It seems huge, more intense, with a previously unseen variety of tones, the pink hue of the sunset in the Indigenous land called Alto Rio Negro (Upper Black River), or perhaps it´s just a feeling, under the influence of being in one of the most preserved areas of the Amazon Rainforest. Night falls in the community of Irari Ponta, by the Içana River, close to where it empties into the river Negro, and the indigenous boy, aided by the flashlight strapped to his forehead, withdraws water accumulated in the canoe with a bowl. He jumps into the vessel, small like him, and starts paddling between partially submerged trees, disappearing behind the curve, entering the lagoon, which, along with the river, embraces the indigenous village.
“He will bring fish. Put fish hook, trap, and now it’s time to catch dinner”, says Juvêncio Cardoso, the Içana’s water at his waist and from there up, covered in soap. He is general-secretary of the Baniwa and Coripaco Peoples in the Federation of the Rio Negro’s Indigenous Organizations, the FOIRN. “When I was a child, I was also responsible for the fish”, adds Juvêncio, who in the language of his people, Baniwa, is called Dzoodzo. He is a teacher in the community where he was born and still lives, Santa Isabel do Rio (River) Ayari, another Negro’s affluent, further northwest, on the top of the region called Dog’s Head, named after the shape of the map of the Indigenous Land with 79.993 km2, near the triple frontier between Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
"We are in that age well lived, in the good living since our ancestors, but what’s going to happen with our sons if our rights are extinguished"
Together with other six indigenous lands - Rio Apapóris, Balaio, Cué-Cué Marabitanas, Rio Téa and Médio (Middle) Rio Negro I e II - , the Alto Rio Negro forms the most extensive black water estuary of the planet. This was officially recognized in March of 2018, during the 8º World Water Forum, in Brasília, when the Black River’s estuary, inhabited by 23 indigenous peoples, a lot of them mixed in 750 communities spread along 11,2 million ha, received the Ramsar Site’s title, as an important wetland for the planet. The Ramsar Convention came into effect at 1975 and carries the name of the Iranian town where the treaty was signed, on February 2nd, 1971, recognizing the ecological importance and the social, economic and cultural values of the wetlands. The treaty has 169 signatory countries, including Brazil, which signed the Ramsar Convention in 1993.
Juvêncio was taking a shower on a break during the last day of the second meliponiculture workshop in the region. The event was set to try to develop the honey production from stingless bees and reunited, at Irari Ponta, representatives of 20 peoples from Alto Rio Negro, the biggest and most populous among the seven lands from the Black River estuary, declared indigenous in May 1996, and legally certified in April 1998. “A lot of things are being threatened. We feel insecure, worried. We are in that age well lived, in the good living since our ancestors, but what’s going to happen with our sons if our rights are extinguished”, asked, in the sultry, wet heat from the beginning of the afternoon, Carlos de Jesus Baniwa, 44, a kind of workshop’s ringmaster, replying about the Bolsonaro government.
Common expression between indigenous movement members and conservation activists, the “good living” means the boy bringing fresh fish for dinner with the night falling; it is living free, at one with the forest that, at this moment, is threatened by the “environmental agenda” of the Federal government. “With this set of measures from this president, Jair Bolsonaro, his intention is to extinguish the indigenous rights”, predicts Carlos, who is itinerant teacher, hired by the Amazonas State government to spend one year in each community, teaching multidisciplinary classes.
Two days earlier, on the night of May 22, the Chamber of Deputies approved the Provisory Measure (MP) 870/2019, returning the capacity to demarcate indigenous land to the Indigenous’ National Foundation (FUNAI). Edited in the first day of Bolsonaro’s government, the MP 870 reduced the number of ministries, extinguishing the Labor and Culture’s departments, among others, and took away FUNAI from the Ministry of Justice. The Indigenous’ National Foundation was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Woman, Family and Human Rights, and the capacity to demarcate indigenous lands came under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food, in other words, the agribusiness. Six days after the ballot in the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, with 70 votes for and four against, confirmed the deputies’ decision, but the president, who pledged, during his campaign, not one more inch to indigenous lands, did not give up.
