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Many of the fires burn out of control for days resulting in reckless loss. In some parts of the country, the air is filled with so much smoke that the days are shrouded in a burning season of twilight. With the oldest river, largest contiguous rainforest and largest wetlands on the earth, Brazil is home for a great flowering of time-rich biodiversity, much of it still undiscovered and losing ground at an unprecedented rate. Brazil has been raided for its ample resources since the Portuguese worked it with slave labor in the sixteenth century and the country's heartbreaking history of colonization continues today with the tragic loss of natural lands and native cultures to global predation.
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But in Goiás state, in the wild west of central Brazil, seventeen families are proving that living with the fertile savannah can produce more jobs per acre than monoculture agribusiness or cattle ranching, and that sustainable development can exist hand in hand with preservation of the natural environment. In 1996, AGROTEC (Small Farmers Agroecological Technology Center) was born with the purpose of producing herbal medicines and other natural products for market while preserving and restoring the complex of ecosystems that enrich this part of the country. By stewarding their "extractive reserve" with both modern and traditional practices, the collective produces organic fruits and nuts, oils and handicrafts. The 300 acre reserve is also engaged in River Turtle and other endangered species restoration and is working with the Xavante Indians of central Brazil to help replenish game stocks for their traditional hunting practices. The inspiration behind the project is Vanderlei de Castro, a charismatic Renaissance Man whose dream of saving what remains of the tropical savannah of central Brazil has become a model for the continent.
Two years ago, The Cultural Conservancy and the Institute for Deep Ecology were approached by Amalia Souza, a Brazilian cultural activist who came to us with the idea of organizing a cultural exchange with the Xavante. Amalia was collaborating with the Institute for the Development of Indigenous Traditions (IDETI), a non-governmental organization concerned with the protection of indigenous culture and traditional arts. IDETI works the Xavante Indians of central Brazil whose lands have been under attack from an encroaching agricultural frontier, deforestation and the proposal for an industrial waterway, or Hidrovía, that would destroy their river systems and way of life. The Cultural Conservancy is a fifteen-year-old non-profit organization that assists indigenous peoples in the protection and revitalization of traditional story, song, language and lands. The Institute for Deep Ecology is an educational organization that promotes a sacred relationship with the Earth and a biocentric view of living systems that the Xavante found to be akin to their own. The Xavante were reaching out to the international community by inviting a delegation of activists to visit their land for a cultural exchange. I was joined by Aryeh Shell from Art and Revolution and Levana Saxon from the Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Youth Alliance (INIYA) on a delegation to meet with the Xavante. A visit to AGROTEC introduced us to the flora and fauna of the savannah and provided a working example of the nexus of modern ecological techniques and indigenous knowledge and practices.
Diorama is a small rural town in Brazil's agricultural heartland. Riding on buses for days toward our destination we passed mile after mile of fields cleared for the next crop of soybean or for cattle pasture. We witnessed the heart-rendering spectacle of the land burned, stripped and tilled for as far and the eye could see. At the crowded bus stations the restaurants offered a meaty faire. Ample portions of churrasco, or barbequed cow, pig, lamb and chicken are served with manioc root, banana, rice and yams. Cowboys with broad brimmed hats swagger into the cafés after spending the day herding cattle or driving tractors toward the horizon. For the last two hundred years, cattle have been a part of the economy and culture of the south central part of the country, but in the last fifty years, industrial farming and ranching, mostly for export, are replacing the natural ecosystems that are home to one of the world's hotspots of biological diversity.
Brazil is the world's second largest beef producer with a national herd of about 170 million cows in over 2 million ranches occupying nearly 60% of the country's interior. The effect of cattle grazing on the landscape varies according to density, but much of Brazil has been severely affected by decades of over-grazing. Large-scale cattle ranching has resulted in compaction of the soil, elimination of native species, introduction of noxious weeds, and disruption of hydrologic systems restricting surface flow and infiltration of water into the aquifers. Giant soybean companies, owned and operated by American-based multi-national corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Archer Daniel Midlands, have created a dramatic shift in land use, the introduction of massive amounts of herbicides and pesticides, large-scale dehydration, a loss of local employment and an even greater concentration of land ownership in a country that has the world's greatest discrepancy between the rich and the poor. Global industrial agribusiness, as practiced today in Brazil and other developing countries, renders the land progressively impoverished with each crop. These corporations, in collusion with government officials, lease the land for pennies on the acre and then move onto other terrain when the yields diminish leaving huge tracts of denuded and exhausted soil.
