Word: yanomami
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...past three weeks dynamiting airstrips used by thousands of garimpeiros, or prospectors. Lured to the Brazil-Venezuela border by one of the world's richest deposits of gold, the garimpeiros have not only damaged a precious patch of rain forest but have also threatened the survival of the Yanomami, the Amazon's largest Stone Age tribe...
This marks the government's second major effort to force miners off Yanomami lands. In May troops blew up 14 landing strips and drove out all but 8,000 of the 40,000 invaders. No sooner had the soldiers left, however, than the garimpeiros returned and rebuilt some of the airstrips. Says Joao Carlos Nicolli, regional administrator of the federal Indian agency: "The big gold lords weren't touched in the first operation. It was a show for the foreigners." He thinks the government is more serious this time. One sign: troops destroyed an airstrip belonging to Jose Altino Machado...
Donning army fatigues, Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello boarded an air force SuperPuma helicopter last week and flew over the dense rain forest of Roraima in the northern Amazon. The region is home to the Yanomami, a stone-age tribe threatened with extinction. For the past three years, their federally protected lands have been devastated by gold prospectors, whose search for riches has led to the deaths of an estimated 1,200 Indians from the 9,000-member tribe, largely through disease. Last October a federal court ordered the miners to leave the territory. But hundreds remained, using crude...