By Mauricio Matos – Luta Socialista / PSOL
When the Supreme Federal Court – STF decided to publish the images of the ministerial meeting held on April 22 of this year, the Brazilian population was able to observe, astonished, the low level of the debates that take place at the summit that governs the country. Among others, one phrase stood out: “(…) we have to make an effort here, while we are in this moment of tranquility in so far as media coverage is concerned, because they only talk about Covid, to pass the scissors and change all the norms and simplify the rules.”
It was Ricardo Salles, Minister of Environment, in his daily battle to dismantle the entire environmental protection system built in Brazil since the end of the military dictatorship. Previously affiliated to the PFL and DEM, he joined the Bolsonaro government through the New Party quota. Before that, he was Secretary of State for the Environment in the administration of Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB-SP), a period in which there were million-dollar movements in his bank accounts. In one of the actions in which he is being investigated, prosecutors discovered 54 transfers between 2014 and 2017 totaling 2.75 million reales. The money went from his law firm account to his personal account. Tax evasion and money laundering are being investigated.
Salles gathers an extensive criminal record, which led the Federal Prosecutor’s Office to request his dismissal in July of 2020 in a lawsuit for administrative impropriety signed by 12 lawyers of the Republic. The MPF identified four groups of measures adopted by Salles to break the structure of the government’s environmental agencies: regulatory, budgetary, inspection, and transparency / participation disruption. These are decrees, orders, ordinances, reduction of resources for environmental inspection, dismantling of CONAMA (National Environment Council), among others.
He tried to be elected federal deputy in 2018. His ballot number (3006) was a reference to the caliber 30-06, the standard of the US military until the Vietnam War. In his campaign material he openly preached using rifle bullets “against the plague of wild boar” and “against the left and the MST.” Due to his reactionary profile and his performance at the head of the MMA, environmentalists call him “an aide under the orders of the Minister of Agriculture.”
“I can’t breathe”
George Floyd´s words as he was being suffocated by a racist policeman in Minneapolis, USA, translate one of the many serious problems resulting from the fires in the Amazon and the Pantanal. A study carried out by IPAM, IEPS and Human Rights Watch evaluated the impact on human health of the effects of the fires in the Amazon in 2019, associated with deforestation in the region. The peak of hospitalizations occurred in September 2019. It is estimated that air pollution reached some 4.5 million inhabitants in 168 municipalities located on the agricultural frontier between the Cerrado, the Pantanal and the Amazon biome, an area that since the decade of 1980 is known as “arc of fire” or “arc of deforestation.”
Severe cases, which required hospitalization, totaled 2,195, of which 70% were patients identified in two most vulnerable groups: 21% were babies from 0 to 12 months and 49% were elderly over 60 years. And the numbers must be higher, since the study was limited to the health units that are part of the SUS, and the portion of the Amazonian population that does not even have the possibility of being treated in a hospital must also be considered. “The air is unbearable,” sums up a doctor from Rio Branco-AC.
Salles must go! Bolsonaro and Mourão must go!
At the service of US landowners, bankers and economic interests, the Bolsonaro government and its body of reactionary ministers constitute a real danger to the environment in Brazil and the world, with direct repercussions on the health and lives of workers.
Defeating a government that promotes this type of destruction is an urgent task for environmentalists, human rights defenders, workers, women, indigenous peoples, and Quilombola populations. Defeating a government that contributes to putting life on planet Earth at risk is a task for all of us. The air is unbearable. So is this government.