Brazil Indians Tell Pope of Threats to Survival

The dwindling Indians of Brazil implored Pope John Paul II on Wednesday to help awaken international awareness of dire threats to their survival.

The Pope met with 150 Indian representatives on the sweltering back patio of a Roman Catholic social agency in this western Brazilian city, a gateway to the vast Amazon forest.

Manoel Gomes da Silva, a Caxinaua Indian, read a statement signed by leaders of 34 tribes, accusing Brazil’s economic and political powers of systematically violating the rights of native peoples.

“In the name of modernity, technology and progress they criminally invade our territories, kill our leaders, poison our rivers, destroy our environment and treat us as sub-races, turning us into foreigners within our own country,” Da Silva, wearing a headband and black paint on his face, read in halting Portuguese.

Since John Paul last came to Brazil in 1980, he said, 140 Indians have been killed, 2,000 Yanomami Indians have died of diseases brought to their northern Brazilian territory by invading prospectors and hundreds of destitute Indian families have migrated to cities after losing their lands.

Meanwhile, the government has repeatedly delayed demarcation of Indian reservations as required by the constitution, he said.

“We want your holiness to carry our cry of clamor for justice to other peoples of the world, so that they may know that Indian nations are disappearing in this country,” Da Silva said. “If they exterminate the Indian nations, they are exterminating the forests and the environment--and life on the planet will become unsustainable.”

John Paul told the Indians: “I have received with great sadness the news that reaches me of violations of those rights, motivated by profit and base interests, with grave repercussions on the life, health and survival of some indigenous groups. I ask God to enlighten all those who are responsible for the common good of this country so that they may find wise and efficient solutions to these lamentable situations.”

Anticipating next year’s 500th anniversary of the European discovery of America, the Pope said that thousands of Catholic missionaries have come over the years to evangelize the Indians of Brazil. He acknowledged the “defects and weaknesses” of the missionaries but said their “grandiose epic” merits admiration.

“With great pain,” however, he observed that some people have tried to denigrate the history of the Catholic mission in Brazil.

Orlando Melgueiro, an Indian and a spokesman for an association of Brazilian Amazon tribes, told reporters before the meeting that Catholic missionaries have contributed to the “cultural genocide” of Indians by inducing them to abandon their own religious traditions. “The church contributed to the extermination of Indian peoples,” said Melgueiro, a Catholic.

An estimated 3 million to 5 million Indians lived in what is now Brazil when Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered it in 1500. Now the surviving 180 tribes have a total population estimated at 220,000.

The temperature in Cuiaba soared to more than 100 degrees Wednesday as John Paul, red-faced and heavily clothed in his white cassock, sat in the shade of an almond tree. Many of the Indians were shirtless, with painted designs on their chests and backs, while others wore T-shirts bearing written reminders of Indian deaths. “1,500 Yanomami Exterminated, 1987-1991,” said Melgueiro’s shirt.

The Pope was halfway through a 10-day tour of Brazil. He will leave Monday for Rome.