Brazil to pay remote tribal community for its losses

REUTERS
September 28, 2000

BRASILIA, Brazil -- A Brazilian federal court has ordered the government
to compensate a remote Indian community after it ruled that a road built
through tribal territory had caused the death of most of its members.

The construction of the road, which cuts through a vast tract of land in
the lower Amazon, brought the isolated Panara tribe into contact with
various illnesses and diseases -- which ended up decimating the community.

"The decision is historic because it allows those populations who feel
violated by the state to claim their rights," said Carlos Federico Mares,
a lawyer representing the Panara during the court case.

Brazil's Regional Federal Tribunal ordered the national government to
compensate the tribe for moral and material damage by paying 4,000 minimum
wages, equivalent to $335,500.

Construction of the road, which links the city of Cuiaba in central
Brazil to the bustling Amazon port of Santarem, began in 1973. Before
that, environmentalists say, the Panara tribe had no contact with the
outside world.

But with the arrival of the construction team, many members of the tribe
contracted illnesses against which they had no protection and also came
up against the phenomena of alcoholism and prostitution for the first
time.

In 1975, the government's National Indian Foundation, which oversees
policy on Brazil's indigenous peoples, arranged for the Panara to be moved
far from their traditional lands as by then just 75 of the 300-strong
community remained.

In 1996, the Justice Ministry recognized the Panara's right to return to
ancestral lands and the tribe moved back again, where it now numbers
around 200.