18 May
2006 - International — We don’t think the Amazon
should be cut down for chicken feed.
Our investigative report, 'Eating
up the Amazon' showed how soya beans grown in
the Amazon were going into McDonald’s McNuggets.
Well guess what? Soy grown by
clearing the Amazon is also going into the making
of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). And some people
don’t want us to do anything about that.
Here’s a report from Gavin Edwards, our international
forest campaigner:
I’ve been in the Amazon almost
a week now and from the moment I arrived I stepped
into a very polarized battle over the future of
the Amazon. My first indication of the tension
was a bumper sticker on a truck outside the airport
with the words ‘Fora Greenpeace’, meaning ‘Greenpeace
Out’. Many more of these stickers were on trucks
around the town of Santarem. It turns out that
by showing this sticker on your car or truck,
you receive a discount on petrol at a local gas
station.
An editorial in the local newspaper
Journal de Santarem was also quite damning of
Greenpeace, attempting to link us to everything
from hunger to abortion, but of course failed
to discuss the real issue, the ongoing and rampant
deforestation and unsustainable development in
the Amazon.
Our first protest involved simply
parachuting an activist into a soy field with
a message written on the parachute, and even this
was enough to bring out a small group of angry
farmers -- the parachutist had a narrow escape.
Our next attempt to protest at the forest destruction
over the weekend was to have 80 people in a deforested
area to make a human banner, arranging the people’s
bodies to spell out the protest message. This
activity was cancelled due to the strong possibility
of violence from the farmers.
Undeterred by the violence directed
towards us, a team of activists on boats projected
a video on soy and deforestation in front of the
town of Santarem on Saturday night. Many of the
local Gauchos are actually farmers from the south
of Brazil who have recently moved to Santarem
in pursuit of land grabbing and profits from deforestation
and farming. Their reaction was swift.
Within a few minutes a mob assembled
and began firing fireworks at our volunteers.
They assaulted one of our photographers, and the
photographer of a local newspaper as well. This
time it seems the local hooligans (who are a small
minority) went too far, and the mood in Santarem
has swung against them.
The subsequent editorial in
the Gazeta de Santarem is quite different from
earlier criticisms. It deplores the use of violence
by the farmers, questions why the Gauchos are
being violent towards Greenpeace, and wonders
if the Gauchos will next turn on the people of
Santarem with their tactics of fear and intimidation.
The Gazeta de Santarem has front-page
headlines and photos of the soy producers attacking
the photographer, and a quote from one soy producer
saying that Santarem is only full of Indians and
lazy people. Now the bumper stickers on trucks
seem to be fewer and fewer. The tide may well
be turning against the soy producers.
We’re keeping up the pressure
on the big soy producers like Cargill over the
next few days, including unfurling a protest banner
in a deforested area today with the words ‘Kentucky
Fried Chicken – Amazon Criminal’. KFC is the next
target in our corporate campaign after our first
target McDonald's has recently shown a willingness
to end their association with Amazon destruction.
We'll be keeping a close eye on McDonald's but
now it is their competitor KFC who will be put
in the spotlight. One by one, we want to show
these corporations just how much consumers are
going to resist their plunder of the Amazon.
We have more activities planned
in the Amazon, and we’re sure those with an economic
interest in forest destruction will continue with
their violent tactics. For now however, it seems
that peace is beginning to win over violence in
Santarem, and it looks like there is a real chance
that the Amazon may remain mostly green, if our
supporters keep up the pressure.