Bolsonaro edited the MP 886, published in the Union Official Journal on June 19. According to this provisory measure, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food would be responsible for the agrarian reform, the land regularization of rural areas, the Legal Amazon and the indigenous and quilombolas (slaves’ descenders) lands. FUNAI stayed under the Justice Department, but the demarcations would go to the hands of agribusiness if the Supreme Court did not rule, in unanimous decision, on August 2, that the competence to demarcate and certify indigenous lands must stay with the Indigenous’ National Foundation. “This government wants to extinguish FUNAI, which always had an important role in legitimating our rights”, summed up Carlos, during the first break up in the last of the four-day workshop that Irari Ponta hosted, at the same community center where the event took place.
With the approximate size of a volleyball court, the community center has the biggest roof among the 22 houses of Irari Ponta, including the evangelical church. All the houses were built around the hard grass soccer pitch, although officially sized, or close to that. At least there were eleven players on each side, some of them wearing shorts, socks and boots, others playing barefoot, with trousers and belts, everyone with enough space for a disputed match, which happened on the first break in the last day of the workshop.
There is no stands, nor even a fence separating the soccer pitch from the houses, but there is a kind of pavilion, built three high steps above the ground. Forty, maybe fifty people could stay there, standing on the raw wood construction, without chairs or nowhere to sit, but at least sheltered. For those wanting to watch the match, it was the only place protected from the sun, unmerciful at that time of day, after three o´clock in the afternoon, besides a faraway bench, behind the goal, under the shadow of two trees, taken by six teenagers who laugh or play each other more than pay attention to the match. Without the polished finish from the houses, the pavilion´s only paint is an advertisement in blue of a local councilor´s support for that building.
Behind this larger pitch, as if in a sports center, the community of Irari Ponta has a sand pitch, which has its own pavilion too, but at floor level, smaller, resembling a bar. Painted on the walls, logos from beverages that were probably never available there. On the roof, the irony continues in the inscription “quadra de futsal (futsal court)”, referring to the little sand pitch. It was in this joking manner that Carlos de Jesus introduced the workshop, speaking less in Portuguese, more in Baniwa or in Nheengatu, known as the general language of the region, brought by the Portuguese settlers and derived from Tupi-Guarani.
Together with Tukano and Yanomami, Nheengatu and Baniwa are official languages in São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Saint Gabriel of the Waterfall), the third largest city in the country, with 109.184,8 km2, which includes almost all of the Dog’s Head from Upper Rio Negro and other indigenous lands, like the Yanomami territory, where the highest mountain in Brazil, Pico da Neblina, is located. São Gabriel da Cachoeira has the Rio Negro running alongside it and 74% of indigenous peoples among its 41.885 inhabitants, including 26 thousand from the communities of deep Amazon Rainforest, according the 2010 Census, from the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE). In other respects, the urban center of the city is not too different, not even in size, from others in the hinterland of the country, where the other side of the "good living" becomes more evident, the bitterness of the peoples of the forest who, even today, suffer the voices that seek to explore the region, to defy land demarcations.
After the two and a half hours flight from Manaus, the poverty shows right outside the São Gabriel da Cachoeira Airport (Uaupés), on the side of the road, in the shape of a shed with no walls and the roof extended by a plastic cover stretched in all directions, on the buried wooden pieces that supports overloaded clotheslines. Three men are sitting together in front of the shed, two kids playing on one side, without shirts, wearing only shorts, and on the other side another boy, even younger, naked, with his little protruding round belly. Inside the shed, on this rainy morning, more people seem to press against each other on hammocks or on the floor.
“All of them are Yanomamis over there”, says José Ribamar Caldas Lima Filho, the planning sector’s chief of the Rio Negro’s coordinating body from FUNAI, substitute general coordinator and former mayor, the second to be elected in the city, in 1988. “They take a one day boat ride to the road, and then begins the worst part of their journey, from there to here”. There is no highway linking the 852 km from Manaus to São Gabriel da Cachoeira. Besides the airplane, the options are a three-day journey by boat and the speedboat called “expresso”, with a more powerful motor, which reduces to 24 hours the journey from the capital of the Amazonas State and the town settled by the Jesuits, and after that by the Salesians, who arrived there in 1914.
