Belo Monte, Brazil - The Tribes Living in The Shadow of A Megadam - Environment - The Guardian

04/02/2015
Belo Monte, Brazil: The tribes living in the shadow of a megadam | Environment | The Guardian
Belo Monte, Brazil: The tribes living in the

shadow of a megadam
Next year the Belo Monte dam will ood vast swathes of Amazon rainforest. Indian tribes living on
the river have lost their ght to halt the project now they await the oods that threaten their entire
way of life
Aerial view of the Belo Monte Dam construction site. Belo Monte is a controversial hydropower plant that is being built in the
Xingu River, one of the largest rivers in the Amazon basin. Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace
Jonathan Watts in Belo Monte

Tuesday 16 December 2014 08.00 GMT
By the Great Bend of the Xingu river in the depths of Amazonia, the Juruna tribe is being
drowned by what seems at rst sight to be a ood of TV game-show prizes.
Theres a shiny new motorboat moored by the old canoe, the latest four-wheel drive
parked beside a chicken coop, satellite dishes outside every home and wide-screen
plasma TVs inside.
But these are not the spoils of victory. They are the consolations for defeat in an
existential battle against Brazils biggest engineering project, the Belo Monte dam.
For three decades, the Juruna have been in the vanguard of the ght against the
hydroelectric plant the worlds fourth biggest which is being built on the edge of their
territory in one of the worlds biodiversity hotspots.
The community have marched, lobbied, seized hostages, burned buses and taken to their
canoes to try to stop the project. But they have failed.
Next August, the Xingu river will be closed by a 5km-wide dam. The rst turbine will
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come into operation a few months later.

When they close the river, it will be like they are destroying our lives, says Giliarde
Juruna, the chief of a village in the Paquiamba indigenous territory. We have always
lived o the river. This region here is where weve lived from our ancestors until today.
The impact will be huge.
Belo Monte is already an undeniable fact. The vast construction site is like something out
of Mordor an immense wall of stone, steel and concrete that towers above a blasted
plain teeming with trucks, bulldozers and cranes. The turbine housings, which are halfcomplete, resemble the jagged ramparts of a fort. Here and there by the side of the road,
felled trees are tied up in bundles, like captured prisoners. And as night falls, the usual
Amazonian chorus of insects, frogs and birds is drowned out by engines, alarms and
clanking earth movers.
Fleets of trucks are shifting 79.2m cubic metres of earth more than that needed for the
Panama canal. To supply the rocks for the barrage, Brazils largest pebble crusher has
been built nearby. There are also several cement factories to mix the 2.1m cubic metres
of concrete that will eventually be poured at the projects three main sites. There is a
main 11,233MW hydroelectric plant at Belo Monte that will house 18 turbines, a
secondary much smaller 233MW plant at the 7km barrage across the river in Pimental
and a deep canal to divert water from one to the other.
Indians from the Munduruku, Juruna, Kayapo, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakana, and Arara tribes in Tapajos and Teles Pires
river basins face a riot police ocer as they invade the main construction site of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam site in
protest against the dams construction, in Vitoria do Xingu, near Altamira in Para State, May 2, 2013. Photograph: Lunae
Parracho/Reuters
The complex system of this run-of-the-river dam is designed as a low-impact alternative

