 Okay. Here we go. Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. In partnership with Friends of Latin America and Task Force on the Americas, we broadcast every Wednesday at 430pm Pacific 730pm Eastern. Last month, Progressive International received a letter from Brazil's articulation of indigenous peoples calling for solidarity in their luta pela vida, their struggle for life, and requesting a delegation to travel to Brazil to witness Bolsonaro's assault on indigenous people and the environment. Over the past 10 days, the delegation met with an incredible range of political actors in Brazil. Indigenous leaders from the API be I hope I say this correct to all of you. Quilombola representatives of the Coordina Cau National Day Articular Cau de Quilombos, CONAQ, members of Congress from parties such as the PT, PSOL, PSB, and others, local and state government representatives from Para. Trade unions and social movements, including the MST, MTST, and CUT, as well as members of the Pan Amazonic Social Forum, environmental groups, and civil society actors. Joining us in conversation today is Nick Estes who just returned to the US from Brazil. In fact, earlier this afternoon he just returned. He participated on the Progressive International emergency delegation. He is a journalist, historian, and host of the Red Nation podcast. Welcome Nick. It's good to be with you again Terry. I'm really great and I'm so I'm so honored that you are willing to make time I know you just got off a plane at noon time today. It's really wonderful to have you with us this evening. And I wonder if we can start with you sharing with the audience a little bit of your personal story because you who you are and what you are is so crucial to the story we're going to talk about this evening. Sure. I mean, it's an excellent place to start because a lot of the things that my people experienced in the 19th and 20th century is being experienced right now in Brazil and I was born and raised in the Missouri River in a place called Chamberlain, South Dakota, which is a border town. It's a white dominated settlement that rings, you know, the Indian reservations, most often in rural places. I'm an enrolled member of the lower rural Sioux tribe. And so in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States began a mass infrastructure development project to develop the Missouri River. And as a result, they installed five earthen rolled dams that affected Sioux tribes or Lakota and Dakota tribes as well as the Mandan Hidatsa Nation and Fort Berthold, which is in North Dakota. The Tixlone plan, the Tixlone project actually removed about a third of the populations of the river tribes and my tribe was included in that and my tribe actually had two dams built on it and we were flooded twice and removed twice. And we lived semi subsistence lifestyle in the 1950s so you could drink out of the water. You, you know, there was gardens, there's community gardens, farming, small scale agriculture, a little bit of ranching and herding. But then also there were just the free goods of nature, as they as they say, in terms of harvesting wild fruits and hunting and things of that nature and as a result, you know, they wiped out 75% of the wild game and 75% of the wild vegetation that we depended on so it was really an attack on our food. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because this is what indigenous people and traditional communities in Brazil are facing right now. This is a battle for food. It's a battle for how nations, you know, eat and reproduce themselves and what nations consume products that are produced for them at the expense of others. Our lands in what we call the Ocete Chacoí country were sacrificed to build hydroelectric dams for the benefit of others and then also were sacrificed to build irrigation, which never came but nonetheless so it was it was electricity and farming. And we're the reasons why they dammed our river and it, you know, it constituted a huge kind of a historical trauma for for our people that carried on through generations but it's also important to remember, you know, I'm one generation removed from an almost subsistence lifestyle that's how early it was it didn't. These like 19th century Indian Wars and land grabs, you know, it didn't just happen 100 years ago it happened, you know, 60 to 70 years ago and it's still ongoing today and so there's so many similarities. And even with the mobilizations against the pipelines in 2016 we had a mass mobilization standing rock, which brought together over 300 different tribal nations and an encampment that was about 10,000 people. And today, you know, we have an I don't know code pink has some people who have done solidarity, renation has done solidarity with the line three encampments up in northern Minnesota within the people. So today, you know, there's just people in the United States are still resisting land grabs, they're still resisting large infrastructure projects that are ostensibly for the public good but we know that this is really just feeding into kind of. This the profit motive for fossil fuel companies and energy companies like Enbridge and Trans Canada so that's that's kind of the short brief history of who who I am and where I come from. I think it's so important for our audience to hear this because you know we're talking about a model a cultural and economic and political model that privatizes what you and your people would consider belongs to the earth and does not belong to human beings period. And we're seeing this all over Latin America and as you said it's not just something from 100 200 300 years ago it's it's a model that still exists to this day in the