The first economic boom came with the National Integration Program, created by the Decree-Law 1.106, in June 16, 1970, under the presidency of general Emílio Garrastazu Médici. “Two roads were going to pass here, one (BR 307) would link Cucuí, in the triple frontier, to Acre (the State close to Amazonas, further west than any other in the country), passing through São Gabriel. The other (BR 210) would come from Macapá (capital of Amapá State), Caracaraí (in Roraima State) and would pass here too, on the way to Mitú, in Colombia”, tells Ribamar. São Gabriel da Cachoeira was the project’s main construction site. The small city, comprised only of the mission and the school from the Salesians, started to host several institutions, including the Army, which maintains, to this day, a massive presence in the municipality with 150 km of borders with Colombia and Venezuela.
The roads, however, were never finished. “From here to Cucuí, 205 kilometers were done, but for six months of the year it is closed, because of the rain, the mud. The one from Caracaraí to here, they finished two hundred and a few kilometers over there, and 80 more from São Gabriel. There were six hundred kilometers that never got linked” explained José Ribamar, on the second floor of FUNAI headquarters in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, while the first floor was crowded beyond normal in that Thursday morning, on May 23.
The reason for such a big crowd, above the average of 80 daily appointments, was the Social Security Institute (INSS) boat anchored close to Praia Grande, the main city beach, from which, with the Rio Negro flood underway, and rising, it was impossible to see neither the sand nor the first, or last, steps from the boardwalk stairs. “Even though there’s an INSS agency in town, there was never an expert”, tells Ribamar, before starting to describe “snake bite” cases, “broke the arm, fell in the waterfall, hit the head”, frequent, according to him, in the region. “As the doctor came in the boat, the demand now is very big”.
Besides the medical expertise for the sickness benefit, indigenous registrations and proof of life, residence or rural activity declarations are the most wanted services in the Rio Negro’s FUNAI, as they are necessary documents to obtain some benefit from the Regional or National governments. The declaration of residence, for example, was what Samuel Massa Lemos, from the Tuyuka People, needed. He and a group of relatives and neighbors from the community of Pari-Cachoeira, in the Middle Itiquié, travelled three days by boat, and Samuel was complaining about the delay in attendance, without noticing the INSS boat close to the city’s beach. “In the past, it wasn’t so slow to get the declaration”.
Little versed in Portuguese, Samuel left the improvised interview at the entrance of FUNAI to others in his group. “He’s cutting the benefits and our sons won’t get scholarships anymore”, said Alberto Vaz Pimentel, Tukano, 49, multidisciplinary teacher, referring to Bolsonaro. “I don´t like anything from this Social Security. I will not reach 75 to get retired. At 60, most here are already in heaven”. In the same group, also from Tukano People, Neli Pimentel Fontes reinforced the speech. “We work more than the white people, and the white say we’re lazy, but they make no effort like us, because we do everything manually”. Born in Pari-Cachoeira, Neli is living in São Gabriel because she is a municipal servant, one of the rare job opportunities in the region. “Around 90% of the indigenous depends on the benefits, unless you are a civil servant or military”, calculates José Ribamar.
A different arithmetic explains the Yanomami’s shed and the rest of the city’s itinerant population. “The guy spends three days to come here from his community, to get 300, 400 reais, which is not enough even to pay the gasoline to go back. So he stays at the city, waiting for help, he goes to the town hall, to FUNAI, goes to the Army...”, explains the acting general-coordinator of FUNAI in the Black River’s region. In the case of the Yanomamis from the shed near the airport, the wait was also for the repair of a broken bridge on the road. “Now they are waiting because the bridge collapsed, there’s no other way for them to return, then they ask for food and everything else”.
“The guy spends three days to come here from his community, to get 300, 400 reais, which is not enough even to pay the gasoline to go back. So he stays at the city, waiting for help, he goes to the town hall, to FUNAI, goes to the Army...”
From the airplane, arriving at Uaupés airport, anyone can see the circles of fallen, cut trees, which can give the false impression of deforestation. These are the plantations of the region’s inhabitants, the majority of wild manioc, cultivated with the technique known as coivara, which combines burning, planting and management of capoeira, also used by quilombola communities. In 2010, the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan) recognized this technique as Brazilian Cultural Heritage. As it is a humid area, the Alto Rio Negro does not have attractive wood for large-scale cutting. There are no sawmills there, and the land is not good for agribusiness or livestock as well. The risk to the region’s current preservation is therefore, entirely, from mining.