At the bus station, we were met by Vanderlei's wife, Solange. We piled our backpacks into the back of her car and drove out toward the reserve. We passed through a landscape dominated by herds of scrawny, tan-colored Brahman cows imported from India for their tolerance to draught. The ground was bare and parched and criss-crossed with cattle ruts. Off in the distance we could see a large patch of greenery where streams and rivers flow among a thicket of Strangler Fig vines and statuesque Buruti palm. Termite mounds dot the landscape creating islands of vegetation that serve as refuges during the wet season. The dense riverine jungle fans out into palm forests, woodland scrub and grasslands. Brazil's tropical savannah, or cerrado, is a mosaic of ecosystems supporting an astonishing diversity of life covering about a quarter of the landmass of the country. The cerrado is home to over 420 species of trees, 10,000 species of plants and 800 species of birds. There can be as many as 150 plant species in a single acre compared to a dozen species found in the same area of forest in the Pacific Northwest. The cerrado is both one of the most productive and most threatened of the planet's ecosystems, with only 3% under any kind of legal protection. It is estimated that 45% of Brazil's savannah has been completely converted to other uses and another 40% has been seriously degraded. The effects of such massive devastation have global implications since the cerrado plays an important role in carbon sequestration countering the effects of global warming. The soil nutrient depletion and restricted water infiltration associated with human activities in the region are on the increase. The people of rural Brazil are impoverished along with the soil. It is estimated that 40% of the population of Brazil, a country numbering over 170 million, are below the poverty level with insufficient food, clean water, housing, employment and health care. The shacks of landless peasants who have been prohibited from working the soil line the highways in a sad testimony against global enterprise.
The reserve is a welcome sight after two days of traveling through a landscape relentlessly mediated by the heavy human hand. Bats swarm as the sun begins to set and a flock of red and green parrots fly overhead screeching and flapping rapidly in determined flight. Solange points to the distance as she announces proudly, "There's home! Now you will get to see the real cerrado."
Arrival at the reserve at night was a remarkable sensory experience. Cicadas scream with complex harmonies, geckos make sounds like wild cats, haunting bird calls drift through the forest, tropical flowers open their nectarines to night pollinators, and a sudden rain releases fragrant oils to the warm night air. AGROTEC has built a dormitory that accommodates visits from students, scientists, dignitaries, local farmers, ranchers and their families. We sat out on the veranda of the main house and watched a cane toad snap up hundreds of winged termites with single-minded purpose. Magic lanterns flew in and out of the surrounding trees. Vanderlei brought a basket of artifacts to illustrate his stories. He showed us the scaled armor of an Armadillo, the skull of a Jaguar with its powerful jaws and severe canines and the mummified stomach of a Rhea full of partially digested seeds, along with other assorted goodies.
For millennia, the indigenous people of the savannah occupied the same ecological niche as the Jaguar as a top carnivore. They hunted Tapir, Peccary, Capybara, Boar and other prey including the Greater Rhea, an ostrich-like terrestrial bird. They harvested sustainably within a large range and dressed the kill where they found it on nomadic migrations. The Rhea eats an estimated 50 to 60 different seeds every two hours and processes them through their digestive system in a way that readies the seeds for germination. In this way, the bird helps to maintain the biological diversity of the plant life. After taking their game, indigenous human hunters, as well as the Jaguar, bury the stomach in the leaf litter of the forest floor, making an essential contribution to the continued preservation and distribution of the flora. Vanderlei works with Xavante elders who teach the traditional methods of hunting and practice the skills and ceremony that revitalize their natural resources. AGROTEC has a fauna restoration program that generates income for the collective and helps to provide native animals for use by the Xavante. With 80% of the reserve dedicated to preservation, populations of Capybara (the world's largest rodent), Peccary, Boar and River Turtle are provided with habitat and a supplement of food until they are ready for re-introduction. The animals contribute to the restoration of plant species in the preserve through dissemination and sowing of fruits and seeds, and natural predation keeps their populations healthy.
