Garimpeiros built a 150 km clandestine road in the middle of Yanomami territory

  • In December, Greenpeace and the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) discovered an illegal road 150 kilometers long, as well as four hydraulic excavators, in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima.

  • Small-scale mining has existed in the region for over 50 years, but the road and the use of heavy machinery can make activities 10 to 15 times more destructive.

  • Currently, around 20,000 illegal miners operate throughout the Yanomami territory, causing violence, health problems and child malnutrition for the 27,000 indigenous people who inhabit the region.

  • Newly elected President Lula signed several decrees to protect indigenous lands and the environment, and subsequently declared a state of emergency in Yanomami territory.

On December 5, while flying over the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima, members of Greenpeace and the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) spotted an illegal road inside the reserve, already 150 kilometers long, in addition to four hydraulic excavators nearby.

“That road is the road to chaos. It will turn the Yanomami Indigenous Land into complete hell,” said Danicley de Aguiar, an activist with Greenpeace Brazil's Amazon campaign, who was on the flight.

Danicley said the road was built by illegal prospectors looking for gold. And that, although they've been operating in the region for 50 years, the presence of this road in an indigenous reserve where there shouldn't be roads means that prospectors will have much easier access to the area. In addition, the use of heavy machinery, such as hydraulic excavators, increases the destructive potential of the activity 10 to 15 times.

“It is happening at an unprecedented speed, which suggests that whoever built it has a lot of money, a lot of capital to invest in this activity”, said Danicley. “An excavator like this, in Brazil, can cost an average of 700 thousand reais.” He told Mongabay that what makes the situation more complicated is the presence of organized crime and drug trafficking gangs operating in a border region that has little control and is difficult to police.

A joint action, in the last four years, by the Federal Government – ​​under the Jair Bolsonaro mandate – with the state government of Roraima, in charge of the now re-elected Antonio Denarium, also contributed to this scenario. During this period, there was a clear  stimulus to mining in the Yanomami TI, as reported by Mongabay in April.

Furthermore, upon taking office in 2019, Bolsonaro cut funding for federal agencies responsible for environmental protection and indigenous rights, which also appears to have dissuaded the military and police from intervening in the invasion of the Yanomami TI by around 20,000 miners . illegal .

Although the Brazilian Constitution prohibits mining in Indigenous Lands, illegal mining increased by 495% in these territories between 2010 and 2020, as the Bolsonaro government tried to legalize this activity .

Impacts on Yanomami communities

The Yanomami TI is one of the three most affected Indigenous Lands in the country, with around 20,000 illegal miners in activity. In April 2022, the Hutukara Associação Yanomami published an investigation revealing that illegal mining in the Yanomami reserve had almost tripled in the last three years, having destroyed more than 3,272 hectares in December 2021.

According to the report, 15,000 of the 27,000 Yanomami who live in the TI were directly impacted. Communities located within a 10 km radius of the mining areas were affected by rampant sexual violence, rape, murder, organized crime, malaria and child malnutrition, while indigenous youth were attracted to the mining .

In December 2022, a report by Agência Pública revealed the extent of the health crisis driven by illegal miners in the Yanomami TI, with data showing that children are dying of malnutrition at a rate 191 times greater than the national average.

In January, the humanitarian crisis that has been plaguing the Yanomami territory since Jair Bolsonaro took power became public, during which time the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples estimates that 570 children under 5 years of age died of hunger. , malnutrition and mercury contamination from mining.

“It's a tragedy,” said Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, president of the Health Council of the District Council for Indigenous Health Yanomami and Ye'kuana (Condisi-YY). “Former President Bolsonaro did not prioritize the Yanomami people. More than that, he encouraged prospectors to enter Indigenous Lands,” he told Mongabay.

Greenpeace claimed that the illegal road discovered in December would make the situation worse – given that, previously, miners could only enter the reserve by plane or boat. The NGO said the road also threatened the uncontacted Moxihatëtëa people, whose village is 15 km from the road.

“We did everything to show [what's going on] – screaming, asking for help, begging everywhere,” said Hekurari. “We are waiting for the government. We expect the government to issue decrees as soon as possible.”

New hope with a new government

On his first day in office , President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva published a decree revoking another, by Bolsonaro, that legalized mining in Indigenous Lands, in addition to signing five other decrees that revoked or changed anti-environmental and anti-indigenous measures of his predecessor .

Lula's January 1 inauguration speech also specifically recognized that indigenous peoples need to have their lands clearly defined and free from the threats of illegal and predatory economic activities. Indigenous peoples are not obstacles, said Lula, “they are guardians of our rivers and forests and a fundamental part of our greatness as a nation”.

Environmentalists and indigenous activists celebrated this change in vision, including the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples by Lula and, on January 20, the declaration of a state of emergency in the Yanomami TI by the incoming government. This included a decree establishing a National Coordination Committee to Combat Sanitary Lack of Assistance for Populations in Yanomami Territory and the resulting social and health problems.

On January 21, Lula was in Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, to visit an indigenous hospital and the Casa de Saúde Indígena. With him were Sonia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples, who leads the emergency intervention in the Yanomami TI, and the presidents of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai) and of the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), in addition to the Ministers of Health, Justice , Planning and Budgeting and Social Development.

“We are going to take this story of putting an end to illegal mining very seriously,” Lula said at a press conference in Boa Vista. “We will see to it that [Indigenous Peoples] are treated as first-class human beings. What I saw here is inhumane.”

Mongabay has requested statements from Ibama, the federal agency for environmental protection, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and the Roraima Civil Police, but has not received any comments regarding the Yanomami situation at the time of publication.

Danicley told Mongabay that the first thing the government needs to do is expel all gold miners from the Yanomami TI, including using the Army and Air Force, as happened when the reserve was created 30 years ago .

Next, he said, the government would need to create protection policies and permanent bases throughout the Yanomami territory to control who enters it, as well as build an intelligence strategy so that the Federal Police can identify and hold accountable the people who are financing illegal mining. .

But Danicley said the government also needs to go beyond command and control activities and look at robust social, scientific and technological policies that could form part of a new economic vision for the Amazonian territories.

“It is a very complex task, because we are talking about a society that was created a little over 500 years ago and that was built according to a predatory logic”, he said. “We already consume 90% of the Atlantic Forest and this predatory logic has not proved to be adequate, it has not shown that it can generate development.”

Danicley said that, currently, there are more than 30 million people going hungry in a country of 200 million inhabitants, and many poor people are attracted by deforestation and mining because the country does not generate many quality jobs, which tends to make these activities are the only chance to have a better life.

“The hand that holds the chainsaw, the hand that operates the hydraulic excavator, is a poor person's hand,” said Danicley. “To overcome illegal mining in the Amazon, it is necessary to overcome poverty.”