“It started in 2015, there were people who came here to visit and were interested in exploring our territory, with an anti-indigenous movement speech, saying that FOIRN was preventing the entry of people who could help the communities”, said Dzoodzo, in the meeting room of FOIRN´s headquarters, in the center of São Gabriel da Cachoeira. “This policy, since the impeachment (of president Dilma Rousseff), reflected here. Now, after this president won, these entrepreneurs who are interested, it seems that they feel victorious, because they believe that, in this management, mining on indigenous lands will be regulated and that from the regulation, the revision of the demarcation of the indigenous lands will come and, with that, they will enter (on indigenous land)”.
One of the walls of the FOIRN’s meeting room has the Rio Negro Estuary’s map, with all its lands, rivers and communities. Another wall has the same map, without the rivers or communities, divided by color in certain parts, several squares pasted, in different colors, most of them on top of the Dog’s Head. “All of this is from Içana. All these squares are already required areas by the companies registered here, all the companies with their codes in every bit of that area that is still intact there, but it’s a struggle”, said Isaías Pereira Fontes, executive director of FOIRN responsible for the Içana’s region, pointing to the map on the meeting room at the NGO’s headquarters. “It’s this subject of land demarcation that tends to prevent the entry of big companies”.
Before Bolsonaro’s victory, the result of the last municipal elections in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in 2016, was already a defeat for the preservation activists. Indigenous, from the People Tariano, Clóvis Moreira Saldanha, a.k.a Clóvis Curubão, was elected mayor, by the PT (Worker’s Party), with 4.649 votes (30,19%), with the defense of mining on demarcated lands as the main motto of his campaign. The mayor was in Manaus from the 22nd till 26thof May. Interviewed by BBC Brasil, on May 2017, he said that, in the city, “everyone was afraid to talk about mining, so we went to Manaus, to ask for help from the politics from there”. Former garimpeiro (as the miners and gold panners are called), founder of an indigenous mining cooperative, Curubão also stated, in the same interview, that “the Indian is in the 21st century, uses an engine, uses everything. You can´t go back to the past”. The problem is that, until now, with less than two years to finish his term, the mayor’s mining projects have not progressed, largely because of the demarcations of indigenous lands, but also due to the difficulties imposed by the region’s greatest protective: nature.
At 50, Isaías was the oldest and had the highest position in the FOIRN hierarchy among the three members of the NGO who arrived in Irari Ponta, in the Baixo (Lower) Içana region, around one o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, 24 May, and left the next morning, around 9am, right after the collective breakfast at the community center. Apart from Juvêncio, the coordinator of the Rio Negro department of adolescents and young people, Lucas Mattos da Silva, traveled on the FOIRN boat with a 40 engine, the fastest for small boats in the region, which can sail at 40 km per hour. Isaias piloted the eight-seater boat. Also on board was the FUNAI technical-coordinator Rosiclaudio Cordeiro, who, for 15 years, has been responsible for the Içana Channel and five more rivers to Cuiaí, on the border with Colombia.
Going up from São Gabriel da Cachoeira, the Rio Negro no longer has the immensity of the sea like some stretches closer to Manaus, where, sailing in the middle, you cannot see one of the banks, and you can hardly see the other. It is still big, but always with visible margins and noisier. The municipality´s name does not refer to a specific waterfall, but rather to the rapids, which become steeper around the Praia Grande, from which they can be viewed, from a safe distance, on two aligned wooden planks, firmly attached to the waterbed, some 500 meters from the partially submerged boardwalk. There lies the sand that is only visible from September to January and serves as a limit for those who swim, play or just cool in the river: from there, it is better not to pass. Just before the beach, close to the house on the bank that serves as the seat of the Navy’s Western Amazonian River Captaincy, the Rio Negro is even more massive and the red sign warns of the risk of drowning.
Leaving São Gabriel da Cachoeiras’s port, those who go up the Rio Negro do not have to go through the rapids of Praia Grande or the worst stretches beyond Irari Ponta. In some of them, it is necessary to get off and in again further down, so that only an experienced pilot can pass with the boat. In others, on the worst days, everyone has to load the boat on land until they pass the waterfall, or rapids. The flood also helps. The FOIRN’s flying boat sways harder where there is a concentration of permanent swirls of foam, which warn of the rocks below, but the trip, of about three hours, is smooth, with the mandatory stop, halfway through, at the river checkpoint of Ilha das Flores (Flowers Island), an Army base where boats are searched for drugs, smuggling and, mainly, alcoholic beverages. The soldier who checked Isaias’ documents and quickly searched the FOIRN’s flyboat even opened the two gallons of gasoline transported, smelling inside before closing them, letting the vessel go.
