Lula has just legalized the 'squatters' in the Amazon. The recently approved Provisional Measure 458 MP gives titles to people who in last years took illegally 67.4 million hectares of public land. In Brazil, the phenomenon is known as grilagem. One century ago, the documents were placed in a box with crickets for obscure them (grilo, means cricket in Portuguese). The grilagem is the tip of the iceberg of devastation. The Brazil registered in notaries is at least 1 million square kilometers bigger than real. Therefore, the only beneficiaries of the new law are the landowners. There are even ghosts invented by companies who own thousands of square kilometers. In real life, big companies take profit of these “ghost land”.The `terra grilada promotes the Amazon plundering that began in the seventies, when the government encouraged the conquest of the jungle with the phrase" a land without men for men without land ". The looting continued. Although deforestation is moderating its digits (in May, 123.73 kilometers, compared to 1,096 in 2008), the Amazon slaughter goes on.
At the present time, the Amazon has 100,000 km of illegal roads, ten times longer than official ones. Roads and so called progress also promote commerce of timber, cattle cows and soybeans, that recently become the worse enemies of the jungle. However, the big losers of this Amazon story are its inhabitants. In every path, in every crossroads, emerge a miserable village, an exploited community punished by the powerful. Without resources, without alternatives, they just try to survive.
I lived almost two years in the Amazon (settled in the city of Belém). I traveled throughout Amazon
