On March 24, social organizations demonstrated in Rio do Janeiro’s downtown, outside the headquarters of BNDES, calling to not destine public funds to this initiative, to be built on Xingu river, in the state of Para.

More than half of the territories that the Xingu goes through are protected areas, and only one of the reservoirs will cover an area of 6,140 square kilometers. It is estimated that 20,000 residents of Altamira, Vitoria do Xingu and Brasil Novo would have to abandon their lands and be relocated.

In the mobilization against BNDES, the demonstrators handed in a letter to the bank’s board with an extrajudicial notification that holds the bank solidary liable for environmental damage caused by the dam, the website Consejo Indigenista Misionero (CIMI), reported.

The state-owned bank has decided to fund the consortium calling for bids for the works of Belo Monte, which is scheduled for April 20, but the opposers to the project claim that the public bank cannot support the enterprise with so many failures in the process of granting licenses.

According to the organizations, if the BNDES funds this project, it will be the main responsible for the impacts on the flora and fauna and on the displaced communities.

So far one of the issues which has not been taken into account, according to the organizations, is that the quality of the water of Xingu river will worsen considerably when the hydroelectric project begins operating.

They claim that the environmental authorities ignored the study conducted by experts of the Universidad de Brasilia, warning about the damages the project will cause.

The plans to build Belo Monte began in the late seventies, and stopped as a result of a big mobilization in 1989. For these reasons, people who are critical of the project, like Leonardo Boff, have said that this push for the project could mean a “triumphant return of the military dictatorship”.

The director of the film Avatar, James Cameron, has recently asked the Brazilian government to think about the consequences that the construction of Belo Monte will have on the water of Xingu river. He said so during a visit to the Amazonian city of Manaus, where he participated in an International Forum on Sustainability.

Photo: www.mabnacional.org.br