In the communities of Alto Rio Negro, the former chief is called captain. In Irari Ponta, that is Ovídio Júlio Cordeiro Pereira, from the Baré People. He hosted, speaking more Nheengatu than Portuguese, the entourage of the indigenous movement for lunch in the community center, serving a meal based on the local wild manioc´s flour and the stew of Dakiru, a small and tasty fish, with white and soft meat, from Içana. “Fishing, hunting and farming is enough for us to live. We want free land to fish, hunt and farm”, said Meraldino Cordeiro da Silva, Baniwa, 41, president of the Indigenous Association of the Baixo Rio Içana (AIBRI) and resident of Boavista, a community close to Irari Ponta, considered one of the largest in the region, with about 2 thousand inhabitants, and located right where the waters of Içana meet those of Rio Negro.
The continuous demarcation of the 11,2 million hectares of lands in the Rio Negro Basin, and not in separate colonies, was an achievement of the indigenous movement that is still praised today. “Our leaders, who preceded us, managed to imagine a future and we are here”, said Isaias, in front of the map with the rivers and communities of the region, at FOIRN’s headquarters. “We go far, to hunt, fish, farm. We will never accept land separation”, said Meraldino, in the shed of the Irari Ponta community center.
At 59, the community’s captain lives also from the fishing, farming and hunting, in addition to the R$ 400 monthly benefit he started to get after losing the little finger of his left hand, in 2016, when he was fishing. “It was Mandi, a small fish, but it has a strong bite, like a stingray. I took it off the hook”, told Ovídio Pereira, in boxer shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, the silver watch on his left wrist and the flip-flops of ten out of ten indigenous peoples communities.
Irari Ponta’s captain for 37 years, elected and re-elected every four years by residents, Ovídio, like everyone else in the indigenous village, built his own house and helped, in a joint effort, the construction of the others, all in wood, with a tile or straw roof, each painted in at least two colors. He currently lives with his wife, Leonilda, and his father-in-law, Renê André, both from the Baniwa People. Leonilda only speaks Baniwa and spoke once during the conversation with her husband, when she passed in front of the open door of the house, saying the phrase from which it was only possible to understand the name of the president. “She’s asking if Bolsonaro will end her retirement”, translated Ovídio, revealing that his wife’s benefit is R$ 950 per month. The daughter, mother of five of the couple’s ten grandchildren, lives next door, and the other son, father of the other five, is a teacher in the Guia community.
“I lived here my whole life, I like it, I grew up here, but there is not so much fish anymore”, says the captain of Irari Ponta, making it clear how the accelerated deforestation, even far away, affects the whole region. “We have to travel four days upstream, at least, to get fish”. Ovídio was five days away from home when he was bitten by the Mandi who took his finger. In relation to hunting, the maths is the same. “To get a hundred kilos of meat, you have to travel four days”, reinforces Renê André, the father-in-law of the Irari Ponta’s captain, who, at the age of 77, accompanies him on trips, one or two a month, looking for the fish and the tapir, the paca, the capuchin monkey, the potbellied monkey…
Further afield, in areas bordering Colombia and Pico da Neblina, there is gold. “To explore there, it has to be with a machine, because it is made of stone, so it´s difficult. From here to there, you go to km 85 of the road, then you take a motor boat, motor 40, sail one day up river to the main place, then the walk begins. Of course, the area is so big that you will not say that there is no garimpeiro, but it’s complicated”, says José Ribamar. The so-called artisanal mining, the one with a sieve, is allowed, but, at least in Irari Ponta, it does not arouse much interest. “If we find gold, of course we’ll work, but it is with a sieve, and so it is difficult”, says Meraldino.
Within Pico da Neblina National Park there is, in the Balaio indigenous land, the Morro dos Seis Lagos (Mountain of the Six Lakes), each with a different colored water, all rich in minerals such as iron, manganese and the already famous niobium. It is probably a stunning place that only allows visitors for research, getting there is not easy, and to produce ore, then, it would require investments that, at this time, would not be worth it, not to mention the inevitable deforestation, in the case of mining, of this isolated paradise. “It´s the largest niobium reserve in the country, but the exploration here, will only happen a hundred years from now, because we have this same niobium there in Araxá, Minas Gerais, which is easier. Here you need to build a railroad, connecting to Manaus or elsewhere, Venezuela, and niobium is still at a low price, it’s not worth doing”, rates José Ribamar, according to the last report on the ore exposed on the National Mining Agency´s website.
