Oxford letter for the Amazon

Abstract

This is a collective document signed by indigenous and peasant representatives, politicians, civil society members, students, artists, activists, researchers and academics. It was approved during the fifth workshop of the Agrocultures network, which took place in Oxford in January-February 2020, at a moment when the Amazon was facing increasing levels of destruction, aggression and nothing short of a genocide. In many ways, the Amazon is the most crucial contemporary experiment of environment and development, where irrational, anti-people, anti-nature and anti-intelligence measures are being adopted, regardless of the will and the needs of most of its population. Old and perverse mechanisms of conquest and colonisation have been revitalised in the name of economic growth and national integration. This has resulted in a trail of violence, stupidity and systemic abuses associated with new roads, dam construction, mining, timber extraction and, more than anything else, agribusiness. In more recent years, a new round of projects and market-friendly conservation initiatives under the hegemony of global financial capital is threatening even the small concessions secured through a difficult struggle since the 1980s, including the establishment of a few national parks and the recognition of some indigenous lands and peasant areas. The departure point of the workshop was the recognition of the inequalities produced by development-as-economic-growth and the associated asymmetry of gains and losses, as well as an appreciation of the creativity, inventiveness and courage of marginalised, subaltern groups. Despite their apparent poverty, these groups have a lot to offer and are ready to take on any challenge. These are the visible invisible, the voices of the silent majority and the oppressed minorities; they represent what is colourful, valuable and alive in the Amazon, the living proof that the region had a long, miserable past, has a turbulent present but, because of its people, can also nourish a much better future.