United States. And also I think I probably the story so many of our viewers are, are familiar with when you mentioned hydroelectric controlling water damning water would be back the chaser is situation in Honduras with the length of people there. But these abuses and privatization and control of the environment natural resources and people is one of our some of the reasons why the act that so many activists in Brazil had requested this progressive international delegation. Can you tell us very quickly, what is progressive international because you are part of that as well as red nation and many other activist groups. Yeah, so the progressive international is a network of trade unions progressive parties and social movements, who's been recently doing, you know, a lot of solidarity work from things such as doing like election observations and doing a political delegations to meet the social demands, or to, you know, in this case, sort of investigate and see on the ground, what is happening in this in this situation, especially under Bolsonaro. So let's this was a 10 day delegation and just finished like yesterday you flew back to the states today. Let's talk about the delegation I know one of the reasons I specifically reached out to you to talk with us this evening is because of this genocide suit that the people's of Brazil filed at the Hague against the Bolsonaro government and this is particularly fascinating to me my, my activism started in the 80s and Guatemala with, you know, with the genocide of the Maya people there and they say genocide as a nation of people received genocide state a status in 2005, which allowed them to, you know, to start changing Guatemala it's, you know, still very difficult and still very slow but so let's talk a little bit about the delegation what you saw and and then also that this genocide suit filed. I'll start with the genocide suit so a PB, which is the, the group the API be in Portuguese they say a PB, which is interesting. But they say they're really hard for me to say I apologize. It's really like CUT, or the Union, Gucci, Gucci. So, yeah, it's a bunch of different things. So this genocide lawsuit was filed at the Hague on August night so this month and they're calling it the indigenous August, and there was also like an indigenous April as well they were, you know, so this has been an ongoing kind of series of uprisings and social mobilizations against the Bolsonaro government. And it's important to say that a lot of the things that they're protesting and challenging, you know, aren't unique to Bolsonaro per se they've just been intense intensified, and it was made very clear by the organizers. You know that people such as Sonia Guajajara, as well as Alessandra Munduruku, that this was not, that this particular moment in time is unprecedented. The levels of attack and the levels of, you know, violence against indigenous people haven't been seen, you know, since the years of the dictatorship and we can see, you know, Bolsonaro himself references the dictatorship as an inspiration, not just, you know, as a form of political rule but an attitude towards indigenous people. And so there's, there's three components of this genocide lawsuit as far as I understand it. And one is, you know, just the listing of the abuses by the Bolsonaro government, you know, which includes the destruction of public infrastructure to guarantee indigenous people, you know, social and environmental rights to territory. And this happens through anything from administrative acts to norms or speeches, you know, is very famous for saying very racist things towards indigenous people, and, you know, that are just directed towards indigenous people and single thing them out specifically. And the consequences of these things, the second part, you know, is the invasion and dispossession of indigenous lands. It's primarily deforestation in the Amazon. And this, you know, this is for mining, this is for agribusiness. These two sectors are very powerful and resilient politics. And they're pushing, you know, people like, you know, Bolsonaro and others, essentially to carry out, you know, to use the state as the handmaiden of capital, you know, so to say, but basically to open these places up, or to turn a blind eye because the state sometimes may be involved directly in the clearing out of an area or a territory. And other times they'll just not pay attention and turn a blind eye. But the policy that kind of indirect or the informal policy, so to speak, is what they call the the Bible and the boy, which is like the bullets, the Bible and the bull or the cow. So it sounds like they're conquistadors from 500 years ago. Exactly. And they are drawing specifically like there's no ambiguity about this on the tradition of violent settler colonialism in the United States, because they are arming everyday people. Many of them are poor, you know, landless folks themselves, they're arming them in the service of, you know, large landowners and agribusiness. So there has been an increase, so 50% of the population is armed. But it's not just the increase in guns, but it's the increase in ammunition and making ammunition more available. And of course, the ideological underpinning of a lot of this is the Bible. The evangelical movement is very strong in Brazil, and specifically kind of the sort of the vanguard of a lot of these settlement projects. Oftentimes you'll see a, you know, a little settlement in the middle of nowhere, but there'll be a giant church, right, with makeshift shacks around it, and it'll be a evangelical church. And of course, the bull or the cow, the cattle industry is very huge and very powerful in Brazil. And it's kind of a