‘Their vision needs to be shared’: the tiny shop championing the literature of the Amazon

The Guardian

Banca do Largo contains the world’s largest collection of titles by Amazonian writers – and its owner believes their Indigenous knowledge and voices should be more widely heard. (...)

By 2010, the shop stopped selling magazines and specialised exclusively in Amazonian literature.

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‘I spent my life searching for these treasures’ … Joaquim Melo, owner of the Banca do Largo bookshop, Manaus. Photograph: Mélissa Godin.

Over the past 12 years, Melo’s bookshop has become a key feature of Manaus society. (...)

The books on the shelves range from poetry collections celebrating the jungle’s forest and fauna to novels chronicling the experiences of Lebanese-Brazilian migrants. (...)

The first written text about the Amazon is believed to be a 1542 book which chronicles the day-to-day life of Spanish explorer Capitán Francisco de Orellana as he travelled through the Napo region in search of gold. A 1942 edition of the book is on display in Melo’s shop, but he is quick to mention that many explorers dismissed the way of life of Indigenous people. “As a result, the origins of Amazonian literature history as we know it are quite complicated from a cultural and political perspective.”

By the 19th century, Amazonian writers started emerging. In 1852, Lourenço da Silva Amazonas published Simá, a book that seeks to give value to the Amazon region and its inhabitants, placing it as a founding element of Brazil’s identity.

But the region’s literature really flourished in the 20th century, when writers such as novelist Milton Hatoum and poet Thiago de Mello began publishing. “Mello denounced the exploration of Indigenous land and the military dictatorship,” Melo says. (...)

Since then, a new generation of Indigenous authors have emerged. Writers including Ely Macuxi, Daniel Munruku and Ailton Krerak have changed the face of Amazonian literature. (...)

“Of course, there is a part of the Brazilian population that is interested in knowing ancestral and Indigenous knowledge,” he says. But the rise of the far right and fake news in Brazil means that people increasingly have prejudices about the Amazon and its inhabitants, Melo believes, ranging from racism towards Indigenous people to underestimating the seriousness of deforestation. (...)

Complete article

The real Amazon bookseller … shelves in the Banca do Largo bookshop, Manaus. Photograph: Mélissa Godin.

Tags: #brazil #brazilie #brasil #books #amazon #literature #manaus #bookshop #indigenous_people #rain_forest #racism #discrimination #deforestation #Francisco_de_Orellana #orellana #Lourenço_da_Silva_Amazonas #da_Silva_Amazonas #Simá #Milton_Hatoum #Thiago_de_Mello #de_mello #poetry #Ely_Macuxi #Macuxi #Daniel_Munruku #munruku #Ailton_Krerak #krerak

‘It felt like history itself’ – 48 protest photographs that changed the world

The Guardian

Protest can change everything. Which is why governments around the world want to suppress it. In a week when thousands in the US expressed their fury over Roe v Wade, we look back at some of the images that helped rewrite laws and change the way we think.

Governments tend to define democracy as narrowly as possible. The story they tell goes as follows: you vote; the majority party takes office; you leave it to govern on your behalf for the next four or five years. (...)

We have seen what happens if we leave politics to governments. Fairly elected or not, they will, without effective public pressure, abuse their power. (...)

Trust in governments destroys democracy, which survives only through constant challenge. It requires endless disruption of the cosy relationship between our representatives and powerful forces: the billionaire press, plutocrats, political donors, friends in high places. What challenge and disruption mean, above all, is protest. (...)

A government that cannot tolerate protest is a government that cannot tolerate democracy.

Such governments are becoming a global norm. In the UK, two policing bills in quick succession seek to shut down all effective forms of protest. (...)

In the US, state legislatures have been undermining the federal right to protest, empowering the police to use catch-all offences such as “trespass” or “disrupting the peace” to break up demonstrations and make arrests. (...) In Russia, a new law against “discrediting the armed forces” has been used to prosecute dissenters engaging in actions as mild as writing “no to war” in the snow. Similar draconian laws are being imposed by governments in many other nations.

Why do governments want to ban protest? Because it’s effective. Why do they want us to accept their narrow vision of democracy? Because it makes our power ineffective. (...)

The extraordinary people in these images understand this – from suffragettes picketing the White House in 1917 to Patsy Stevenson being manhandled by police at last year’s Sarah Everard vigil; from relatives of those killed at Amritsar in India in 1919 to those taking to the streets after George Floyd’s murder in the US.

Almost everything of importance is disintegrating fast: ecosystems, the health system, standards in public life, equality, human rights, terms of employment. (...) Business as usual is a threat to life on Earth. Disrupting it is the greatest civic duty of all. (...)

