As the sun rose over the vast Tapajós River in Northern Brazil last Saturday, 400 of us, including representatives of the Tupinambá, Munduruku, Arapiun, Kumaruara, Jaraqui, Tapajó, Tapuia, Apiaka, and Kayapó Indigenous peoples, local riverside communities, and allies from dozens of local organizations, staged a powerful direct action to send a decisive message to the Brazilian federal government. Echoing the “Ancestral Outcry” of the Tapajós River and its inhabitants, we halted commodity shipping in the middle of the river for six hours to demand the cancellation of the Ferrogrão “grain railway.”
Initiated at the request of Cargill and other major agribusiness companies, the Ferrogrão mega-railway project would expand the transportation of soybeans and corn from Brazil’s west-central region. Without any consultation with local communities, it would impact over 49 thousand square kilometers of protected forests.
The railway would cut north through the Amazon to export commodities through the Tapajós River, intensifying the already catastrophic impacts of the so-called North Arc logistic corridor. In fact, according to studies presented by Brazil’s Ministry of Transport, Ferrogrão would lead to a sixfold increase in grain transport in the river by 2049, posing major threats to the waterway’s vital ecosystems and those who depend on them for their survival.
However, the same studies introduced by the Brazilian government fail to address the impacts threatened by the mega-railway to the lower Tapajós basin and the communities who live there, as if Ferrogrão’s socio-ecological destruction would end at the end of the railway.
Countering this unacceptable erasure, Indigenous peoples, local communities, and their allies made our central demand clear: Ferrogrão must be canceled to save the Tapajós River and our collective future.
Dozens of canoes lined with signs denouncing Ferrogrão formed a barrier blocking the traffic of barges transporting soy and other commodities. Meanwhile, our mock soy barge called attention to notorious agribusiness traders such as Cargill, Bunge, ADM, and Louis Dreyfus, which are vying to expand commodity production and export in the region.
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As Raquel Tupinambá, a key organizer and coordinator of the Tupinambá Indigenous Council (CITUPI), emphasized, corporate interests are deepening existing threats to local communities and their ancestral ways of life. “They are preventing us from fishing and killing the Tapajós River to export soybeans to China and Europe. Ferrogrão would increase deforestation for more soy production and also intensify the river’s destruction. They want to carve into the riverbed and blast the rocks, which are extremely sacred for us. The railway will heighten the impacts of a logistics corridor that already adversely affects us, and we have yet to even be consulted,” she warned.
Karanhin Metuktire, a Kayapó leader and representative of the Raoni Institute, echoed her sentiment, declaring that, “the fact that the Ferrogrão project is being prioritized by sectors of the federal government shows our rights continue to be ignored. They want to build this railroad without respecting our existence and the consultation protocols of various Indigenous peoples, as required by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.”
Having traversed hundreds of miles over 24 hours from his territory in Mato Grosso, close to where Ferrogrão’s tracks would start, he reminded us that, “each territory has its own rules and ways of making decisions, and this needs to be respected.”
As the sun set on the water, a powerful ritual around the fire ignited the river’s voice, demanding continued action through us in its defense:
This is the Tapajós River speaking. I lend the voice of the humans who live alongside me to ask for help from all of you. I want to continue being a river and not a dead waterway. With ports and soy barges, they want to transform me into a logistics corridor for the profit of foreign companies, but my true reason for existing is different: I am a corridor of biodiversity, life, and ancestry! I am the Tapajós River and I want to be alive!
Saturday’s protest was among the largest anti-Ferrogrão actions to date, demonstrating our growing collective power. Organized by the Tupinambá and other members of the #NoFerrogrão Alliance – of which Amazon Watch is a key member – the protest energized our collective fight to shut down Ferrogrão and resist the broader, reckless expansion of destructive agribusiness across Brazil’s critically-endangered Amazon and Cerrado biomes.
As we gathered on the water to denounce this imminent ecological destruction in the Tapajós basin, Brazilian representatives touted their climate credentials at the COP29 climate summit that is currently underway in Baku. As Brazil continues to position itself as a world climate leader on the path to the historic COP30 summit next year in Pará – the very state that Ferrogrão will cut through – we will continue to organize to expose this critical contradiction that the federal government must address.
Today, the Ancestral Outcry’s final act rang out in the halls of COP29’s Blue Zone, where Goldman Prize-winner Alessandra Korap Munduruku led a dozen Brazilian allies in a protest that denounced Ferrogrão and its proponents. By bringing their message from the banks of the Tapajós to the world’s most important climate gathering, the growing #NoFerrogrão Alliance is building influence and power.
Amazon Watch is committed to defending the Tapajós River and supporting the #NoFerrogrão Alliance, which is made up of 39 members across Brazil and the world. Together, we will collectively organize to ensure that the mega-railway is never built.
The #NoFerrogrão Alliance includes the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB), the Karuana Association, the Montanha and Mangabal Association, the Wakoborun Munduruku Women’s Association, the Iakiô Association, the Pariri Association, the Xavante Association, Amazon Watch, Avaaz, the Pastoral Land Commission of Itaituba (CPT), the Indigenist Missionary Council of Santarém (CIMI-STM), the Indigenist Missionary Council of Mato Grosso (CIMI-MT), the Tapajós e Arapiuns Indigenous Council (CITA), the Tupinambá Indigenous Council (CITUPI), the Planalto Apiaká and Munduruku Council, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), FASE Amazon Program, the Federation of Mato Grosso’s Indigenous Peoples and Organizations (FEPOIMT), Greenpeace Brazil, the Infrastructure and Social Justice Working Group, the Institute of Socio-environmental Studies (INESC), the Kabu Institute, the Raoni Institute, the Maparajuba Human Rights Consultancy, the Small Farmers Movement (MPA), the Movement of Dam-affected People (MAB), the Tapajós Alive Movement, the Xingu Alive Movement, the Arikico Munduruku Educators Organization, the Operation Native Amazon (OPAN), the Social-environmental Observatory of Mato Grosso (Observa MT), the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), the Cerrado Network, the Trairão Agroecology Network, the Trairão Rural Workers Union (STTR), Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAN- Brazil), the Santarém REPAN Committee, Stand Earth, and Terra de Direitos.
