A Fight for the Amazon’s Future
The miners had to go. Their bulldozers, dredges and high-pressure hoses tore into the land, polluting the water, poisoning the fish and threatening the way life had been lived in this stretch of the Amazon for thousands of years.
So one morning in March, leaders of the Munduruku tribe readied their bows and arrows and crammed inside four boats to drive the miners away. “It has been decided,” said Maria Leusa Kabá, who helped lead the revolt. The showdown was part of a struggle indigenous communities are waging across Brazil. But the battle goes far beyond their individual survival, striking at the fate of the Amazon and its pivotal role in climate change.
In recent years, the Brazilian government has sharply cut spending on indigenous communities, while lawmakers have pushed for regulatory changes championed by industries seeking unfettered access to parts of the Amazon that have been protected under the nation’s Constitution.
Now, Brazil has elected a new farright president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has promised to scale back enforcement of environmental laws, calling them an impediment to economic growth. “Where there is indigenous land,” he said last year, “there is wealth underneath it.”
Long before Mr. Bolsonaro’s victory, descendants of the original inhabitants of the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rain forest, had become vulnerable to miners, loggers and farmers who have been clearing it. From 2006 through 2017, Brazil’s part of the Amazon lost roughly 238,000 square kilometers of forest cover, according to Global Forest Watch.
“He represents an institutionalization of genocide in Brazil,” Dinamã Tuxá, the coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, said of Mr. Bolsonaro’s presidency.
A spokesman for Mr. Bolsonaro’s transition team said no one would comment on indigenous concerns because officials were focused on “far more important issues.”
Experts say the rate of deforestation in the Amazon, which soaks up