to conventional narrow dams, which simply block the river and build up a huge reservoir
behind the dam.
Although Belo Monte will submerge a hefty 478 sq km in its 28-mini reservoirs (in an
area that was, until very recently, covered by one the worlds most biodiverse
rainforests,) engineers say the ratio of land ooded to power generation is about half that
of Brazils biggest hydroplant at Itaipu.
At great expense, they say they have designed this 25bn reais hydropower facility to
avoid the ooding of indigenous territory. The relatively small reservoir and the
maintenance of a minimum ow of water on the trunk river means the plant will work
on average at barely 40% of its 11,200MW capacity.
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The Belo Monte dam a controversial hydropower plant that is being built in the Xingu river, one of the largest rivers in the
Amazon basin. For 20 years indigenous groups, rural communities and environmentalists have fought against the
construction. Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace
Its the price we pay to preserve the environment, said Jaimie Juraszek, the
construction superintendent of Norte Energia. We cannot save the forest and live in the
dark without TV. There is a conict of interest here. We need balance. I think Belo Monte
is a compromise.
The 20,000 people who will be relocated certainly seems modest compared to the 1.5
million people that Chinas government moved for the Three Gorges dam. But, unlike
Chinas crowded Sichuan province, the problem in sparsely populated Amazonia is not
moving people out, but moving them in.
The biggest impact of Belo Monte is from the inux of tens of thousands of construction
workers, suppliers, security guards, prostitutes and other migrants who have been drawn
to the area by the megaproject. Since work started in 2011, the population of the nearest
city of Altamira has surged from about 100,000 to more than 150,000. The newcomers
require homes, food, water, electricity, oil, roads and boats all of which add to the
pressure on a local environment that is one of the worlds most important biodiversity
hotspots.
Forests are being felled in the Altamira region around the construction site at a faster
rate than anywhere else in the country. There are conicts over shing catches.
Endangered species are under increased pressure and indigenous groups are losing their
land and traditions.
Some tribal leaders privately admit that all they are ghting for now is compensation.
They want more land and for the dam operator Norte Energia to fulll its promise to
provide them with schools and clinics.
Three years ago, when these were not forthcoming, the government urged the company
to launch a two-year emergency programme to placate opposition among the Juruna
and other indigenous communities.
Suddenly, every wish the tribes made was granted up to a budget of 30,000 reais per
village per month. Centuries of a subsistence lifestyle gave way to instant gratication in
the form of food, laptops, new vehicles, freezers, motorbikes. For the 2011-13 duration
of the programme, all they had to do was ask.
The result was calamitous for traditional customs, hierarchies and a sense of identity.
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Villages split to get more money. Residents stopped farming and ordered food from the
supermarket. Conservative elders were nudged aside by the young who could speak
Portuguese with the company ocials.
The traditional diet of sh from the river and meat hunted in the forest gave way to
barbecued steak and brightly coloured sweets bought at the supermarket. Instead of
water from the river, locals drink beer and sweet zzy drinks. Plastic rubbish is a growing
problem.
Outside, respect for the communities is being replaced by scorn or pity. Norte Energia
ocials are privately contemptuous. In the old days, you just gave the Indians a mirror
and they were happy. Now they want iPads and four-wheel drives, said one employee.
But it is the company and the government that are to blame, according to the federal
prosecutor in Altamira, Thais Santi, who reported with horror her visit to another tribe,
the Arara at Cachoeira Seca.
Children form Arara tribe look out of their home near the dam site. Photograph: Lunae Parracho/Reuters
The scene in the village was that of a post-war holocaust with garbage everywhere,
she said in a recent interview. The Indians did not move. They just stood there
motionless, asking for food, asking to have homes built for them They had stopped
talking and meeting each other. The only time they met was at night to watch a
telenovela on a plasma TV. It was brutal The Emergency Plan had created an absolute
dependence on the company.
Santi said she is now preparing to bring a lawsuit against Belo Monte for ethnocide
against indigenous people.
Government ocials privately acknowledge the Emergency Plan should have been
better planned. Reversing the damage seems impossible. Many villagers want more land
and another emergency program of cash payments because, they say, the traditional
way of life will soon be impossible and modern appliances, like cars and houses, will be
no use without water and food.
The village chief, Juruna tells us he is planning another protest on canoes to try to secure
more territory before the dam is completed.
If they close the river, well never resolve the land issue so we need to ght to stop
them. Well do whatever it takes. Well go there and block it. The police can kill us. Id
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rather die there than give up.

