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First Contacts. Until the end of the 19th century,
the Yanomami only had contact with other neighboring indigenous
groups. In Brazil, the first direct encounters between
Yanomami groups and representatives of the local extractive
frontier (balata gum and piassava palm extractors, as
well as hunters), soldiers of the Frontiers Commission,
SPI workers and foreign travelers, took place in the decades
between 1910 and 1940. Between the 1940s and the middle
of the 1960s, the opening of some SPI posts and, above
all, various catholic and evangelical missions, established
the first points of permanent contact within their territory.
These posts comprised a network of poles of sedentarization,
a regular source of manufactured objects and some healthcare
assistance, but also very often a source of serious epidemical
outbreaks (measles, influenza and whooping cough).
The "development" phase.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the State’s development
projects began to submit the Yanomami to much more intense
forms of contact with the expanding regional economic
frontier, especially in the west of Roraima: roads,
colonization projects, farmsteads, sawmills, masons
and the first mineral prospectors. These contacts provoked
an epidemiological shock of great magnitude, causing
high demographic losses, a general deterioration in
health conditions and, in some areas, serious damage
to the social fabric.
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Perimeter road. The two main forms of contact
initially known to the Yanomami – first with
the extraction frontier and later with the missionary
frontier – coexisted until the start of the
1970s as a dominant conjunction of forces within
their territory. However, the 1970s were marked
(especially in Roraima) by the implementation of
development projects under the aegis of the ‘National
Integration Plan’ launched by the military |
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governments during the period. This basically involved
the opening of a section of the Northern Perimeter road
(1973-76) and public colonization programs (1978-79) which
invaded the southeast of Yanomami lands. During this same
period, the RADAM Amazonian Resources Survey Project (1975)
detected the existence of important mineral ore deposits
in the region. The publicity given to the mineralogical
potential of the Yanomami territory unleashed an gradual
invasion of propsectors, which became worse at the end
of the 1980s and from 1987 onwards took the form of a
full-scale gold rush.
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The gold rush. Over a hundred clandestine
extraction tracks were opened up on the upper
course of the main affluents of the Rio Branco
between 1987 and 1990. The number of prospectors
in the Yanomami area of Roraima was therefore
estimated between 30,000 and 40,000, about five
times the indigenous population residing there.
Although the intensity of this gold rush had diminished
considerably by the start of the 1990s, still
today pockets of prospectors stubbornly
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continue on Yanomami lands, from where they spread
violence and serious health and social problems.
Future threats?. By the end of the 1980s,
the expanding wave of mineral extraction had tended
to supplant the previous forms of contact between
the Yanomami and the surrounding non-indigenous
society, even to the extent of eclipsing the frontier
of development projects that had
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emerged in the
1970s.
This does not mean, though, that other
economic activities (commercial agriculture, logging
and cattle ranching, industrial mining) that are
still non-existent or in their early stages, may
not comprise a new threat to Yanomami lands in
the future, despite their demarcation and ratification.
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Thus, in addition to the persisting interest
of prospectors in the region, it should be noted
that almost 60% of Yanomami territory is covered
by mineral applications and title deeds registered
in the National Department of Mineral Production
by public and private mining companies, both national
and multinational.
In addition, the colonization projects
implemented in the
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1970s and 1980s in the east and southeast of Yanomami
lands created a wave of land occupation that is tending
to expand inside the indigenous area (in the regions of
Ajarani and Apiaú) due to the general migrationary
flow in the direction of Roraima – a trend that may
be exacerbated in the future as a result of the wiping
out of the boundary markers by a huge forest fire that
hit Roraima at the start of 1998.
Finally, three military bases from the ‘Northern
Trench Project’ have been installed in the Yanomami
Territory since 1985 (The Special Border Platoons/ PEFs
of Maturacá, Surucucus and Auaris, a fourth is
planned in the Ericó region), leading to serious
social problems (prostitution) among the local populations,
which has already provoked protests from Yanomami leaders
in Roraima.
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01:: Opening of the Yanomami General Assembly. On
the right, the leader Davi Kopenawa (with Raimundo Yanomami).
Demini village
Photo: Hervé Chandès, 11/12/2000.
02::Davi Kopenawa Yanomami receives the
'Global 500' award from the UN.
Photo: Duda Bentes, 1989.
03:: Landing strip for airplanes at the 'Chimarrão'
mine, upper Mucajaí river region/ Roraima.
Photo: Charles Vincent, ISA archive, 1990
04:: 2 hours distance by foot from the Hemosh
maloca.
Photo: Charles Vincent, ISA archive, 1990
05, 06:: Pilot of the Brazilian Air Force
helicopter removes a sick Yanomami from the Hemosh maloca
to the Surucucus medical post.
Photo: Charles Vincent, ISA archive, 1990
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