Bøker av Jan Rocha

Brazil In Focus is an authorative and up-to-date guide to the giant of Latin America.

In July 1993, near Haximu, a tiny hamlet in the Amazon rainforest, a fateful meeting between a group of young Yanomami Indians and Brazilian gold miners resulted in the massacre of the Yanomami. News of the tragedy shocked Brazil and the world. But mysteries remained: What exactly happened at Haximu? How many people died? Who killed the Indians and why? Using eyewitness accounts, this work tells the story behind the Haximu massacre. Set in the context of the Amazon gold rush, it describes the failings of Brazil's official indigenous policy, the tragic cultural misunderstanding between the gold miners and Yanomami, and analyzes the role of gold fever in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and its people.

Access to land is one of the key issues for developing countries - and Brazil has one of the most inequitable land distributions in the world, with vast tracts of land held by often absentee landowners. Meanwhile thousands of peasants live in marginal lands in cities and rural areas. The Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST) has proved a huge success with the disenfranchised rural and urban poor in Brazil - becoming one of the largest social movements in the world. Cutting the Wire is the first account in English of the origins, history and current challenges faced by Brazil's poor majority. The authors have traveled the vast expanse of the country to record the words and actions of hundreds of activists who have taken their lives into their own hands. Cutting the Wire is how the MST describes the act of occupying the land, the cornerstone of their movement. It is the baptism of fire for the militant, an essential part of their identity and it plays a key role in the mistica, the moment of collective ritual that kicks off all MST events. Cutting the Wire is the story of the MST told in their own words, in vivid first-hand accounts of a continuing struggle.