The Brazilian government has initiated operations aimed at dismantling extensive illegal gold mining activities in the Amazon’s Yanomami Indigenous Land. The objective is to drive tens of thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous reserve after they invaded the territory over a span of several years. Agents from Brazil’s environmental protection agency IBAMA – with support from the Indigenous agency FUNAI and the newly created Ministry for Indigenous Peoples – launched the long-awaited operation on Monday, with military troops establishing a base along the Uraricoera River.
By Tuesday, IBAMA said it had destroyed a helicopter, a plane, and a bulldozer, and seized weapons, 12-meter (40-ft) boats, and 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of fuel, in addition to generators, internet antennas, freezers, and one ton of food. The operation’s main objective is to cut supply lines, rendering this remote and capital-intensive activity unviable , as well as to establish a stable on-the-ground presence of inspection teams for an undetermined period of time, IBAMA said in a statement.
In recent years, and markedly since President Bolsonaro’s 2018 election, an estimated 25,000 miners invaded Indigenous territory, bringing disease, sexual abuse, and armed violence that terrorized the Yanomami community, estimated to be numbered at 28,000 people, leading to severe malnutrition and deaths. In recent weeks, dozens of Yanomami children were flown to hospitals in Boa Vista suffering from malnutrition and malaria. At least 570 Yanomami children are reported to have died of curable diseases during Bolsonaro’s administration. “It was a government of blood,” said Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, a Yanomami leader who blames Bolsonaro for emboldening the invaders with his anti-Indigenous rhetoric.
According to a recent report by the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, during the Bolsonaro administration the armed forces stopped acting to combat illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land or took insufficient action on at least seven occasions, which weakened enforcement efforts by police and contributed to the expansion of criminal activity in the territory. The administration’s collusion with illegal miners and its withholding of assistance for Indigenous health care created a humanitarian crisis in the territory, with an explosion in cases of malaria, severe malnutrition, and other diseases associated with hunger.
“Illegal mining kills and displaces people from their land,” said Paula Vargas, Amazon Watch’s Brazil Program Director. “The Yanomami people and the forests they inhabit will take a generation to recover from Bolsonaro’s genocidal agenda. While driving the miners out is critically important, there remains much to be done: There is an unprecedented health crisis among the Yanomami as well as a social crisis in the region, as the miners may migrate to other Indigenous territories and protected forests. It is not enough to stamp out this disastrous industry in one place. Rigorous investigation is required to uncover who is investing in and profiting from this horror.”
Amazon Watch has repeatedly denounced the impacts of illegal mining in the Amazon and on Indigenous peoples and their territories, including the increase of violence and destruction within Yanomami territory. Last September, an exposé published by Amazon Watch and the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB) showed that the supply chains of technology, electronics, and automotive leaders could be tainted by Brazilian gold illegally mined in Amazonian Indigenous territories. During the Covid humanitarian crisis, Amazon Watch allocated emergency funds to several Indigenous peoples, including the Yanomami, who were provided emergency food and health supplies. In 2020, alongside several NGOs, the organization called for global action to demand that the Brazilian government remove the illegal miners inside the Yanomami Territory with the campaign Miners Out, Covid Out.
