reprinted with permission from
Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 107-108

In Brazil, there is no rotation among parliamentarians. They hold onto power forever and are, therefore, always isolated as community politicians. The AMAR is a facility that makes uranium available to the Brazilian Marines which, after the disclosure, after the whole process, was named Parallel Program. In 1991, at the end of last year, the Presidents of Brazil and Argentina signed a bilateral contract for cooperation and mutual help here in Vienna, the seat of the "Mafia", the so-called International Atomic Energy Council. But to this day, neither Brazil nor Argentina have signed the International Agreement for Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. . . .
This year, since the beginning of the year, the military has been very busy trying to secure the "super computer" from the USA -- why and what for? Because just before the ECO '92 in Rio de Janeiro, the president went to the Amazon area in order to symbolically close a shaft in which the first underground bomb testing in Latin America was supposed to take place. So now here comes the "super computer" with which they can simulate every kind of atomic explosion in a room.



Francis Monteiro

Francis Monteiro, Brazil. Co-founder of the Green Party in the State of Sao Paulo, General Secretary of CRAFA-EN.
(This speech was held originally in Portuguese)

My name is Francis Monteiro. I'm here to represent the Green Party of the State of Sao Paulo and a regional administrative body made up of delegates from 30 cities from my area where the atomic complex of the Brazilian Marines is located; the distance from my house: two kilometers.

Although nuclear power is in itself a complicated matter, it's quite easy to explain atomic programs in Brazil: an official one, already mentioned here, based upon a contract of cooperation between Brazil and Germany drawn up in 1975, and another one no one knew about until 1986 when we and a few other people discovered it.

On an ecological reservation of what was left of the "Mate Atlantica", which is used for agriculture, a very large construction site was set up. One could read on posters that spare parts for ships of the Brazilian Marines were being manufactured there although there is no beach there and we are located about 200 kilometers from the nearest Atlantic coast.

Since then, there have been reports here and there from farmers of trucks that came to this construction site in the night. After a few community leaders got moving, there was a report from a journalist from Rio de Janeiro that it was very probable that the Brazilian Marines had begun a secret atomic project.

I don't think anyone has to say anything about the most recent events involving the Brazilian military; not those in Brazil, nor those in all of Latin America.

A year after this discovery -- a year and five months before, the accident at Chernobyl had occurred -- the people were very aware of the process of uncovering this secret project. Public opinion was immediately activated by the community leaders. The movement grew, and a large number of the two million inhabitants of this area were mobilized against this atomic project in that they went out onto the streets and town squares.

On the other hand, for all of that, the military's reaction to us was resounding. Clearly, they tried to silence us; clearly, they tried to fight us; clearly, they tried to create a bad situation for us with regard to public opinion among the communities and towns of this region.

But we carried on to the end. We eventually received the support of the independent scientists of the Brazilian Society for Physics, we received support from some of the alternative press; we received support of all the unions and from various other entities and movements of civilian society. By 1988, we had managed to become the largest pacifist and anti-nuclear movement in the history of Latin America.

In 1989, I discovered a document in the drawers of the regional government saying that the Brazilian constitution requires the protection of the environment when such facilities are being built. And until then, they had always said that such a document was unnecessary because this atomic facility was entirely safe and the most modern of its kind in the world. We had never believed them, and then this document appeared. It was drawn up by a private company and had been in the drawer for more than a year. I had access to this document and we studied it. We passed it onto the press with the condition that it may only be printed in full, because this document described the dangers of a radioactive accident in this facility. This was done and -- obviously -- we were persecuted even more. From that point on, the battle was very uneven. They switched then to a policy of public persuasion. They went to the schools, to the first and second grades, to very young students through the 15-year-olds, and set up competitions on atomic energy in which atomic energy was defended. Valuable prizes were given to the winners. They influenced all the farmers of the region in that they told them that everything was fine and that security was taken care of and that everyone would have to get used to the situation. They influenced the press. They influenced portions of the armed services, particularly the army and the Marines. In short, they influenced everybody and everything so that our movement was more or less beaten.

We never had the opportunity to say this outside of Brazil. When Brazilian politicians were abroad to talk about this, they said practically nothing, either because they didn't know what was going on exactly, or because they didn't want to lose, or it seemed as if they were afraid to lose influence.

In Brazil, there is no rotation among parliamentarians. They hold onto power forever and are, therefore, always isolated as community politicians. The AMAR is a facility that makes uranium available to the Brazilian Marines which, after the disclosure, after the whole process, was named Parallel Program. In 1991, at the end of last year, the Presidents of Brazil and Argentina signed a bilateral contract for cooperation and mutual help here in Vienna, the seat of the "Mafia", the so-called International Atomic Energy Council. But to this day, neither Brazil nor Argentina have signed the International Agreement for Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

It's time for me to close.

This year, since the beginning of the year, the military has been very busy trying to secure the "super computer" from the USA -- why and what for? Because just before the ECO '92 in Rio de Janeiro, the president went to the Amazon area in order to symbolically close a shaft in which the first underground bomb testing in Latin America was supposed to take place. So now here comes the "super computer" with which they can simulate every kind of atomic explosion in a room.

Because time is running out, I'd like to close with a little verse from a great friend of ours:

Thank you.