CAPITALIST "PROGRESS"

For thousands of years tribes have lived in isolated parts of the Amazon jungle without contact with the so-called "civilised" world. Sometimes this contact turns out disastrously. "Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night. ... Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhao . "She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said." (Daily Telegraph, 10 January) Capitalism, with its ceaseless drive for profits is always catastrophic for tribal society. RD