Column: A murder in the Amazon reveals what the fight over the rainforest is all about
n the south of the Amazon, just where two dirt roads cross, is a small bar, set back a bit from the highway. There’s no name over the door because it’s part of a house, really, but everyone calls it Guiga’s bar, after its owner. Like many of the bars dotted across the region, Guiga’s is ramshackle and no-frills. There’s a pool table along one side and a few tables and chairs out front, but that’s it.
People like the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau have good reason to lament the former army captain’s reign. It was in the 1970s, as the military forged a path into the untouched part of the jungle, that the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau first came into recorded contact with a Brazil they had never hoped to meet. The Amazon was Brazil’s Wild West, and the military dictators of the time saw it as a weak spot, a vast frontier coveted by bigger geopolitical powers and vulnerable to outside invasions.
Deforestation has gone up every year since he took power, this year hitting a 15-year high. An astonishing 99% of all deforestation in 2021 contained indications of illegality, according to a study by. Violence has soared, and Indigenous people feel under siege.
But when Bolsonaro starved it of funds, the opportunists poured in, often telling anyone who challenged them the President had their backs. It was a shock to people like Ari and Bitaté, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau’s 22-year-old leader, and they instinctively knew they had to react. Now, when they get word of illegal deforestation on their land, they don’t just inform FUNAI. They pack their bags, power up their drones, and set out to resolve the problem.
“Ari used to say, ‘We are survivors. This is our land. This is where we are from,’” Bitaté says. “He wanted to protect it not just for himself but for his children and his grandchildren. When he died, we lost someone who was always on the front lines, someone who said, ‘We must not bow our heads.’”elected President
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