self-serving mechanism. In two ways, one is that, you know, there's the cattle industry and just, you know, putting cows out on the land, but to do so you have to clear large swaths of forest to do that, but also creating the feed for that cattle. And a lot of the soy that's grown on this deforested land by corporations such as Cargill is exported to places like the United States and Europe to be, you know, turned into feed, basically to feed cattle here, right. You know, Cargill is, Cargill kept coming up in a lot of our conversations, and I can talk a little bit more about that, but that's kind of the sort of three areas, three lines of attack that the Bolsonaro government is using, not just against Indigenous people, but all kinds of people. So it's important to note that in places like the Amazon, 68% of the population is Black. So you have a large Black rural population with the Quilambolas. You also have the Rivian heroes. I'm mispronouncing he, it's the he being heroes. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. When people say Spanish and Portuguese are similar, it's not true. Maybe for a non like native speaker of Spanish, but it's the river people. So there are other like, you know, traditional communities that are tied to territory and are very much grounded and integrated within other, you know, Indigenous communities or they themselves have been, you know, a mixture of Indigenous ancestry and a bit of, you know, Indigenousity as part of their experience, but that they are also under attack. And I think that's important to bring up because at the front line, so to speak, is the Indigenous people, but then also it includes other, you know, other people. And then the final, you know, the final point on that is just to say that the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil has been devastating. I think the last count was like 600,000 deaths, which is, it's unprecedented, you know, and when we arrived, they were coming off that surge and it has very much impacted Indigenous communities. Many of them are isolated by choice. They isolate by choice, but because of the influx of minors, loggers, as well as farmers, they are introduced to the disease. And obviously, they're the last to be served when it comes to public health and everything like that. So that was another issue or that was another aspect of this charge of genocide. And I think that that genocide charge at the Hague, it encompasses a lot of the things that we saw on the ground when we were there. Well, for Indigenous people, the term genocide doesn't just refer to human beings. It refers to genocide of the earth, too, which we term, you know, ecocide, but it's genocide on all living things. Yeah, and it's important to actually define, you know, to look at the legal, the international legal definition of genocide, because genocide doesn't always involve the active killing. Like it doesn't mean like you're just centering Calvary people out to annihilate people. It also means, you know, imposing, you know, certain measures to stop the growth of that population. And it also means attacking food sources in some instances. So I think that it is important to note that this isn't just an anthro-centric process that it also entails when you destroy the land, you also destroy the people. Yeah. We starve them. Exactly. You could make the argument that's what unilateral coercive measures are used for what a lot of us say sanctions. It's, yeah, the second. So there's a couple of things you mentioned that I just kind of want to re-emphasize. You mentioned destruction of public infrastructure, and you mentioned Cargill, which makes me just automatically think destruction of public infrastructure and pushing privatization and not just privatization, but privatization for transnational corporations around the planet and especially in the global south. And that's kind of, I would say that's the framework, or that's Bolsonaro's main mission is to help make that happen. Let's talk about the political context of Brazil right now because this is part of what the Progressive International Delegation was there to investigate and observe as well. It goes without saying that somebody like Jair Bolsonaro is the result of a kind of global trend of right wing authoritarianism and neo-fascism. The Brazilian right sees itself very much connected and influenced by the right wing in the United States and Trumpism specifically. In fact, the week before I went on this delegation, Jair Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, was speaking in my home territory for this event about how, as by Mike Lindell, the Mike Pillow guy, and he was about the elections and how Trump lost the elections. Eduardo Bolsonaro was there talking about how if Bolsonaro, if his father loses the election next October, not in 2022, that it's probably going to be the fault of these voting machines, much like they stole the election from Trump. But also it was also said at that conference that, you know, and this is South Dakota, right, this is where I'm from. It's not a very populated state and it was going on at the same time as the Biker Rally where, you know, almost three quarters of a million people descended on the state, not wearing masks, you know, ignoring any kind of social distancing. This is the annual Biker Rally in Sturgis. Exactly, exactly. And so he wasn't speaking at the rally, but it was during the event, you know, it was during that whole kind of hoopla. And they said, you know, that Lula is the most dangerous leftist on the planet. And because he could defeat, you know, Bolsonaro and it's expected that he will. I mean, Bolsonaro isn't polling very well. He's, you know, he's