Amazon bishops make plea for indigenous

National Catholic Reporter, June 16, 1995

In a protocol ad limina visit May 30 with the 13 bishops from Brazil's northern Amazon region, Pope John Paul II focused on the role of laity and avoided the bishops' most pressing concerns: social and political problems.

Speaking to the pope, however, Bishop Antonio Possamai of Ji-Parana, president of the episcopal region, spelled out how dominant development and economic policies are harming the poor and indigenous peoples of the area. Possamai said that "human life is profoundly under attack" and that native peoples are the big losers under current national policies.

"We see increasingly confirmed among our government authorities and the business classes the attitude that 'the Indian gets in the way of progress' and therefore 'should either be forcibly integrated into our civilization or perish,'" he said.

Possamai said the church in the Brazilian Amazon was not afraid to criticize what he called "persistent and well-programmed" efforts to move the native populations off their land. Massive agricultural and industrial projects, he told the pope, have destroyed the native people's forests, polluted their rivers and brought disease to their communities.

Possamai said economic projects generally benefit the elite and create a "multitude of people who lack employment, housing, health care, education and basic sanitation."