Complete article with photos

Tags: #protest #pictures #photographs #china #tiananmen #tank_man #abortion #abortion_rights #ireland #democracy #freedom_of_speech #strike_action #great_britain #police #policing_bill #us #united_states #right_to_protest #russia #george_floyd #sarah_everard #pussy_riot #india #amritsar #amritsar_massacre #civil_rights_movement #alabama #racism #discrimination #birmingham #martin_luther_king #mlk #gezi_park #turkey #barbara_kruger #poland #rosa_parks #Thich_Quang_Duc #vietnam #israel #gaza #occupied_territories #palestine #palestinians #Emma_Sulkowicz #rape_culture #march_on_washington #egypt #tahrir_square #mexico #may_day #black_power #olympic_games #march_on_montgomery #handmaids #euromaidan #kyiv #kiev #ukraine #stonewall #gay_rights #standing_rock #dakota_access_pipeline #native_americans #indigenous_people #thailand #rubber_duck_protest #japan #tokyo #vietnam_war_protest #vietnam_war #narita_airport #war_protest #south_africa #soweto #soweto_young_lions #apartheid #earth_day #czechoslovakia #prague #russian_tanks #Dubček #pakistan #Notabugsplat #sweden #Växjö #neo-nazi #neo_nazis #ocasio-cortez #tax_the_rich #colombia #bogota #LGBTQI+ #woolworth #whites_only #germany #hitler #holocaust #posner #lviv #prams #Jan_Rose_Kasmir #south_korea #hong_kong #umbrella_movement #sudan #Alaa_Salah #jamaica #royalty #republican_protest #Greta_Thunberg #climate_strike #sufragettes #Arlen_Siu #Sandinistas #nicaragua #black_muslims #police_violence

Amazon wild west: where drugs, fish and logging are big money but life is cheap

The Guardian

Illegal businesses form an interlocking web in the Brazilian remote region where Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were killed, threatening Indigenous communities and local ecology. (...)

Such are the contrasts in this underreported part of the Amazon rainforest where magnificent natural beauty has become a backdrop to increasing violence and impunity. It is the setting for a battle over access to resources that has intensified following the election of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2018.

Law enforcement officials say the Javari Valley, an area the size of Portugal and home to the world’s largest concentration of uncontacted Indigenous tribes, is now Brazil’s second largest drug trafficking route, where the interwoven illicit industries of fishing, logging and mining have proliferated over the past decade. (...)

With sweeping government cuts in the region – there has been no federal environmental agency [Ibama] base here since 2018 and just three, poorly resourced Indigenous protection agency [Funai] outposts – seizures have plummeted under the Bolsonaro administration, according to a report by Publica, a Brazilian investigative newsroom. According to internal Funai documents seen by the Guardian, the Funai outpost closest to where Pereira and Phillips were killed has come under fire seven times in the past two years. (...)

“Dom Phillips was not on an ‘adventure’. He was a war correspondent documenting a war.”

Saraiva argued that the Brazilian government has more than enough resources to end the crime surge here, citing his own experience combating illegal gold mining in the Yanomami Indigenous territory by using the army to target illegal infrastructure such as boats and equipment.

“But they [the Bolsonaro administration] are not doing it for lack of political will.” (...)

Traffickers have also begun recruiting younger Indigenous men and boys into the drugs operations themselves, said Tamakuri. Drawn in by payments of a few hundred dollars for months of work, promises of clothing and mobile phones, the recruits then face execution if they try to escape. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #brazil #brasil #brazilie #amazon #killings #dom_philips #bruno_pereira #chico_mendes #dorothy_stang #indigenous_people #mining #illegal_mining #logging #illegal_logging #cattle_farming #deforestation #rainforest #bolsonaro #jair_bolsonaro #marina_silva #impunity

Killing and outrage: little has changed in the Amazon after years of violence

The Guardian

(...) Before the world was outraged by the murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira, it was aghast at the killings of Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang.

Mendes was a rubber tapper and unionist murdered by ranchers in 1988 in the southern Amazon; 73-year-old Stang was a US nun assassinated in 2005 for standing up to illegal loggers on the other side of the rainforest. (...)

But for those hoping the recent murder of Phillips and Pereira will mark a turning point for the Amazon – some combination, say, of greater environmental protections, more oversight or broader rights for Brazil’s Indigenous communities – the killings of Mendes and Stang do not offer very comforting lessons. (...)

“We don’t believe that anything changes because of these cases,” said [Ronilson Costa, national coordinator of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a Catholic church organisation that monitors land conflicts]. “There is not less violence or fewer deaths and the numbers prove that.”

“The level of impunity is very high,” he added. “Areas such as Amazonia are always in conflict, there is something every week, whether it is a threat, an attack, a prison, and murder as well. I think the expansion and invasion of capital has generated more violence.”

According to CPT statistics, Stang was one of 39 people killed over land disputes in 2005. In the years since, more than 600 people have perished, an average of 38 each year. (...)

Only around 10 % of the cases recorded by the CPT come to trial and even then it often takes years of delays, appeals and retrials. (...)

Complete article

Brazilian ecologist Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American nun, were both shot dead. Composite: AFP/Getty images/Reuters.

Tags: #brazil #brasil #brazilie #amazon #killings #dom_philips #bruno_pereira #chico_mendes #dorothy_stang #indigenous_people #mining #illegal_mining #logging #illegal_logging #cattle_farming #deforestation #rainforest #bolsonaro #jair_bolsonaro #marina_silva #impunity