The river, named Laje on non-indigenous maps, is vital to the Oro Waram, one of six subgroups of the Wari’ people who have inhabited the western Amazon for centuries. However, this immemorial relationship is increasingly under threat. The relentless expansion of soybean crops and pastures invades their territory, while land grabbers promote illegal deforestation.
To protect themselves, the Wari’ are turning to a new strategy: the white man’s law. In June, the municipality of Guajará-Mirim approved a cutting-edge law proposed by an indigenous councillor, designating the Komi Memem and its tributaries as living entities with rights, ranging from maintaining their natural flow to protecting the jungle that surrounds them.
The Komi Memem, an unprotected tributary of a larger river, is the first of hundreds of rivers in the Brazilian Amazon to have a law granting it legal personality and corresponding rights. It is part of a new legislative approach to protecting nature that has had a major impact in many nations around the world, from New Zealand to Chile.
A teacher by profession, Oro Waram lives with his family in the village of Laje Velho, a 40-minute drive from the center of the city of Guajará-Mirim, a journey on a mostly paved road and surrounded by pastures. Just before the entrance to the village, heavy machinery was preparing the land for soybean crops, which are rapidly replacing cattle ranching in this part of the Amazon, in the state of Rondonia.
“There are many generations to come, so we older ones protect the water,” Oro Waram said of the river. “We do not pollute it or cut down the trees that surround it. For us he is a living being.
Satellite images show how the Igarapé Lage indigenous territory is now shaped like a green rectangle surrounded by deforestation. This is where Laje Velho is located. In the past decades, the federal government has created six non-continuous Indian territories. One of them, Río Negro Ocaia, has been waiting for the government to approve the expansion of the borders established by an anthropological study 15 years ago.
The Wari’ people lived autonomously until the late 1950s and early 1960s, and are the largest group of speakers of Chapacura, a family of language isolates. In the first years after contact with foreigners, three out of five Wari’ died from introduced diseases, and their number dwindled to only about 400. Since then the population has increased tenfold, but now occupies less than a third of its original territory, according to Vanderbilt University anthropologist Beth Conklin, who has worked with them for nearly four decades.
“The Wari’ value their cosmology and rituals. Everything is centered around promoting human development in relationships with the non-human, with the world in general and the well-being of people,” Conklin told the AP. “That is why this law is a 21st century update. of these very traditional social, biological, and ecological values that are at the core of Wari culture.”
The expansion of soybeans, with crops heavily dependent on pesticides, poses a significant threat to the Komi Memem River, but it is not the only one. Upriver from Laje Velho, an invasion by land grabbers has prevented the Wari’ from accessing their essential fishing grounds.
Furthermore, the source of the river is located near the Guajará-Mirim State Park, which used to be Wari’ territory. Despite being a protected area, in recent years land grabbers have invaded and extensively deforested it.
Rather than evict them, state governor Marcos Rocha, an ally of right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro, enacted a law in 2021 to reduce the park’s borders and thus legalize land occupation. Although a subsequent court order struck down that law, encroachment and deforestation have not stopped.
Last February, the tea-colored water of the river turned a cloudy red, which scared Oro Waram. “I have never seen anything like this in my life,” said the 48-year-old, who blames rampant illegal deforestation for the episode.
The councilor says that due to pollution from cattle farms and soybean crops, his village no longer drinks the river water directly, as their ancestors did. Instead, they turn to artesian wells.
Sometimes the threat is very direct. On June 6, some 60 armed men invaded the Linha 26 village and expelled its inhabitants. They only returned after the Federal Police came to retake it, according to an organization that defends the rights of the Wari’.
“The loggers came in and divided up the indigenous land,” Gilmar Oro Nao, vice president of the Oro Wari’ association, told the AP. “They threaten food security. Our relatives have nowhere to fish, they cut down the Brazil nut trees. Today they have nowhere to get their livelihood to survive.”
Oro Nao indicated that the Wari’ do not trust the local employees of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples. He said there is a widespread suspicion that they are collaborating with illegal loggers and land grabbers.
The AP emailed the Foundation but received no response. The Attorney General’s office, whose responsibility includes overseeing indigenous rights, said it has an open investigation into the invasions and has been monitoring the situation.
The Wari’ hope that the new law granting legal status to the river will help address what they see as inaction on the part of the Foundation and the Attorney General’s Office. Its main clause creates a commission to monitor the river along with a council that would include indigenous and non-indigenous members, including a representative from the Federal University of Rondonia.
The commission will issue an annual report on the status of the river and propose actions to secure the rights protected by the new law.
In a region of the Amazon in which agribusiness has become the economic engine, it surprised many that the law had the unanimous approval of the municipal council of Guajará-Mirim, a city of 40,000 inhabitants with more than 90% of its territory located within protected areas.
“We are very happy with the law. It made our municipality visible and sets an example for other cities and indigenous territories,” said municipal president Raissa Paes Bento, who enacted the law.
Protecting the Komi Memem River is also important for non-indigenous inhabitants, Bento noted, because fishing is a very important economic activity and source of food. “It is very positive to have it well preserved and clean,” he declared.
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FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