lost a lot of his base of support because of the pandemic, but also because he's not really doing anything. He's kind of ruling by decree. And so there's, there's a similar kind of sense of attack on our mobilizing the right to attack certain institutions. So on September 7, which is Independence Day in Brazil, I believe. We are planning a mobilization to invade the Congress, the Brazilian Congress, to invade the Supreme Court, which has been battling the decrees by the Bolsonaro government and the actions by the Bolsonaro government. And then you have, you know, conservative and liberal judges on this on the Supreme Court. And also the, the invasion of the Chinese embassy. And we can see, you know, this, this xenophobia towards China. You know, it's not just a kind of personal animosity towards, you know, people of Chinese descent or Asian people in general. But it's an attack on, you know, the project that Lula and others had set in motion to sort of delink themselves from the US economy and begin trade relations with China. So the kind of geopolitical maneuvering that's going on there, but then also the attack on Congress because they have been systematically harassing and haranguing members of the Workers Party, which is the main kind of left force, the largest left force in the Brazilian Congress, and among social movements, because they represent a primary threat, but also attacking other, you know, leftist tendencies like the pay soul, which is aligned somewhat with PT in this particular the Workers Party in this moment. So you have this polarization, much like we saw in the United States. And so amidst this historic up this historic mobilization where you have 6000 indigenous people, you know, on their national mall, which is not called the National Mall but it's similar to the United States, historic, there's never there hasn't been as I was told and I don't know if this is true but I was told that it was the largest encampment, protest encampment in recent history. And, you know, not just of indigenous people but in general. So you have this mass mobilization, and the right is going to come back, you know, swinging and trying to set the stage that the game is rigged against their candidate of choice. So this is a this is a long game that they're playing, and there are. We started the narrative now, as you said, South Dakota they've already started the narrative about the voting machine so. And so they're going international with their movement and we have to be international with ours. And we have to understand that this mode of capitalist accumulation and dispossession on the so called frontier that's what they call it down there, the frontier on the. They're pushing, you know, that's called the Marco Temporale the, the kind of, I don't know how to translate in English but it's like a, the territories that define, or excuse me the way that the Constitution defines indigenous territories, when the Constitution was written in 1988, it kind of set those in stone. It's now the move now with laws and measures is to like push those territories back into essentially dispossess indigenous people. And that move is going hand in hand with the attempts by agribusiness and being pushed, I don't know if it's being pushed necessarily but it's definitely benefiting multinational corporations like Cargill, who operates out of Minnesota and has this very, you know, family friendly face to it, you know, the CEO was talking about how they were undoing racial discrimination within their corporate their corporate culture by having workshops about being woke and white fragility and whatever it was you know that they were talking about. But fundamentally, Cargill is anti black and anti indigenous because it is, it is the primary economic mode, a motor of dispossession of the Amazon, right. He knows this it's building these massive ports it's it's trying to get as much done that it can under under Bolsonaro, because it knows that there's going to be no it's going to swing left again because people are pushing back and fighting back and so that's sort of the way that I was told the political situation is playing out right now on the ground in Brazil. I just want to share with you a couple of comments in our chat because I think you should, you should hear some of this is where you have. This is from love and from love indigenous. Oh, I just lost hello somebody. Hello from Cheyenne. Cheyenne River Lakota lands. Oh, nice. South Dakota, and then from Anna Paula Vargas she's just just confirming what you just said this was the largest camp and mobilization since 1988 when the Brazilian Constitution was approved. Exactly. So. We've got a few minutes left I'm so happy to see how many people have joined us this evening because this is such an important. Such an important story to be sharing with everyone and and as you shared with me Nick before we went live it it's not something we're hearing much at all about in in the US media Western media in general. And of course Bolsonaro's, you know, reflective of the model the US wants to perpetuate across the globe. So, let's talk a little bit about in our last few minutes, the progressive international delegation specifically the itinerary where you know it's just so our viewers have a, have an idea of, you know, where you went and who you met with and. Yeah, I think after I do that I'll maybe talk a little bit about what we hope the outcomes are of this trip based on the people we talked to so we witnessed the the catastrophe that PV warned us about when it comes to the violent dispossession of indigenous killambola traditional communities, the assassination of their leaders, and the intensification of