The Xavante Indians live on their traditional lands in the rich natural landscape of the Mato Grosso area of central Brazil. These native people still practice many of their ancient traditions and live on reservations representing a fraction of their original territory. Modern technological society is threatening the Xavante's way of life with the dangers of environmental degradation and cultural extinction. The Xavante and fifteen other tribes in the Araguaia/Tocantins river basin are facing the construction of a series of dams on their life-sustaining rivers and a 1,200-mile dredged industrial waterway that would facilitate rampant resource extraction in one of world's richest sanctuaries of biological diversity. The push behind the Hidrovía project are soybean conglomerates who plan to reach far into the interior of Brazil to extract timber, iron ore and gold and clear hundreds of thousands of acres of tropical savannah to grow soybean for export.
With assistance from Catherine Powell of the Data Center, we provided the Xavante with detailed information about the corporations behind the Hidrovía project including criminal activities that have resulted in multi-million dollar fines and incarceration, convictions and investigations into bribery, influence-pedaling, price-fixing, environmental destruction, mistreatment of employees and other illegal activities. These companies engage in industrial farming practices that lead to diminishing returns resulting in what has been termed as "suicide economics."
The Xavante people have been in contact with the modern Western society for only 50 years and consciously maintain their culture and traditions in an area surrounded by rapidly expanding agricultural enterprises, mining and timber extraction. The Xavante must hunt their traditional game in order to dream. It is through their dreaming that they communicate with their ancestors and thereby maintain cultural continuity over time. One of the five Xavante villages located at the Rio das Mortes Reservation is working with AGROTEC to replenish stocks of wild animals and teach sustainable hunting and gathering practices using a combination of traditional knowledge and modern ecological perspectives. The Xavante were once nomadic over a large range and are now confined to a limited land base burdened by a growing population. In order to survive in a traditional way, they must combine native practices with techniques that help to restore their natural resources.
The next day, Vanderlei and Lindomar, another member of the collective, took us on a tour of the reserve. Our guides introduced us to hundreds of plants within a short walk of the main house. We were impressed by the extent of their knowledge as they related each plant's use and characteristics, food and medicinal value and preparations. They showed us the feeding areas and pens where the Peccary and Boar are eventually captured for transport. As we walked slowly through the scrub forest, Lindo Mar quietly pointed through the crowded vegetation to a place where a moment later, a pack of wild boar thundered through the underbrush. They told us that the best thing to do when confronted with these sharp-tusked animals is to climb the nearest tree. As we approached the turtle ponds, hundreds of the sunning creatures dove for the water. AGROTEC restores as many of as 500 turtles every three years to the Araguaia River where siltation from human activity and over-harvesting have endangered the species.
In a clearing in the forest, we visited AGROTEC's phytotherapeutic laboratory where organically grown plants are processed into essential oils and medicines. The laboratory rooms are spotless and the extraction and processing machinery were custom designed by Vanderlei and German pharmacists Detleif Facklam and Torsten Mendel. Medicinal plants native to the region are cultivated in their natural habitat. Exotic species, including plants of European, North American and African origin are grown in a garden plot reclaimed from cow pasture. Funding and support for the enterprise is provided by The Brazilian Biodiversity Foundation as well as federal, state and municipal governments. Every aspect of the preparation is carefully documented in order to qualify the medicines for national and international markets. But the process of introducing organically derived herbal medicines into the competitive pharmaceutical trade has been mired in bureaucracy and politics. Vanderlei showed us reams of records they have submitted in their on-going appeal for legitimacy. But AGROTEC's medicines are welcomed by local people, the municipal and state health clinics, and a growing number of, nurses, physicians and health centers throughout the country. Vanderlei's plan is to initiate a series of "green pharmacies," small laboratories using herbal medicines that respond to regional needs. These skills are taught to landless peasants gathering in the Brazilian agrarian reform resettlement areas. Our guides then took us on an exhausting walk through the jungle to a pile of boulders near the river where a Jaguar resides. We approached the den quietly and carefully as Lindomar showed us the places where the wild cat has scored deep marks on moss covered rocks and trees. All we found were the remains of a deer, its legs tangled in a leathery mass.
