Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in Washington last week meeting with President Biden, talking about the climate crisis and preserving the Amazon. The meeting came just over a month after supporters of Brazil’s former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, attempted a coup shortly after Lula’s inauguration. This week Bolsonaro announced he plans to return to Brazil to lead the opposition.
The people from the city, the non-Indigenous society, are listening to what I have to say. You asked me, “What does President Lula represent?” For me, my people, the Indigenous people of Brazil, he has thought about us. He has thought about how to resolve the problems that we’ve been been facing for so many years. For me, Lula is a positive person. He is like a friend. He is like a friend of the forest peoples. He wants to save the life of my Yanomami people and to save the lives of our rivers, our forests. He is a very good thinker. He has planned thinking. He has promised to remove the miners from the Yanomami territory. He has also promised to minimize the deforestation of the Amazon forests. So he is following through on his word. He is the only president who has been elected on the ticket of helping the forest peoples, helping the Indigenous people of Brazil, and other persons who really need help. So, he was very good.
He went to visit us in Boa Vista on January 21st. He went to Boa Vista to see up close, to meet our children who are suffering malnutrition, illness and hunger. So he
— source democracynow.org | Feb 17, 2023