Brazil’s leader has steadily attacked those defending the region where journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira lost their lives
f Jair Bolsonaro had not been elected Brazilian president in October 2018, the relationship between Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira might have been different and so mightWhen they first met, Phillips was a British journalist and Pereira a senior figure with the Brazilian government’s Indigenous agency, Funai. The explorer opened doors to jungle communities for Phillips to research a book on sustainable development.
“The bullets that kill journalists, activists and Indigenous people in Amazonia are bought with money from land grabs, illegal mining and logging,” said Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of Observatório do Clima, an environmental NGO. In addition to the environmental ministry and Funai, there’s Ibama, the ministry’s conservation and sustainable development arm; Inpe, the body that monitors deforestation; and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity, named after the rubber tapper whose murder in 1988 helped kickstart Brazil’s modern environmental movement.
Even when the government is active, those on the frontlines are just as likely to be military men rather than real experts in the field. As a former army captain and lover of all things olive green, Bolsonaro has purged qualified staff. Bolsonaro once congratulated the US cavalry for decimating North American Indians and lamented that Brazilian soldiers had not done the same. Before taking office, he vowed not to give Indigenous people “one more square centimetre of land” and he has proudly kept that promise.
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