After Two Murders, a Brazilian Indigenous Leader Steps Up the Fight

[Judi Lynn]

Indigenous Guarani at a vigil in Sao Paulo for British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, June 23, 2022. ANDRE PENNER / AP

INTERVIEW

In an interview with e360, Beto Marubo, a leader of Brazil’s Indigenous Amazon people, discusses the recent murders of an activist and a journalist and excoriates President Jair Bolsonaro for opening Indigenous territories to a host of environmentally destructive activities.

BY JILL LANGLOIS • SEPTEMBER 1, 2022

n June, an advocate for the Amazon’s Indigenous groups and a journalist accompanying him were murdered in Brazil’s Javari Valley, a dense stretch of forest — larger than Austria — that has the highest concentration of uncontacted Indigenous groups in the world. The advocate, Bruno Pereira, was working to stop the relentless incursions by miners, loggers, narco-traffickers, fishers, and hunters who are illegally encroaching on Indigenous land under the regime of Brazil’s nationalist president, Jair Bolsonaro, which has refused to enforce environmental and territorial laws.

Beto Marubo, a prominent Indigenous leader in Brazil and coordinating member of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA), was a friend of Pereira’s and has been working alongside him to protect the Javari Valley, whose location on the border with Peru and near Colombia has made it especially susceptible to illegal incursions. Eight men suspected of belonging to an illegal fishing gang in the Amazon have been arrested in connection with the murders of Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, who was researching a book called How to Save the Amazon.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Marubo describes the crucial work that Pereira was doing to enable Indigenous groups to monitor and protect their territories; talks about how, under Bolsonaro, Brazil’s agency to protect Indigenous lands and people, known as FUNAI, has virtually stopped defending Indigenous territories; and explains how Bolsonaro’s anti-Indigenous policies have led to an increase in murders of Indigenous leaders and a sharp rise in environmental destruction.

“All of [these] factors were caused by the absence of the Brazilian government in the Amazon,” says Marubo. “Organized crime is taking over this void left by the state.”



More:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/after-two-murders-a-brazilian-indigenous-leader-steps-up-his-fight