Episode 02 – The impact of mining on the indigenous people of Brazil
Intro
Hello and welcome to My Speed News Podcast, your beginners Portuguese News Source.
I’m Vlad, your Brazilian Portuguese teacher and today we’re talking about the impact of mining on the indigenous people of Brazil.
The biggest indigenous reserve in Brazil, the Yanomami reserve, in the Amazon region, is facing a humanitarian crisis. The increase in the number of deaths among the Yanomami people has been caused by the destruction of forests, the pollution of water with mercury and the spread of diseases. These are all results of artisanal mining, called garimpo in Portuguese.
Context
But before we get to it, let me explain the format of this podcast.
This podcast is aimed at beginners and intermediate students, so if you’re starting to have conversations in Portuguese, this content will be perfect for you for three reasons. It will help you keep up with the latest in Brazilian news, it will expand your vocabulary, and, through tips that I’ll give you, it will equip you with tools to better use the language beyond the topic at hand.
So let ‘s get to it, or as we say in Portuguese, bora lá!
Vocabulary tip 1
The first tip today regards the translation for the word “half”, as we have two options in Portuguese. Depending on the context, the words “meio” and “metade” can be used.
When you’re talking about a subsection of a group, you can only say “metade de” to say “half of”. So imagine we ordered 4 pizzas and 2 or them were pepperoni, we could only say:
Metade das pizzas é de pepperoni. = Half of the pizzas are pepperoni.
But most of the time the words “metade” and “meio” are more or less synonyms.
So to say “I ate half of the pizza.” you can say both:
Eu comi metade da pizza.
or
Eu comi meia pizza.
Because Pizza is feminine “a pizza”, we use “meia” instead of “meio”
Another word that we commonly deal with in halves is “hora”, “hour”, when talking about time, which is also feminine.
So how would you say “It’s half past twelve” in Portuguese?
TIC-TOC-TIC-TOC
The answer is “Agora é meio dia e meia”.
The word “dia” is masculine, hence “meio dia”.
But why do we say “meia” and not “metade” when referring to hour?
This happens because some usages have taken precedence over their synonyms over time. So even though technically we could talk about “metade de uma hora” for “half an hour”, to a Brazilian this would sound a bit weird. So always say “meia hora” instead.
——
The word “meio” has another meaning that is relevant for today’s story.
“Meio” can also mean “medium”.
The expression “o meio ambiente” could be literally translated as “the surrounding medium”, but the best translation, especially when discussing nature and ecology, is actually “the environment”.
Vocabulary tip 2
The second vocabulary tip today also reffers to the word “meio”, because it has another meaning that is relevant for today’s story.
“Meio” can also mean “medium”.
So the expression “meio ambiente”, even though could be literally translated as “the surrounding medium”, especially when discussing nature and ecology, the best translation is actually “the environment”.
So in the context of today’s story the word “meio” in “meio ambiente” has nothing to do with “half”, even though it could be argued that we’ve half destroyed the environment.
As you can see, the word “meio” han many, many meanings. If you’re curious you can check the other meanings in the transcription of the podcast at bestwayportuguese.com
Vocabulary tip 3 (only written)
Portuguese and Spanish have a huge overlap in terms of vocabulary, but some words that are present in both languages sometimes have completely different meanings.
In today’s story you’ll see the word “apelido” that means “nickname” in Portuguese, but if you’re familiar with Spanish, you know that apellido means “surname” in that language.
So my advice is to take advantage of your Spanish knowledge wisely, knowing the ones that might make for embarrassing mistakes, like pelado meaning bald in Spanish but naked in Portuguese. You’ll find some more important examples in the transcript.
Pronunciation tip
Now to our pronunciation tip.
Pronunciation in Portuguese is quite consistent, but there are words with no cues to show how to exactly pronounce them.
The word people can be the plural of “person”, and in Portuguese this will be “pessoa”, singular and “pessoas”, the plural.
Now, when the word people means a connected group that forms a nation, its pronunciation, well, needs some attention.
In the singular form the word “people” is “povo”. Here the first O sound is what we call a closed O, meaning your mouth is not as open in comparison to the sound we’ll see next.
And this other sound can be found in its plural, Englsih: “peoples”, and in Portuguese “povos”, with an open O sound.
