For journalist Eliane Brum, visiting Barcelona or any big city is a trip to the outskirts. “For me, the center of the world is the Amazon,” he explained Tuesday during a meeting with journalists at the CCCB. “I see the center as places of life and nature, as opposed to places where their destruction is favored.”
Recognized as her country’s most awarded journalist, Brum has dedicated more than 30 years to covering the deforestation of the great Amazon rainforest and its consequences for climate change. In 2017, she decided to settle in Altamira, one of the centers of destruction in the Amazon, to be able to “say from the front line” what she considers a “war”.
“We are at war,” he said. “Perhaps less visible or less attractive to the press, but it is much larger, it started before and will end after any other armed conflict. » This is why Brum claims to feel like a war correspondent who tells from the ground how “big companies” and “complicit governments” are destroying the great lung of the planet.
“We accept as normal that a minority modifies the climate and morphology of the planet,” he lamented. “We no longer have time to stop this crisis and we must act on behalf of children recently born and those who will be born in the future. »
The reporter and documentarian, author of eight books and four documentaries, collaborator of The Guardian, The New York Times And The Country, arrived in Barcelona to become the second participant in the CCCB international residency program, succeeding the journalist from New Yorkers Patrick Radden Keefe.
Brum will reside in the city for the next three months and will participate in conferences, seminars and student lectures. She will also advise the CCCB on an exhibition on the Amazon and will be the curator of the series “The Jungle is a Woman”, in which she will bring together various activists and indigenous leaders from the Catalan capital.
The journalist considers the Amazon rainforest to be a woman, not only because we call her feminine, but also because of the history of abuse she has suffered. “Both are bodies that the world allows itself to violate, invade, empty and abandon,” he underlines. “It’s a logic in which we still operate today.”
Brum recalls that in the Amazon region, violence against women is even higher than in the rest of Brazil. “It is no coincidence that women have acquired great importance today in the defense of the Amazon,” she continues, before recalling that the first indigenous person to hold a public office was a woman. “Many men were corrupted by the plunder of the lands and women mobilized to defend them. »
A region in which journalism is not well regarded
The journalist assures that her move to the epicenter of deforestation is not without risks, hence her comparison with a war correspondent. “Journalism is not well regarded in the region,” he emphasizes. “Journalists and human rights defenders are being murdered. »
The situation is also worsening due to the arrival of organized crime in the region due to the large economic interests at stake. “There may come a time when we will not even be able to enter the jungle to work,” predicts -he. “We already saw it in the favelas, where there were factions that controlled them and prevented journalists from passing through.”
For the journalist, her previous situation, in which she traveled to the Amazon to work and then returned to Sao Paulo, has nothing to do with her new reality. “Now I take a lot more risks because they know where to find me,” he emphasizes. “And it’s also difficult to write stories about my own neighbors.”
Brum’s intention is that over time, indigenous peoples themselves will speak out about what is happening on their lands. That is why, in 2022, he launched the Samaúma journalism platform in which, beyond telling what is happening in the Amazon, they train young local reporters so that they can become future journalists in the jungle.
“We are a team in transition,” he describes. “The project will only succeed if the journalists we train succeed us in the future and can explain their point of view to the world.”
Regarding the contradictions that can appear when combining his work as a journalist with that of an environmental activist, Brum has no doubts. “Anyone who is not an activist in the current context, in which we are in danger as a species…” he reflects. “I worked in major media for 30 years and realized that if I kept doing the same thing, we wouldn’t get anywhere.”
He explains that in Sumaúma, journalism is essential. “We go through verification and correction processes with journalistic criteria and we do not neglect any code of ethics,” he says. “Our commitment to truth and facts is at the center of our work. »
