If only for the fact that I'm putting it up:
"High school students explore Amazon, Brazilian tribes" by Lindsey Anderson | Associated Press, August 07, 2012
Eight Massachusetts high school students returned to the United States Monday with unique stories to tell after spending two weeks in the Amazon.
The Wilbraham & Monson Academy students and their chaperones studied conservation, land issues, and two indigenous tribes in western Mato Grosso state, as well as how to catch dinner while avoiding stingrays, piranhas, and anacondas....
16-year-old Jessica Smith said via phone from Pirenopolis, Brazil, on Friday, the trip, the fourth by school students to the Amazon, was a ‘‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’’ for someone from a small town to live on a river and visit with members of native tribes.
The group entered one Kamayura village just in time to witness a coming-of-age ceremony.
There, a recent graduate and the chaperones received traditional Kamayura scratches, a form of administering medicine. The tribe warrior rakes the skin with a dog-fish-tooth comb, draws blood and rubs medicinal compounds into the wound....
As in the United States, indigenous groups in Brazil have fought squatters, landless workers, and ranchers, some of whom have lived in the area for decades, for access to their ancestral lands.
The group donated eight cows to the tribe, the village’s first source of meat in weeks....
Although they have enjoyed their time abroad, the teenagers say they are looking forward to certain comforts of home, like pizza and manicures....
Before 16-year-old Maria Slater jetted off to Brazil, someone told her she was too high-maintenance to survive the Amazon unscathed.
But the high school junior has traipsed through jungle, climbed waterfalls, and seen all sorts of creepy-crawlies, from frogs to scorpions to a tarantula.
‘‘I've learned that I'm tougher than I think I am,’’ she said. ‘‘At the end of the trip, I'm so much stronger than at the beginning.’’
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"Brazil’s Truth Commission to investigate church" by Stan Lehman |
Associated Press, November 08, 2012
SAO PAULO — The Truth Commission investigating human rights abuses
committed by Brazil’s former dictatorship will also look into the role
Catholic and evangelical churches played during the 1964-1985 military
government.
Established last year by President Dilma Rousseff, the commission
will investigate whether pro-dictatorship clergy committed human rights
abuses, or supported members of the military responsible for such
abuses.
Rousseff herself is a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned for
more than three years and tortured during the dictatorship. She signed
the law establishing the commission, which was given two years to
conclude its investigation into the torture, murder, and forced
disappearances of people opposed to the dictatorship.
See: Brazilian Gender Bender
Brazil has never punished military officials who committed human
rights abuses. A recent study by the Brazilian government concluded last
year that 475 people were killed or ‘‘disappeared’’ by agents of the
military regime.
‘‘The activities of the clergy who opposed the dictatorship as well
as the actions of religious groups that backed the regime will be
analyzed,’’ said commission member Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who will head
the investigation.
The church saw the coup d’etat as a strike against communism, said
Fernando Altemeyer, a theologian at the Catholic University of Sao
Paulo.
A coup that was supported by the CIA.
But the church decided it could no longer support the military
government when it saw that the regime was imprisoning and torturing
real and feared opponents, Altemeyer said.
Advocates say that investigating who was involved in the abuses is essential if Brazil is to move forward.
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I support truth in all matters no matter how painful.
Related: Chile's Catholic House of Horrors
And I thought the pedophile priests scandals were bad....
If I come across any other Brazil-related stories as I sift through my Globes I will update.
UPDATES:
"There is something unsettling about placing art work dominated by a
massive masked subject near the entrance to South Station, the city’s
major railway station. Bostonians may lack knowledge of the vernacular
of Brazilian street art. But the artists from Brazil may be a little
fuzzy on Boston sensibilities, too. This is still the city of origin of
the passenger jets used by Al Qaeda hijackers to attack the World Trade
Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Yeah, except it turns out Muslims didn't do 9/11; Israel and her helpers in various western governments and intelligence agencies did -- if what we even saw was true.
Brazilian artists may not care. Their government doesn’t seem to. It
hasn’t bothered even to enact anti-terrorism legislation. As a result,
the FARC, Hamas, and other terrorist groups comfortably conduct their
financial transactions in Brazil. It’s not a big topic of conversation
in the art world. But it is a subject of considerable concern among
international security experts who contemplate the 2016 Olympics in Rio
de Janeiro.
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Also see: Oscar Niemeyer, 104, celebrated Brazilian architect
