Amazon Indigenous are leaving rainforest for cities, and finding urban poverty

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE
Associated Press

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP) — Thousands of Amazon Indigenous are leaving their rainforest villages in a migration to urban areas that is reshaping their lives, their villages and their new cities. Some of the migrants are seeking a better education than they can get in village schools that they say are in shambles from poor maintenance and lack of government oversight. Others may have found themselves ensnared in a city after traveling long distances to collect a federal welfare benefit. One tribe in the western Amazon, the Matis, says almost half its people now live in the impoverished Brazilian city of Atalaia do Norte. Tribal leaders worry that their villages and culture will wither while their people are mired in a new urban poverty.