The murder of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and the confirmation, on June 16, of the discovery of their dismembered and burnt bodies shocked the world. This violence, however, committed under the cloak of impunity and fueled by the current government’s hate speech, is something that native peoples and their defenders have been suffering for decades.
On April 27, Rel UITA (IUF Latin America) launched The Meatpacking Plants Pandemics in digital format, a book that was made possible by the support of Sweden’s Union-to-Union. Ahead of the launch of the printed version in São Paulo next week, we spoke about the book with Doctor Roberto Ruiz, the man behind this work.
In 2020, some ten to twenty thousand indigenous workers were employed in Brazil’s meatpacking plants. The NR36, a norm that regulates health and safety conditions in that industry, cannot be modified without first consulting the indigenous communities that will be affected by any proposed changes. However, indigenous activist and lawyer Fernanda Kaingáng told La Rel that this revision was presented out of the blue, without prior discussion, thus violating the obligation to consult the indigenous peoples concerned, as stipulated by ILO Convention 169.
Meatpacking sector, champion in work-related accidents, defends end of breaks
Over 80 technicians, researchers, professors and doctorates in the worker’s health area sign a manifest in favor of NR 36.
The news was featured on the “crime” pages in the press of both countries: On Tuesday, September 28, over 630 kilograms of toxic agrochemicals were seized in Brazil, after being smuggled into the country from neighboring Uruguay. Brazil has long been the South American emporium of toxic agrochemicals, both legal and illegal. The government of Jair Bolsonaro has now turned the country into a paradise for such substances.
On Wednesday, July 14, state congresswoman Luciane Carminatti met with members of the IUF’s Latin American LGBTI Group to discuss the furthering of public policies for the inclusion of gender-diverse persons in Florianópolis.
From the absence of prior consultations to all kinds of operational irregularities and the failure to conduct a thorough environmental impact study, the port that the multinational corporation Cargill has been operating since 2003 on the Tapajós River, in the Brazilian state of Pará, blatantly ignores the most basic environmental regulations, disregards the rights of local indigenous peoples, and negatively affects the economy of the region.
The beer manufacturing giants were charged following an inspection conducted by the Program for the Eradication of Slave Labor in the state of São Paulo, which found 23 migrant workers subjected to slave-like conditions in one of the distributing companies that the multinational corporations outsource their services to.
Hunger haunts more than half of Brazil’s population, according to a study coordinated by the Food for Justice Research Group and carried out in late 2020 by researchers from the Free University of Berlin, the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and the University of Bras