To whom...,
The issue is that multi-nationals are not following the
illuminating wisdom of the great capitalist philosopher Meyer Lansky who
said "A problem that can be solved with money is not a problem." There
are some Inuit who live north of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who
are living pretty fat and happy since they *sold* their mineral rights to
the oil companies.
From what I understand, the people who really give the Amazon
Indios a hard time are the small time ranchers, farmers (those couldn't be
*family" farmers - the kind of people who eliminated the wolf from America
- could they?) and people who want to make a dirty dollar that will
eventually kill them by separating out gold in the river sediment with
liquid mercury (From what I understand Amazon gold is not commericially
viable for large-scale production). If you consider the number of Amazon
Indios there are and the very reasonable amount of money it would take to
get them to settle, multinationals would clearly find it in their economic
interest to buy the problem out of existence. After all, Merck spent tens
of millions preserving a Costa Rican rain forest just for the rights to
*potential* pharmaceutical discoveries.
I'm certainly not saying capitalist corporations wouldn't steal
instead of buy, but I suspect there is more going on here than a conflict
between multinationals and Yanomami. I suspect that there are a lot more
squeaky wheels looking to get the Green Grease out of Amazon development
rights. The Yanomami can't be looking for that high a price. What seems
more likely to me is that local mandarins are looking to horn in and get
their cut before the Indios do.
The point is, that whether or not the Yanomami get a good price
from the multinationals is moot. What matters is that they are going to
get screwed the same as everybody else unless we alter the nature of
multinationals. The rest is just reformism. Of course it's important to
try and save what might be destroyed or lost forever, but it's not the war
- it's only a side battle.
peace
