January 16, 2020

By Leonardo Benassatto

XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian indigenous tribes and rubber tappers joined forces on Wednesday to oppose steps by Brazilian far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that they say are destroying the Amazon forest they depend on.

Some 450 members of 47 tribes met for a second day to discuss how to resist Bolsonaro’s moves to weaken public agencies that are meant to protect the environment and native land rights. Bolsonaro has said tribes have too much land and he wants to open up the reservations to commercial mining and agriculture to develop the Amazon and lift indigenous people from poverty.

Kayapó chief Raoni Metuktire, who called the meeting in his village on the Xingu river, called on Brazil’s Congress to block the president’s policies.

“We are here to defend our land and to tell him to stop talking badly about us,” said Raoni, who became a global reference for his environmental campaigning in the 1980s with musician Sting at his side. He said he would never accept mining on his ancestral lands.

Among those attending the meeting was Angela Mendes, daughter of rubber tapper, trade union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes who was killed by a rancher in 1988 for his efforts to protect the rainforest.

“United we can resist. They have the power of the state, but we have the force of the waters, the flowers and ancestral land,” she said at a news conference.

The existence of non-indigenous extractivist communities that live off rubber tapping and selling the fruits of the forest is being endangered by deforestation, she warned.

Mendes struck an alliance with Sonia Guajajara, head on the APIB umbrella, Brazil’s largest organization of tribes.

“This is a very grave moment in our history. It looks like a war scenario,” Guajajara said, accusing Bolsonaro of serving the interests of Brazil’s powerful agribusiness and farming sectors that have advanced into the Amazon region.

The rise in violence against Brazil’s 850,000 indigenous people due to land conflicts with farmers and illegal mining and logging on reservations threaten the tribes’ future, she said.

Bolsonaro has vowed to integrate indigenous people into the Brazilian economy and society, an assimilation that Guajajara said was tantamount to the death of their cultures and languages.

Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, run by a police officer appointed by Bolsonaro, said the meeting in the Xingu was a “totally private event” that it could not support because it was not “in line” with government policy.

(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto; Wirting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Leslie Adler)

January 16, 2020

By Frank Jack Daniel and Gustavo Palencia

GUATEMALA CITY/TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Guatemala’s new president on Wednesday faced an early test of his ability to manage migration as a caravan of hundreds of people left Honduras for the United States, and said Mexico would halt its progress.

President Alejandro Giammattei inherited a contentious deal that his predecessor’s government struck with Washington designed to make migrants from Honduras and El Salvador seek asylum in Guatemala rather than the United States.

Giammattei met with Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard early on Wednesday, and later told reporters that Mexico was determined to halt the caravan’s advance.

“The Mexican government told us that they won’t let it pass,” said Giammattei, “that they will do everything in their powers to stop it from passing.”

Mexico’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Giammattei’s remarks.

Earlier, Ebrard said on Twitter that Mexico and Guatemala will hold bilateral talks on migration once the new Guatemalan government has become familiar with “the situation.”

In accordance with a freedom of movement agreement between northern Central America countries, Giammattei said he would allow the caravan to enter Guatemala provided its members had the required paperwork.

Still, tensions flared when a group of about 300 migrants approached the Guatemala border at Corinto from Honduras.

According to Honduran security ministry spokesman Jair Meza, Honduran police fired tear gas when a group of people tried to cross without passing through migration controls.

Some reached the Guatemalan side, where 15 people were detained by Guatemalan authorities and sent back, Meza said.

Giammattei, a conservative who has already discussed migration with top U.S. officials, is scheduled to speak by phone with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Giammattei has yet to detail how he will treat the U.S. migration agreement, instead focusing on economic development.

“Physical walls aren’t going to stop migration… the only things that stop migration are walls of prosperity,” Giammattei told Mexican broadcaster Televisa.

Before dawn, the caravan of several hundred people set off from San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, about 25 miles (40 km) from the Guatemala border.

“Here there’s no work, there’s nothing. That’s why we are fleeing to the United States,” a young man traveling with his wife and two children told Honduran television.

San Pedro Sula, one of Central America’s most violent cities, also was the departure point for a large caravan in 2018 that angered Trump, prompting him to press governments in the region to do more to contain migration.

Guatemala’s former President Jimmy Morales last July agreed with the U.S. government to implement measures aimed at reducing U.S. asylum claims from migrants fleeing Honduras and El Salvador, averting Trump’s threat of economic sanctions.

Giammattei said a top priority would be reviewing the text of migration agreements made with the United States.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel in Guatemala City, Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City and Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa; Editing by Bill Berkrot)