Tribute to the peoples fighting for life and for their territories

Assembled at the Federal University of Acre campus in the city of Rio Branco, between July 23 rd  to 25th 2014, in a tribute to the resistance of the peoples of Amazonia, the signatories of this letter manifest their most vigorous condemnation of the brutal and insane murder of Palestinian children, women and men in Gaza.

With unacceptable omission of the UN and the complicity of the United States government, the State of Israel violates the most basic principles of human rights, killing or wounding the Palestinian civilians brutally, cynically and cowardly.

International mainstream media, turning everything into show, announce Israel´s defensive war against Arab terrorist groups. By doing so, they produce a hoax in order to hide the planned genocide against the Palestinian people and explain irrational as well as unjustifiable bombardments on schools, universities, hospitals, public buildings and residential areas, indiscriminately hitting the defenseless and fragile Palestinian population.

With the same indignation we denounce the Brazilian state´s authoritarian approach, criminalizing social movements trough grotesque processes as well as attacking freedom of opinion and expression all across the country - an example of what happens with social activists in the city of Rio de Janeiro. What takes place in the larger Brazilian cities is the expansion of the same violence that has long reached indigenous peoples and rural communities throughout Amazonia, the northeast as well as other more distant locations.

Currently, we live in times of attempts that aim at silencing the voices and movements which oppose the vested interests of big capital worldwide. We live in times in which a rationality is being imposed, that devastates lives as well as transforms nature into a mere commodity - indifferent to cultures, values​​, knowledge and ecosystems. The totalitarian mercantilization of everything and the erasure of opposing voices are in tune with, and at service of the interests of the economic megablocs all over the planet.

Mercantilization - and its totalitarian logic - has invaded science too. The hegemonic science as "science of capital," seeks to legitimize the process of accumulation of collective resources, heritage as well as popular and traditional knowledge, the hearts and minds of entire peoples. Territories in their materialities and imaterialidades are "scientifically" cataloged and made available to accumulation, while the people living from the land, forest and water see and feel the "progress of science" cutting them off their territories, land, body and life. "Scientists" from around the world team up with capital. We need other sciences, by women and men of integrity standing in everyday struggle and resistance, to apply the kind of wisdom that makes life happen, and that makes us understand live as this simple and extraordinary experience, which capital insists to usurp and kill by applying its science of progress.

In the face of the logic of "progress that kills and destroys" we raise our voices and our knowledge in order to build a "Vivir Bien" (to live well), as proposed in the constitutions of Bolivia and Equador, a world in which "many worlds fit" as the Zapatistas from Mexico persist in reaffirming. We join the struggle for justice, democracy and freedom, the right to the whole land, in a broad international solidarity of women and men who rise up and challenge the totalitarian order. In these struggles we are all Mundurucu, Kayapó, Tenharim, Guarani-Kaiowa, Achuar, Ese eja, Jíbaro, Omagua, Madija, Mashco Piro, Matsés Marubo Huni Kui, Apurinã, Nahua, Vacacocha, Huaorani, Shuar, Mapuche, Palestinians and many other peoples and groups fighting against the destruction of their cultures, languages ​​and territories.

 

Amazon border, Brazil-Bolivia-Peru, July 25, 2014.

 

Amyra El Khalili - Rede RECOs/ Mulheres pela Paz

Ana Patrícia Chaves Ferreira -  COMIN

Abrahan Cuellar Araujo - FOBOMADE - Bolívia

Andres Bustamante - FOBOMADE - Bolívia 

Barbara Silva - Militante da comunicação comunitária na Pan Amazônia

Cristiane Faustino - Rede Brasileira de Justiça Ambiental

Diego Cardona - CENSAT Agua Viva - Amigos da Terra Colômbia

Elder Andrade de Paula - NUPESDAO -UFAC

Edna Castro - UFPA

Geovane da Costa Souza - MAB-RO

Gerson Rodrigues Albuquerque - ADUFAC

João Silva Lima - ADUFAC

Jones Dari Göettert - ADUFGD

José Alves da Silva - STTR de Xapuri

José Alves - GEPEA - UFAC

keã Huni Kui -  Comunidade Huni Kui Hené Bariá

Lindomar Padilha - CIMI-AO

Lucia Ortiz - Amigos da Terra Brasil

Luiz Zarref - MST

Luis Fernando Heredia - CIPCA- Bolívia

Luis F. Novoa - UNIR

Marcio Santana de Lima - MAB-RO

Maria de Jesus Morais - GEPEA -UFAC

Maximiliano Ochante Saune- UNAMAD-Peru

Michael Franz Schmidlehner - Amazonlink

Ninawa Huni Kui - FEPHAC

Pedro Casanova - As. FADEMAD-Peru

Raimundo G. C. Neto - CEPASP/MAM

Raquel Ishii - ADUFAC

Simeon Velarde - Vanguardia Amazónica - Peru

Winnie Overbeek - Movimento Mundial pelas Florestas Tropicais