20 July 2009

Dear MAP and Friends of the Mangroves:

Life happens when you are planning something else - especially when it’s holiday time!

For this reason, I ask you to be patient and read the latest developments in the "Sirinhaém Situation".

The Sirinhaém fisherfolk community thanks you for your patience. They have been patient in their struggle for the Extrativist Reserve (RESEX). This Reserve will guarantee their way of living and sustain the environment of which the community is part.

The recent facts:

1)     the Public Audience - a key part of the RESEX process - was cancelled. A new date has not been arranged. If the date of the Audience (and its realization) is not arranged immediately, nothing more will happen in the RESEX process. The cause of the cancellation?  Manipulation and machinations of the federal and state authorities at the service of the sugar-alcohol agri-business and the archaic structure it represents in the region

2)     the Sirinhaém Prefecture and the local Sugar Mill (whose violence you are already acquainted with from my other communications with you) are increasing pressure on the local community for them to desist from the RESEX project

... and, much more worrying:

3)     anonymous calls by telephone  to the Fisherfolk Colony (the fisherfolk´s class organization) telling the organization to "forget the RESEX" and that the struggle for the RESEX "is not good" neither for the Colony nor for the fisherfolk

4)     in the latest meeting of ICMBIO with the Colony and the fisherfolk community, the federal organ showed a clear lack of appetite to continue the RESEX process, alleging that it awaits for the state authority to act first to remedy the environment situation in the region ... which is like waiting till hell freezes over. (Inside information tells us that a tsunami of e-mails will help ICMBIO regain its appetite.)

5)     the state government, manipulated as it is by the sugar-baron complex, in an effort to dismantle the RESEX  process, has arranged a meeting for 28-29 August 2009, at a place 500 (five-hundred) kilometres from Sirinhaém to deal with the RESEX process: five hundred kilometres distant from fisherfolk participation and the organizations that support the fisherfolk cause. Pure cynicism in dealing with the public good.

In the light of these facts, the Land Pastoral Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra-CPT) asks you to send an e-mail to the President and the Director of ICMBIO. The message to be sent in Portuguese follows its translation in English. Ask your many friends to also send this message.

Thank you for your attention! Thank you for the Sharing of your holiday time!!  Thank you for your Solidarity!!!

The Sirinhaém Fisherfolk Community thanks you.

Yours sincerely,
Pe. Tiago Thorlby - CPT