The team of Heks Eper, a Swiss agency that supports the CESE, was in Salvador on Saturday (14) for a monitoring visit of the Country Program – Quadrienniun 2016-2020. To demonstrate the scope and effects of the partnership with the agency, a visit was made to communities on the Island of Maré, which experience repeated violations of rights increasing from the growing presence of petrochemicals around the Todos os Santos Bay.
The Vanderlei Pinho Museum houses the story of the arrival of the quilombola communities to the region
The morning and early afternoon was destined to the Toxic tour, which consists of a tour guided by fishermen and women shellfish collectors to the Bay of Aratu, on the border between the municipalities of Salvador, Simões Filho and Candeias. The proposal was to denounce the industrial contamination that slaughters the region, debating on the environmental and social impacts suffered by the local communities.
After the Toxic Tour, a dialogue was held with women, children, and young people from the Island of Maré. At the moment, fishermen, fisherwomen and women shellfish collectors shared not only the resistance they encounter daily, but they told the stories of their people, the natural and cultural treasures that feed the dream, the utopia and the desire to remain united and united in their ancestral territories.
At the sound of the hymn “Fence in the waters, overturn!”, chanted by the community and visitors, energetically, the visit to the Maré Island was finalized, with the request that the agency Heks Eper joins the mobilization and also to be a voice in the process of criminalization that the local leaderships have been suffering and the violations of the human rights of the peoples of the region.