the Homeless Movement not only as a way to struggle for the right to housing, but to restore their own dignity, unraveled by lack of care and social segregation.

There is tremendous prejudice in Brazil against the homeless, who are often accused of being "rabble rousers" and "invaders" of empty and abandoned buildings.There are more than 400 sealed or under utilized buildings in downtown Sao Paulo. It is in these locations that the homeless want to live. Nevertheless, in recent years, "urban revitalization" projects have given emphasis to raising real estate values, and there is no room for the homeless. They are evicted towards the periphery or sub-human life in cortiços – precarious urban dwellings with many residents in tiny spaces. These revitalization projects sponsored by the city government and private companies (pressure of property speculation) do not give priority to reducing inequalities, but to exclusion, a social apartheid, which often includes violent actions from shock troops, security forces and private security.
These images seek to show that the homeless are honorable people seeking the inalienable right to a dignified life.

Prestes Maia Occupation now
After almost 5 years of occupation, constants suspensions of evictions, national and international mobilizations, in May 2007, a meeting joined leaders from federal, state and municipal sphere, giving a new direction for the Prestes Maia families. After negotiations, a progressive and pacific withdrawal happened and the occupation was closed.
Many had moved to other buildings, small apartments at city's downtown with a provisory support of the federal government, and are still waiting the promise of the negotiation: reform and rent for fair values social habitations for them . Other group of families accepted the offer to move out of downtown, to live in the periphery of the city. Some other families just moved to other occupations from the Homeless Movement in the city, and continue fighting.
Since July, 2007, the Prestes Maia building is still closed, sealed with concrete blocks.

These photos are fragments of this history of S o Paulo society, where I was born. They are not only testimonies, but also elements of communication that I hope can raise awareness and promote the approximation of social classes. They strive to contribute to the transformation of urban space into a location that does not segregate, but to the contrary, unites people around a common good.

2007/09/09

let me be

the future

A Kayapó child , that lives on South Pará State and Mato Grosso State of Brazil.

They were about 7.096 (in 2003). Sadly, the Enawene Nawe People are not so lucky, their population is about only 450 today, and they are needing an urgent attention.

>> Picture of the Indigenous National Festival, 2006, at Bertioga city. (slide-show link)

These other images were made at Pará state in December 2006,
while I was visiting the Health and Happiness Project at Amazonia. (slide-show link)

As usual, there are a lot of human-rights and environmental troubles happening in all the Amazon area. These are becoming worst because of the development shock between different interests sides. In one hand the soy and sugar cane's producers who want the land for the plantations, beside the cattle producers. They believe they are the land's owners and they don't accept the indigenous land's rights (some of them believe to be the owners of the indigenous people too, as you can see at this video that I blogged here).

On the other hand are environmental, health, labor organizations who fights for the forest conservation and basic rights, beside the indigenous people (with their secular relation with these lands, real owners, and for who the future and survive will depend only of their recognition and protection).

What seems hard, and selfish, to those producers understand is that the survive of all of us (indigenous or not) will depend of the protection of these lands, water and forests. It's the old game of a development without sustainability, and they are just repeating the models that our modern life and irresponsible extravagant consume creates.
It's the game of money X life.

Copyright © Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.

2007/09/06

Brazilian Indigenous reality beside the soy producers

To help the Enawene Nawe People, you can sign this letter to the brazilian government here:
http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/enawenenawe

2007/08/13

fragile shield

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

2007/07/16

stepmother girl

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.

2007/06/14

"pacification"

"pacification", originally uploaded by Tatiana Cardeal.

During the Rikbaktsa “pacification” and soon after it, influenza, chickenpox and smallpox epidemics decimated 75% of a population, which was estimated in some 1.300 people at the time of contact. As a consequence, the Rikbaktsa lost most of their lands, and the majority of their small children were taken from the villages to be raised at the Utiariti Jesuit Boarding School, almost 200 kilometers from their homeland. There, the little Rikbaktsa were raised along with children of other indigenous groups also contacted by the missionaries. The surviving adults were gradually transferred from their original villages to larger ones, which were centralized under the Jesuit’s catechist administration.
:
In 1968, about 10% of the Rikbaktsa’s original territory were demarcated as the Erikbaktsa Indigenous Land; from then on their children began to be taken back to their villages, and missionary action concentrated in that area.
Since the end of the 1970s the Rikbaktsa have struggled to regain control over part of their traditional lands. However, it is still occupied by miners, timber companies and colonization companies.

From Rikbaktsa Location and history, by Rinaldo S.V. Arruda,
at the Instituto Sócio Ambiental.

> VII Indigenous National Festival, at Bertioga city.

Copyright © 2007 Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.
Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.

2007/05/21

Good bye

Winds of changes
a gate will open
we navigated in dreams
and expectations

every place
must bring enchants for the eyes
and touch the heart

dear Prestes Maia
symbol of many fights
and knowledge
we brought your name for the world
but it will remain in our hearts

there is a giant bird
that underneath of its wings
received us

here's the life's mirror
It's time to leave
good bye, dear Prestes Maia
we must leave you

the doors are closing
they cease the applauses
but it will be forever
kept in our memory.

Poem by Roberta Maria da Conceição,
who became a nice friend,
always opening her wings and home to receive me
at the Prestes Maia occupation.

2007/05/17

the last days

the last days, originally uploaded by Tatiana Cardeal.

I've been visiting the Prestes Maia occupation these last weeks, to see how things are changing and give some pictures to the people. The progressive and pacific withdrawal of the families had started, and many had moved alredy to other buildings, at city's downtown. They will stay living in those new apartments for 6 months, with a government's fund help, until the "popular" (subsidized) buildings be finished to be inhabitable. Other group of families decided to move out of downtown, to a neighborhood that alredy have "popular" apartments, with the same government support.

Here is João, son of Severino and Roberta, still at his Prestes Maia's home during the lunch. They are going to stay until the last family leaves. They care about the Prestes Maia's library, and they have agreed that the library will be last thing to be moved out of the occupation. For where?
Well, this have been a theme of strong discussion between them,
but it's probably going to another occupation. Let's see.

They have asked to say that they are really thankful for all your support, all the faxes and letters you sent, and this really made a big difference here.