Another chapter of the war in the Amazon

The Amazon has become a refuge for drug traffickers and murderers hired by landowners.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
04 August 2022 Thursday 01:48
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Another chapter of the war in the Amazon

The Amazon has become a refuge for drug traffickers and murderers hired by landowners. And in the preserve of a legion of poachers: hunters, miners, fishermen and lumberjacks. Especially dramatic is the case of the Vale do Javari, one of the richest and most threatened areas of the largest tropical forest on the planet. British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira were murdered there in June.

Although their alleged killers have already been arrested, the Brazilian authorities have created the conditions for the tragedy, Survival reports: "Their genocidal attempts to open up indigenous territories to invaders and reward criminals with impunity have led to a dizzying rise in the destruction of forests and the appalling violence against those who try to stop it".

The Vale do Javari, a territory the size of Austria and home to the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world, is under enormous pressure from the massive influx of invaders “desperate to steal its natural resources for profit”, Survival spokespersons add. . There have been many attacks on the base that Funai, the (increasingly sugar-coated) department of Indigenous Affairs in Brazil, has in the area.

In the triangle between Brazil, Peru and Colombia, this corner of the Amazon is home to the largest number of peoples in the world who reject assimilation. And they know why. In many cases, assimilation or contact with civilization is equivalent to extermination for them, as Survival and other organizations have repeatedly denounced. Far from prying eyes, an invisible war is being waged in the largest lung on earth.

The lack of control and the government's laissez faire have led to the jungle attracting cocaine smugglers and businesses such as illegal mining to flourish. Or logging, hunting and poaching. The indigenous are uncomfortable witnesses for those who engage in these clandestine activities. Massacres of entire villages have been documented. Whatever the motive for the killers of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, one thing is certain...

This land is already watered in blood and drags a long series of dramatic chapters. Univaja, the União dos Povos do Vale de Javari for which Bruno Pereira worked, has denounced that the authorities have ignored his repeated warnings that the valley was becoming "a focus of drug trafficking, poaching and mining, with constant threats to the indigenous people who live there and who are trying to stop the invasion.

The native associations began to warn in 2021 of the incursions into the Vale do Javari protected area and unsuccessfully alerted the Prosecutor's Office, the Police and the Department of Indigenous Affairs, which is experiencing a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide syndrome: veteran and responsible officials are being replaced by people related to the anti-indigenous theses of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Dom Phillips, author of numerous chronicles on Brazil and the Amazonian communities in The Guardian, got along very well in the jungle. The same as his friend Bruno Pereira, ethnologist and former official of the federal indigenous agency Funai, who he abandoned when he began to be decaffeinated by the Government. They wanted to investigate the problems of the indigenous people. They were not looking for adventures, as Bolsonaro said, but to uncover injustices.

Dom Phillips, author of numerous chronicles on Brazil and the Amazonian communities in The Guardian, got along very well in the jungle. The same as his friend Bruno Pereira, ethnologist and former official of the federal indigenous agency Funai, who he abandoned when he began to be decaffeinated by the Government. They wanted to investigate the problems of the indigenous people. They were not looking for adventures, as Bolsonaro said, but to uncover injustices.

They were last seen on June 5, in São Rafael, their stopover before reaching Atalaia do Norte after what should have been a two-hour walk. They never arrived. Shortly after, a large part of their belongings appeared in the jungle. The discovery of human remains 24 hours later raised fears for the worst. To say that they were killed by two assassins is a half-truth, because the murderers acted on someone's orders.