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Brazil's indigenous tribes are rapidly losing their once-plentiful hunting grounds and streams rich with fish to farmers and ranchers.
Corrego Grande, Brazil - At one time, Jose Aogua's ancestors could gaze out to the distant horizon, across miles of verdant savanna, and still not see the limit of their land. The hunt was plentiful and the rivers stocked with fish, so much so that Aogua's Bororo tribe developed elaborate religious rituals to celebrate nature's bounty.
Then the Portuguese frontiersmen came on horseback to battle Indian tribes and lay claim to ever-larger chunks of their historic lands. Now the interlopers arrive on tractors and combines, their relentless advance threatening the Bororo and other indigenous peoples of Brazil.
An agricultural explosion is underway in this mammoth country, transforming the world's ninth-largest economy into a farming, logging and ranching powerhouse able to compete with the U.S. and Europe in the production of everything from beef to orange juice.
But the rapid expansion is exacting an anthropological toll not unlike that of the American push west during the 19th century. Land is being cleared and cultivated at a galloping rate, especially for soy, Brazil's new blockbuster crop. As a result, native peoples have been squeezed onto tiny reservations where their customs and traditions are in danger of dying from obsolescence or environmental destruction.
"The indigenous areas are islands surrounded by soy and ranching," said Mario Bordignon, a historian and advocate for the indigenous. "They used to be nomads, but now they have nowhere to roam."
In May, the plight of Brazil's Indians garnered worldwide attention when loggers encroached on a small, previously uncontacted tribe on the edge of the Amazon rain forest. The judge who had opened the area to loggers hastily reversed course following an outcry by Brazilian officials and international activists, who warned that the isolated community could face annihilation.
The tribe lives on the northern fringe of Mato Grosso state, which also happens to be the engine of Brazil's spectacular growth as an agribusiness giant over the last several years.
A vast and ecologically diverse area in the heart of the South American continent, Mato Grosso boasts rain forest to the north and the world's largest wetland, the Pantanal, in the south, home to hundreds of rare animal species. In between lies the fertile savanna coveted by farmers and ranchers.
Their interests, however, have inevitably collided with those of many of the three dozen indigenous tribes scattered across the state and also with environmentalists. Almost half of the deforestation last year in the Brazilian Amazon occurred here in Mato Grosso, as loggers moved in to harvest prime woods, with farmers and ranchers hard on their heels.
The speed and thoroughness of land-clearing in Mato Grosso, Brazil's top soy-producing state, have caught many of the native peoples by surprise.
"They're alarmed because the white men chop down everything," Bordignon said. "They feel that the white men are worse than animals because they destroy everything."
Government restraints on agricultural expansion at the expense of the environment have been negligible or relatively unenforced, which may not be surprising given that the governor of Mato Grosso, Blairo Maggi, heads the Maggi Group, the world's largest soybean producer, which grossed $600 million last year.
In light of the new deforestation figures, Maggi said last month that he would propose a three-year moratorium on development in his state. But critics are skeptical of a man once quoted as saying, "To me, a 40% increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here."
Jose Carlos Dias, the governor's communications secretary, insisted that Maggi's administration fully upheld the laws restricting development in such areas.
"Fourteen percent of Mato Grosso is indigenous land and is occupied by Indians," he said. "The state government does not interfere in the lives of the indigenous. The government of Mato Grosso is in full compliance with the law."
Aogua, a Bororo elder here in the village of Corrego Grande, is unimpressed by such assurances.
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