Um povo => dois povos
Now pay close attention, and see if you can catch the difference when I say
an indigenous people = Um povo indígena
many indigenous peoples = Muitos povos indígena
Um povo (singular), dois povos (plural)
Cultural tip
And now to our cultural tip.
Using Google translate won’t help much sometimes, as we need some cultural insight to fully understand a word in context. That’s the case for the word “bancada”.
Bancada literally means “bench”, but in politics it means something else.
To explain it fully I need to show you how they work.
So, in spite of what our constitution says, many politicians voted against indigenous rights recently.
The Brazilian constitution guarantees that indigenous people have the right to their land but the House of Representatives decided that there is a date by which indigenous land had to be occupied for them to have the right to own it.
This date became known as Marco Temporal, in Portuguese, and could be understood as a time limit. The law passed earlier this year, 2024 says that any land that wasn’t occupied at the time of the establishment of the Constitution, wich is in 1988, can’t be claimed by indigenous people, in spite of traditional ownership.
The politicians that voted for the establishment of such a date are part of an unofficial group, a political faction, known to had been financed by the agricultural industry.
But why am I telling you this now? well, these different groups of politicians are called “bancadas”, literally “benches”, specifically these landowner advocates form a group called “bancada do boi”, or “bull bench”.
So when you hear about “a bancada da bíblia” (the bible bench) they’re talking about the evangelical lobby, or when you hear about “a bancada da bala” (the bullet bench) they’re talking about gun rights advocates inside the house.
Bíblia, boi e bala (bible, bull and bullet), or BBB, form the holy trinity of conservative lobby in modern day Brazilian politics.
Today’s story covers some of what “bancada do boi”, “the bull bench” has been up to recently.
Intro da história
In today’s story you’ll understand a bit more about indigenous people’s rights and struggles in the context of mining and political disputes.
História em português
O Brasil tem muitos povos indígenas, são mais de 250 povos. O censo de 2022 mostra que o Brasil tem um pouco mais de um milhão e meio de pessoas indígenas em todos os estados, de norte a sul.
O estado com mais indígenas é o Amazonas, na região norte. Quase metade dos indígenas do Brasil está na região norte. Um dos povos que vivem nessa região é o povo Yanomami.
O povo Yanomami vive na maior reserva indígena do Brasil, com mais de 30 mil pessoas. Apesar de ser o maior grupo indígena do país, atualmente o povo Yanomami enfrenta uma crise humanitária. O maior responsável por essa crise é o garimpo ilegal.
O garimpo é um tipo de mineração que usa técnicas simples para encontrar pedras preciosas. Apesar de simples, essas técnicas são muito ruins para os rios e para o solo porque usam mercúrio e destroem florestas.
As consequências da atividade dos garimpeiros é grave para o povo indígena e para o meio ambiente. Apesar disso, muitos políticos defendem os garimpeiros.
Esses políticos fazem parte da “bancada do boi”. Esse é o apelido de um grupo de políticos que defende os interesses dos proprietários rurais. Em geral esse grupo é contra os direitos indígenas.
Felizmente a constituição brasileira é muito clara. Ela garante que os povos indígenas têm direito à terra, à assistência e à proteção.
As reservas indígenas são uma das poucas áreas preservadas no Brasil. Por isso, defender os direitos dos povos indígenas é um dever moral, mas também uma maneira de preservar o meio ambiente.
Extra Practice
Now, if you want to take this practice further, I’ll give you the meaning of some of the words and expressions that you might have missed. Write them down and, as you listen again to the story, tick the ones you managed to understand the second time around.
Apesar de = in spite of
Ruim = bad or harmful
O solo = the soil
garimpo = mining
pedras preciosas = precious stones or gems
proprietários rurais = rural landowners
Um dever moral = a moral duty
Apelido = nickname
Now you can go and listen again paying close attention to these words.
CTA
Now, if you want to take this pactice even further, you can have access to the transcript of this podcast, to do so, go to bestwayportuguese.com. There you’ll find more tips, an exclusive audio version of this story with a natural speed, closer to what you could expect from a native Brazilian in a conversation, and other recordings of the same story read by our tutors from other parts of the country, so you can also practice with different accents.
There you’ll also be able to book a lesson with one of our amazing tutors and practice what you’ve just learned.
That’s all for today, thanks for listening. Até a próxima!