extraction of their wealth. And we, we started our delegation of facility which is the capital of Brazil. We met with the landless workers movement or the MTS T and talk and went to one of their encampments and we had food. We ate with at one of their free kitchens that they had and learned about what was going on there. We talked about Brazilia, the inequality capital of Brazil, which is very true. And then we convened with top members of Congress, specifically from the opposition to hear their grave concerns about, you know, Bolsonaro's frontal assault on democracy and his desire to hold power by any means necessary. So we traveled to the state of Pará, which is at the delta of a south of the delta of the Amazon river were empties into the Atlantic Ocean. And we sat one night we sat with about 100 or actually several hundred community leaders until late in the evening. The local power supply that was once national was recently privatized and so they're going through waves of blackout so it was incredibly hot because there's no air conditioning. We hear their stories of pain, anger and resistance. We also listened to their songs and poetry. And we talked about, you know, the violent targeting of their lands and lives and then the next day we traveled deep into the Amazon and met with Quique Kilimbola and traditional communities living along the river. We talked about the levels of mercury that they're finding in the waters and the devastation of their lands. And then we joined, we will return to Brazilia and joined the Maduro on the kaipo and many other indigenous groups in their in their act at the Lutapé la vida resistance camp in the in the capital. And we talked about, you know, the line three pipeline and how we can support them as an international delegation. And so one of the, you know, one of the things that we're looking into. We're going to we're asking members of Congress to look into why William Burns was what William Burns is meeting that who is the director of the CIA what his meeting with Bolsonaro was. Because we know that the CIA played a role in the lava Jato, which led to the cool Dilma and the election of Bolsonaro. We're also calling for further investigations into genocide of indigenous in Kilimbola communities and calling on multinational calling for an investigation and congressional investigation on multinational corporations, such as Cargill and their role in, you know, driving this on the land. And then finally, we made a commitment to return in October 2020 to observe the elections. So that was, excuse me. 2022. 2022. Excellent. I have a few more hellos I want to share with you. This is Adam just hopped on tuning in from Taiwan and Tewa lands, am I saying that correctly, they want you are and greetings from the children of Sun Island Salash Spokane tribal territory. So, yeah. Let's talk about what what would you personally and also the Progressive International delegation proper. What, what can you suggest we as activists do to follow up on on your delegation findings, what do you need us to do and how can we do it. So, we issued a sort of final statement on the delegation and I can share it with you and you can share with others. We have several action items, but I think, you know, the biggest, the biggest way that we can kind of make the amplify these voices is to go to the PV website and read their documents on genocide, which is a P I B O F C L which is O F I C I a L O R G, where they have all the information that you need and they have their calls to action and how you can support indigenous people. But also, I think we need to look at how what role the United States plays in all of this and especially the corporations and our consumption because this is an imperialist relation. And, you know, the, the, the economics of imperialism are driving this deforestation so we do it's not just a national project of the Bolsonaro government. But it's also the United States is directly benefiting from this and as well as European nations, because we are a beef consuming nation, right and it's not just about making, you know, I respect people who are vegans about it's not just about making the national choices which are good to, you know, to avoid these products, but it's also investigating the supply chains, and regulating them, and also calling for a different mode of how we eat and consume in this country because right now it's not sustainable it's literally destroying it's burning up the lungs of the planet in the Amazon. And the final thing to and this is a this is a request that I had by the lens workers movement. We need to investigate how pensions in the United States are being invested in land privatization in Brazil. I just did a quick Google search. And you will see it brought up so much. So this is something that you know there are so many fronts. And we owe it to our brothers and sisters are relatives or comrades who are on the front lines, whether they're part of the social movements, whether they're part of the opposition parties whether they're indigenous kilambolo communities, we owe it to them, because we, we play a huge role in this, and we may not see it. But you know where we get our cheeseburgers where we get our food directly impacts the Amazon, and it's up to us to make those decisions and to transform this social system here that we, we have control of in the United States, or ostensibly have control over to pressure certain people individuals and institutions, but also to to build an alternative that this that our way of life doesn't have to be predatory or parasitic on others. That is so true. I have to say, I was in South America quite a number of countries earlier this year. And I