Published in December 2017, but in relation to the year 2003, the document reports that the Brazilian Company of Metallurgy and Mining (CBMM), which exploits the Araxá reserves, “supplies the entire national market”. In the same document, the former National Department of Mineral Production (DNPM), which gave rise to the Agency, stated that “due to stabilization of demand and supply of niobium in the world market, due to the level of existing reserves to meet all the demand (...), CBMM projects were not proposed or foreseen in 2003. In the last topic, as “other relevant facts”, the report informs that “on October 16, 2003, the Research and Mineral Resources Company (CPRM) closed the bidding for the largest niobium deposit in the world, with around 2,9 billions tons, located in São Gabriel da Cachoeira-AM, in the region of Seis Lagos”.
According to a DNPM survey, Brazil has 98% of the planet’s niobium reserves in operation and 75% of the national production stems from the Araxá deposits of CBMM, the world leader in the market. Beside Meraldino, in the community center of Irari Ponta, Anderson Tomaz Ferreira, also Baniwa and resident of Boavista, joined the “relative”, as the indigenous of the region, even from different ethnic groups, call themselves. “We don’t need a lot of wealth. The land is more than just for farming and making money. It is knowledge, culture”.
Some say that the majority of the population defends mining, others say that the division is fifty-fifty and there are those who say that, lately, due to the lack of progress in the projects of ore cooperative, the defense of the demarcation has gained strength among the Uper Rio Negro’s residents. There is no research on the topic, but the opinion of PSL councilor Basílio Rodrigues, 42, from Coripaco People, illustrates the doubts and fears even of those in favor of mining. “I’m in favor, but in my region, in Alto Içana, most are against it, so I respect that, I’m not, like, fighting”, said the councilman, who is from the Jerusalem community, three days away by motor boat 40 from São Gabriel da Cachoeira, on Thursday, May 23, in an interview at his office in the City Council Chamber.
Basílio is in his first term. He left his community, where he worked as a health agent, at the age of 37, to take the technical nursing course in São Gabriel da Cachoeira. “When I finished the course, I joined the campaign and ended up participating in politics”, says the councilor, who, even though he is favorable, still has his doubts about mining. “The mining worked lots of times, but instead of benefiting, it ended up destroying some families in a few communities. We used to call those who dealt with mining to see where it really was (the ore), but they were never transparent, businessmen, technicians, always hiding something, they have been saying, ‘we came here to help’, but they want to force us to petition, but for them, we stay behind, last in line. That’s why, if I agreed, it would have to be a very long negotiation, in a serious agreement. The businessmen would bring machinery, they would only come to show the precious stones, the real values, but that will never exist, because each one only thinks about his own interest, that’s the problem”.
“The mining worked lots of times, but instead of benefiting, it ended up destroying some families in a few communities"
The panning in Alto Rio Negro began in the 1970’s, when there was only a small FUNAI post for the entire region. Taking advantage of the absence of the state, companies such as Paranapanema and Gold Amazon took the Serra do Porco, in Alto Içana, where indigenous peoples were already panning gold in an artisanal way. With the arrival of white men, with all the machinery of the companies, the indigenous peoples were forbidden to pan and started living the routine of drinking, drugs, prostitution and conflicts ending in death, which came with these companies. It was no different, from the mid-1980s, in the mountains of Caparro and Traíra, this one closer to another tributary of Negro, the Tiquié River, in the district of Pari-Cachoeira.
Former president of FOIRN, Baniwa of the Tucumã community, in the Middle Içana, André Fernando Baniwa was a child, but he does not forget what he heard at the time. “I was studying in the fourth grade. I already understood something of Portuguese. The guy arrived with the captain like this, saying, ‘we’re miners, we work with money, how is your community? Where’s school? Where’s the health clinic? There isn´t? We are going to bring it, we’re going to bring a school here, we’ll pay for teachers, we are going to bring a hospital, you won’t get sick anymore’”, remembered André, on the morning of Monday, May 27, at a bakery in the center of Manaus, where he lives for family reasons. According to him, “thirty, fifty tons of gold” were extracted from the Alto Rio Negro, without any benefits to the Baniwa, whose leaders were co-opted by the companies. “They left Içana without leadership, that´s what they did to the leaders of the time, so we don’t know exactly what happened, what we saw was that the company gave a boat for the stretch from Nazaré to Vista Alegre and gave the equivalent of a thousand reais to each community, to open a canteen”.