But even the protests are changing the tribes way of life, which is now increasingly
taken up by meetings. The endless round of talks with government ocials, Norte
Energia representatives, NGO activists and journalists takes up so much energy that
many say they barely have time to tend the land or go shing.
When they do sh, they say the catches are much lower than in the past because of the
blasting and the dust and the extra upstream demand for food for the construction
workers.
Conservationists say the situation will get worse when the river is closed o. There are
several sh, including the acari, that are unique to the Volta Grande (Big Bend) where
the hydropower plant is being constructed. Much of this aquatic life is dependent on the
rise and fall of the river. Many species reproduce in ood water ponds that will disappear
once the dam is built.
Fishermen approach the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam construction site, during a protest against its construction and its
impact on their livelihoods, along the Xingu river near Altamira in Para state. Photograph: STRINGER/Reuters
The uctuation of the Xingu also aects the temperatures of tributaries, which could
eect the tracaja turtle. The gender of this species is determined by whether the sand of
the banks is hot (female) or cold (male). Reduced ow on the trunk river will mean lower
temperatures and probably a higher proportion of males.
It is not only indigenous tribes who are aected. Glio Alvas da Silva has lived on the
Xingu for 32 years, but his shing community of mestizos at So Antonio was one of the
rst to be disrupted by the project. Before the construction started, he used to spend the
night on the river, diving into the depths to catch zebra sh for aquariums, harpooning
asas and using wooden traps for pescada. But once the project started, he said the
catches started to decline drastically.
I used to take 50kg each night. Now Im lucky to get 2kg, he said. Like many former
shermen in the area, he now makes a living breaking rocks for the dam.
Despite the many tales of woe, Belo Monte is the precursor for more barrages in
Amazonia. The government considers hydropower, which accounts for 77% of Brazils
energy, as the key to meeting the countrys climate commitments while maintaining
economic growth. Many of the most accessible rivers are already tapped so future
expansion is expected to come from the Amazon and Cerrado regions.
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Next year, bidding will start for the next megadam - a 8,000MW plant at So Luiz on the
Tapajs river, despite opposition from the Mundruku tribe, whose lands are likely to be
partly submerged.
Along with President Dilma Rousses championing of oil and agribusiness, such projects
are undermining Brazils reputation a global leader on the environment.
In the most recent edition of Science magazine a group of Brazilian scientists warned
there was a growing discrepancy between the positive role played by the countrys
diplomats at UN climate talks, and the increasingly destructive direction of legislation
and infrastructure projects that do not adequately balance environmental and social
costs with the economic benets.
An aerial view of the Bacaja indigenous tribe settlement, of Chicrin ethnicity, on the Bacaja river banks, a tributary of the
Xingu river, 137 miles outside Altamira, northern Brazil. Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters
Since 2008, the paper notes that Brazil has lost 44,100 sq km of protected land.
Until now, unplanned agricultural expansion has been the greatest pressure on the
environment, but new pressures are being exerted in response to rising demands for
hydropower and mineral resources, the authors noted. They called for greater
investment in solar, wind and biofuels to reduce the destruction this causes.
Environmentalists say the Belo Monte case also highlights the importance of preserving
indigenous territory which is home to the last good forests in Brazil. But under existing
circumstances, the tribes who have long been the staunchest forest guardians are losing
land, culture and the will to resist.
Belo Monte is gradually weakening them. Its very sad to see. Weve been ghting
together for 30 years, but now they are succumbing to drugs, drinking and prostitution,
said Antonio Melo, of the Xingu Vivo anti-dam campaign. Dilma says the dams produce
cheap electricity, but the cost is paid here in the destruction of the environment and the
destruction of peoples lives.
With additional research by Shanna Hanbury
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04/02/2015

Belo Monte, Brazil: The tribes living in the

Jonathan Watts in Belo Monte

come into operation a few months later.

The complex system of this run-of-the-river dam is designed as a low-impact alternative

rather die there than give up.

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