Several thousand Brazilians protested President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right policies by gathering outside the Congress of their country on Wednesday.
The President’s new bills would weaken the Amazon environmental protection and allow mining on Indigenous lands.
Popular singer Caetano Verloso, along with three dozen other Brazilian musicians, called the “Earth Event” to urge legislators to stop the destruction and destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Native people wore feathered headdresses, students carried banners against pesticides in agriculture, and children dressed up as bees mixed in the crowd under a huge inflatable capybara.
Priscila Boores, a professor at the University of Brazil, stated that Brazil’s environment is being endangered by growing agriculture and a government supporting agribusiness.
She told Reuters that the situation was critical and that the government was destroying what little forest remains.
What would the new Brazilian bills mean for the environment?
The bill that was opposed at the rally includes a bill which will grant an official pardon for land grabers who have illegally invaded lands that belonged to the government or were previously inhabited by Indigenous communities for decades.
Other bills would relax the requirements for environmental licensure and increase the number and types of herbicides and pesticides farmers can use.
A fourth bill would allow oil exploration and mining on Indigenous reservations that are protected under the Constitution. This bill will be fast-tracked through Congress by the government. It is based on the argument that the Ukraine war disrupted supplies for fertilisers necessary for grain crops.
Veloso and other musicians met Rodrigo Pacheco at the Senate’s head to ask for his assistance in blocking the bills.
Brazil is at crossroads. Veloso stated that Amazon’s deforestation is out-of-control, violence against Indigenous peoples has increased, and environmental protections are being undermined.
He stated that “our international credibility has been destroyed.”