In the early 90s, when he returned to FUNAI, after ending his term in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, José Ribamar was faced with mining on indigenous land in full swing. “I went to Brasilia and asked: what’s going on? These companies, did you authorize? ‘No, they asked for permission to do research’. Only they weren’t doing research, they were exploring”, says the ex-mayor. The companies have to leave the region, leaving at least a new headquarters for FUNAI, on two floors, right in front of the Rio Negro. “They left in good terms. I even had to buy this house here from them”, reveals Ribamar.
After that, the number of prospectors venturing into the indigenous land was limited to small groups repressed and dismembered, from time to time, by Army operations, until Michel Temer assumed the Presidency of the Republic. On June 24 of last year, Folha de São Paulo reported that Elton Rohnelt, advisor to president Temer, and São Paulo businessman Otávio Lacombe have been trying to convince Baniwa communities in the Içana Basin to mine, and that the main target is tantalita, used by the electronics industry, mainly in smartphones. Former garimpeiro, former federal deputy of Roraima, Rohnelt founded Gold Amazon in the 1980s and recently left 10% of the company on behalf of his daughter, Carolina, and sold 90% to Lacombe.
“The father of this Lacombe (Octavio Lacombe), in the 70s and 80s, helped the communities in exchange of permission to explore the mining the Baniwa had discovered. During the period that these companies were there, they made several requests for pieces of land for mineral prospecting, and today his father has passed away, but he is coming with all his strength”, says André Baniwa. According to Folha’s report, Lacombe bought the control of two other mining companies founded by Rohnelt: Edgar Rohnelt (in honor of Temer’s former advisor´s father) and Sergam. Together, the three companies have 95% of the research requirements represented by the colored squares of the Dog Head’s map displayed at FOIRN’s headquarters.
"When he demonstrated the exploration plan, the cost of each kilo of tantalita and, in the end, how much of that would be for those who were going to extract it, was less than a can of flour"
Based on the 1973 Indigenous Peoples´s Statute, which allows rudimentary mining, Lacombe and Rohnelt are pushing for the approval of Bill 1610/96, by Senator Romero Jucá (MDB-RR), that would favor their interests. In its Article 19, the bill states that “the requirements for research authorization and license registration targeting areas located on indigenous lands, filed before the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, will be analyzed by the managing body of mineral resources for the purpose of gaining priority”.
To try to convince the residents of the region, Lacombe has been participating in meetings since 2016, in communities such as Castelo Branco, where André Baniwa faced the businessman. “I went to listen, to help clarify indigenous rights. He spoke in the same way as his father and I asked about that, and he said: ‘the past doesn’t matter’. But the Baniwa already know more than they did at that time, mathematics, they already understand more Portuguese too. When he demonstrated the exploration plan, the cost of each kilo of tantalita and, in the end, how much of that would be for those who were going to extract it, was less than a can of flour. He failed there, the communities left on time, better to work my flour than to work for him, they said, but there is still a risk”.
The 1988 Constitution allows for the possibility of mining on indigenous lands, regulated by the Congress, with communities being heard and getting a share of the profits. Romero Jucá’s bill, approved in the Senate in the 1990s, has been stalled in the Chamber of Deputies ever since. Now, the Executive Branch has decided to do its part and the Minister of Mines and Energy is considering pushing for the approval of the MDB senator´s bill to regulate mining in indigenous lands, one of Bolsonaro’s main campaign promises. On Saturday, July 27, the president said, during the graduation of paratroopers from the Armed Forces in the Military Village of Rio de Janeiro, that he nominated his son, congressman Eduardo (PSL-SP), to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington to look for investors interested in mineral extraction on indigenous lands.
For the time being, the homologations continue to prevent any legal basis for mining, and also hampering, in the name of preservation, others investments in demarcated land, such as the opening of side roads, the priority of Basilio Rodrigues’ mandate. “I don’t want to know if it’s demarcated or not, as long as it at least abates our suffering, there was already deaths in several communities over there, it’s impossible”. At the crowded FUNAI headquarters, waiting for the declaration of residence together with his group of relatives and friends from Pari-Cachoeira, Alberto Vaz Pimentel, Tukano, already agreed with the councilman. “Opening roads, yes, I am in favor, for the people to use, to help support our families, to farm”.
