Sweeney Channel 4, February 3, also on video AT LAST we have an alternative to those moralising environmentalist documentaries that blame peasant farmers for the devasta tion of the rain forests of South Anne-Marie Sweeney's tim Amazon Sisters centres on the vast industrial revolution that is turning an area bigger than Europe into a vast mineral extracton and steing coul olex, leaving a lunar landscape of smoke and dust in the heart of Brazi's Amazon jungle.
Here giant ironworks, financed by the World Bank and by Japanese and European captal, use charcoa/ as fuel, regarding the forests as expendable raw material in the rush to exploit up to 18 bilion tons of iron ore reserves.
Up to 900 square mies of forest each year could be burned simply to fuel this one complex, and leaving a perpetual haze of smoke and polt. on over vast tracts of barren ground.
In South Pará, a huge hydro-electric dam called for the creation of a lake larger than some European countries. When contractors failed to complete the forest clearance on time, the floodwaters from the dam rotted the vegetation, spawning vast numbers of insects, among which do zo previousy crown surers of mosquito. This in turn has trig gered an epidemic of malaria among the local people still trapped in nearby settlements. Lesbian and Gay liberation As the malaria spread, so health care spending has been cut: now the environment minister has sancsoned spraying the area with insecticides including ODT - banned in Europe. Last time around, the spraying killed crops and even chic.
Deforestation is itself big bustness. Around the regional imber capital Paragominas are 600 saw mills employing men, women and children working in clouds of noxious dust and using potentally lethal equoment.
On the edge of the sawmills, char. coal workers oke out a tough exist. ence in makeshift shacks amid constant smoke and noide - the buk of the work done by women.
Even the tokenistic Environmental Reserve has its ulterior motives - owned by one of the most profitable firms in Brazil, known as The Vale. For Vale bosses, the issue is not the forest but their C3.5 bilion scheme do explot the minerals that le beneath it. In the meantime the forest s protected by strong-arm forest police evicting the peasant familos who once lived there.
All this is the backdrop against which Amazon Sisters constantly focuses on the stucouragecus struggle of women - their tight to organise. their wilingness to taike action including strikes and land occupations, and. in significant cases. to win victories against overwhelming oods.
The women toll their own stories, face to camera, recounting the problems and the battles of their lives with awesome cheerfulness. Many explain how central are their union organisations which have provided the strength and solidarity that enabled them to fight on.
As the fim progresses, this posi tive message of resistance and class action emerges more consist. ently to the fore. One of the organisers recounts in detail the victonious land occupation led by women which in 1984-5 secured the 3,000home settlement of Marabá-Liberthat has been buit up, the fruts of collective struggle followed by collec. Sive planning - again run by women.
Union action secured electricity supplies 10 the town, and acoon dy the unlon also forced the closure of charcoal ovens which were polluting the air.
The film shows union organisers and activists, including a vigorous lambada fund-raising party that dious organisers of 'socials' in BriVisual images link with the words to point up the paradoxes of the Amazon: homes blighted by malaria caused by hydro-electric schemes whích lack electricity, families ousted Why then do Outrage! leaflet schools without trying to cooperate with NUT members?
Believeit or not, lesbian and gay teachers do exist - even in Catholic schools - and there are even straight teacherssympatheticto positive images of lesbians and gay men within education.
Leaflets
Just bouncing inand handing out lentlets showing lesbians and gay men kissing, to some what bemused school students is not a serious campaign around positive images and anti-heterosexist education.
In tact it may not be must counterproductive in some cases, but could easily be dangerous for lesbian and gay students and teachers who may not feel their environment safe enough to come out. by cattle- ranchers who can afford neither meat nor mik; the lush tertilty of the remaining forest, contracted with the cust-bow created by captalism.
With so many images, i may seem mean to point to two omissions. There is no sign of the employers" life-style or that of local management to counterpose to the poverty of those they axploit. And the exclusive focus on women leaves out any discussion of the role played by men in the struggles. The very few visual images of men appear to suggest most are cowed, passive, defeated, in contrast to the zest and tenacity of the women.
Yet it is this tremendous strength, the capacity of the women to tight back, developing a modem-day version of the fearsome 'Amazon' female warriors who struck fear into the hearts of the Romans, which is the abiding message of the film.
If you missed Amazon Sisters on Channel 4, make sure you or your organisation get hold of the video, available for sales and hire from Oxford Film & Video Makers, The Stables, North Place, Oxford ОХЗ 9НУ (0665-60074).
Direct action certainly has a central role in challenging lesbian and gay oppression, bu lesbian and gay workers and students have got to be collec.
tively involved and not merely passive observers of this highly individualistic method of operating.
From the tone of their recent adverts in the lesbian and gay press, it seems Outrage! are frustrated by the passivity of the lesbian and gay movement.
This passivity fined to lesbians and gay men.
After thirteen years of savage and now with an appallingly right-wing Labour opposition, the vast majority of the WOrKINg CHiSS passive. Stunts, no matter how exciting are not going to reverse this situation - electroshock therapy never works.