I was amazed by Vanderlei's knowledge of medicine, biochemistry, botany and pharmacology, European and Brazilian pharmacopoeia, restoration biology, farming, the native uses and preparations of plants, as well as the geology and ecology of the cerrado. He is an animated teacher who delights in what he can share. In the evening, after a meal of fresh boar and manioc, at Amalia's urging, Vanderlei brought out a set of videos from a series entitled "Decade of Destruction" that he helped to produce ten years ago. We watched the dramatic images of environmental destruction and political violence chronicled in the documentaries.
Vanderlei is the son of a small farmer who struggled for the rights to his own land. He studied psychology at the university but soon after graduation joined a team of British filmmakers who spent 10 years documenting the landless peasant movement and the rampant destruction of the Amazon. The films were banned in Brazil, but they brought international attention to a period of history that witnessed a reckless campaign of deforestation and a concerted effort by the government and large land owners to kidnap, rape, torture and murder peasants and their families attempting to work and live on unused land. The Brazilian government, infamous for corruption, awarded huge land grants to foreign and domestic investors who used only a portion of their holdings. One of the films covered a five year period of time following the efforts of Brazilian government agents to make contact with the Wai Wai people of the Amazon forest to prepare them for the invasion of their lands by the construction of a dam. The black and white images, old from age, are both fascinating and horrifying as we are given a rare and intimate picture of a forest people wasted by the advancing colonial flood. Mere contact with outsiders decimated whole villages that would become consumed by smallpox, measles and the common cold. The films document the complicity of public officials and fazenderos (ranchers) in attempts to crush the land reform movement. Vanderlei told the story of when his film crew were given a warning that a group of hired guns were coming for them. The cameraman was so drunk, they had to tie him to a donkey as they escaped just ahead of the killers. The film series exposed the injustices of the period and contributed to public support for land reform and the establishment of indigenous peoples' reserves.
We are dumbfounded by the films and I can see in Vanderlei's eyes a raft of painful memories rising to the surface. I felt a profound respect for his courage and dedication to human rights in a country where such activism results in incarceration or worse, and I recognize that the reserve is a healing practice for both his soul and his beloved cerrado. In the next moment, Vanderlei is drawing a map of the Xavante Reservation and the rivers that cross it. He shares with us his belief that the Xavante people, by practicing their traditional methods of land stewardship, will show the way for cultural survival and the preservation of endangered ecosystems. By reclaiming their traditional lands and by maintaining their culture and knowledge of the natural world around them, the Xavante can resist the tidal wave of cultural assimilation and environmental destruction.
At exactly seven o'clock in the evening, Vanderlei, his family and members of their community assemble to watch the national news on a television in the dining hall. There is much excitement in the room as presidential candidate Luis Ignacio da Silva, known as Lula, is interviewed by journalists. Lula is the radical leader of the Brazilian Workers Party. He has been a force on the Brazilian political scene for the last 25 years and has run for president three times. He has served at the forefront of the labor and social justice movements during the period of military dictatorships and has been jailed for his activism. Lula's opposition to hemispheric "free trade" pacts, support for regional cooperation and independence from economic globalization has put him at odds with the United States of America, major investment banks and financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. After decades of control by military dictatorships, organized crime and a string of powerful and corrupt federal governments, the Brazilian populace has been energized by Lula's ascendance. Now in office, the new government faces entrenched opposition from the Brazilian military, business elites and international monetary institutions that facilitate resource exploitation by a global cadre of corporations. But for people like Vanderlei de Castro and his collective of rural families, Lula's government offers an opening for sustainable projects rooted in the bountiful cerrado.
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