remember talking with a person who used to work in the in the United States, not a US citizen was back home. And he said, you know, in order for you, you know me as a US citizen, you to have the life you have the consumer products you have the diet you have as you mentioned with the beef cattle. For you to stay wealthy with consumer products and food products, we have to remain poor. I mean, this was somebody a friend personal friend who spent years in the United States with a high education, and, you know, to sit over a beer and hear that come back, you know, in a, you know, in a non aggressive manner but to hear that reality that for you to have what you have you Terry and your fellow US citizens, we have to remain poor. And I think that's the entire global sell for basically the last 500 years. And this is a food. This is a food rich country. There's so much food that comes from the Amazon. And that's, you know, created locally and produced locally within Brazil. But why are people starving, you know why are people going hungry. And that's that's the question this is the dynamics of imperialism we have a role to play in that and so, you know, we have to own up to a responsibility. Because there are so many beautiful alternatives to that kind of extractive project going on, you know, on the ground where there's the MST the MTS T the indigenous mobilizations. They are very inspirational like the movements are very powerful and strong their leaders are amazing and we have so much to learn from them. And they have, they have the alternative and so it's our job to support them and to ensure that they have a fair and democratic process. Because we know that the CIA isn't has, you know, the US isn't has inserted itself in their democratic process. So let's so is there anything that that you'd like to say before I let you go this evening. Anything that I've missed, or that you want to reiterate or I would just like to say that being in Luta pela vida was life altering for me it was. I don't know how to put it into words is it was very not only was it like a spiritual experience but it was very like empowering to see all the different groups of indigenous people come together and they're diverse, much like the United States they're very diverse in their language their culture their customs, the, you know, the things that they wear everything, you know, the way that they carry themselves. And it was just, it was just a reminder that there's so much at stake in this moment in time that we can't really be in a hostages to a politics of cynicism that here you have the most, you know, one of the most diverse groups sectors of society and Brazilian society that travel days and mobilized right because they have an alternative they have, you know, they're in there and it's not just an exclusive thing for indigenous people, but they understand the role that they play in this broader movement. And to me and for me like, you know we're in this moment where there seems to be like a lack of mobilization on the ground under Biden, people may be fatigued because of the pandemic and four years but you know there are movements that are going on right now that are historic and very revolutionary and, you know, we, we need to pull ourselves out of that kind of that that politics of cynicism and pessimism and really look at the very positive social movements that are underway right now, especially coming from the south, because we have so much to learn from them, and especially their collective power their discipline nature or just so mind blowing, it's beautiful. I mean, it's really inspiring to hear you say this, because this is part of who you are as a person as well your family, your family heritage and so for you to be inspired is very powerful for me to hear I am. I see what indigenous nations people are doing across the planet, and including in the United States. And I guess for me it's really powerful to see the difference and important to understand the difference. Among a nation of people who see themselves as integrated with nature as part of the web of the entire earth versus being in a paradigm where human beings rule over everything. And it's just to me that is that is a paradigm that is that is basically going to prove to be the vanguard of humanity we either accept that we're part, and you know, and not though the rulers over everything on the planet, but we're part of the entire web. And yeah, it and I just, I don't know how to how to teach people that except to have someone like you come back and talk with us and inspire everyone to take a, you know, a different a different look and and start an evolutionary process of changing systems for changing systems. Yeah. And starting with our own system in the United States so. So thank you Nick, really wonderful to see you. I'm so thankful for your time this evening. And I want to just remind our viewers that you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America code pinks weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday on code pink you to live 730pm Eastern, and also be sure to catch code pink radio every Thursday morning 11am Eastern 830am or 1111am Eastern 8am Pacific excuse me on WBA I radio out of New York City and simulcasting on WPFW out of Washington DC. And so thanks again, Nick I'd love to have you come back and talk with us and keep this conversation going and, and connect the dots for all of us throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, because it's particularly egregious now in Brazil but this is something that is happening pretty much everywhere. So, okay. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate your time this evening. Thanks so much.