According to Basílio, the numerous obstacles to investments have reduced support for demarcation among the residents of the homologated indigenous lands themselves. “I see a minority defending the demarcations, most of them are already out, those who defend are mainly environmentalists”, speculates the councilman, before admitting to not knowing “how it is, because we cannot follow almost every day, communities are far to travel”.
If the chief is called a captain, more so than shaman, the communities of Alto Rio Negro have a pastor, and this position in Irari Ponta has belonged to Hermes Pereira, Baré, for 21 years. He gives his services on Saturdays, Sundays and on Wednesdays, in the white church with the door, the windows and details in blue, like the name at the top, Congregação Batista (Baptist Congregation), at the entrance facing not the football pitch, like almost all others houses, but the River Içana; and below, in the same color: Bíblica Aliança (Biblical Alliance). Hermes is in favor of the demarcation and concentrates his complaints against the current mayor, who “does not help”. The pastor’s wife, Flávia Santos da Costa, also Baré, had already complained minutes before. “The City Hall only helps large communities, like Boavista”. She was born in the community of Guia and, despite the difficulties, does not think about leaving Irari Ponta. “This land is hard to work, but I like it here”.
Being small, Irari Ponta maintains the habit of collective meals. Especially at breakfast, but also at lunch or dinner, everyone meets to eat, drink and talk at the community center, or almost everyone, because there is no imposition, no order for anyone or anything like that. Hermes and Flávia had the company of their son, Jorge da Costa Pereira, 29, who has a house and a three-year-old daughter in São Gabriel da Cachoeira. He is trying to get his driver’s license after leaving the Army, where he served from 2012 to 2018. While dinner was served at the community center, father, mother and son hosted representatives of FOIRN and FUNAI in the spacious kitchen of the family home, with their eight-seat table, the hammock hanging in the corner and the wooden shelves laden with old pots and cans, leaning against the wall to the four-burner stove connected to the gas cylinder.
The house has two more kitchens, actually sheds, one without walls, only with the straw roof and the circular oven with the wood hole and the equally round tray on the top, large, metallic, where the beiju, also known as tapioca, is roasted and manioc flour is made. The other kitchen has another type of artisanal oven, smaller, used only when there is no gas. Asked about where she prefers to cook, Flávia answers promptly, without thinking: “on the gas stove”, and complains: “gas is difficult, all the time is lacking”.
The main dish at dinner, Dakiru fish again, this time stewed on the stove, was not better appreciated because less than half an hour before, Rosiclaudio and Lucas Mattos showed up with two fishes, Aracu and Jaraki, that had just been smoked in one of the community´s round ovens. It was only necessary to open the hard scale cut as if it were a lid, take a piece with your hand, pass in the salt and tucupi sauce (just like soy or worcestershire sauce), and eat outdoors, in the darkness of the Alto Rio Negro.
Lucas is 22 years old and from the Tariano People, from the indigenous village of Iauaretê, on the border with Colombia, right at the point where the river Uaupés, which gives name to São Gabriel da Cachoeira airport, enters Brazil. “They say that the people here are starving, they die of malnutrition, a lie”, said, in the afternoon, the young man who joined the indigenous movement at the age of 19 and still acts as a broadcaster, one of the 18 communicators of the Wayuri Network, on the radio, spread throughout the Rio Negro basin. “The Network fights the fake news. We have to be united in several issues, health, education, youth is the present future”. Health worker in her community, Laura Mirtes Almeida, 31, tariana, was at Irari Ponta’s workshop and is also a correspondent for Wayuri Network, in Assunção do Içana. “There is a lack of information, a lot of lies, and you arrive with the right one, there are people who try to misrepresent them, we go back and explain again”.
“We have 176 radio stations. They broadcast information, if there is an invader, or some guerrilla, we inform the Army itself from time to time, or if there was an accident that needs rescue”
The line in front of FOIRN’s headquarters had eight, nine people and grew slowly on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 22. Everyone was waiting for the opening of the two hours daily broadcast of the NGO’s radio station, to communicate with their communities. “We have 176 radio stations. They broadcast information, if there is an invader, or some guerrilla, we inform the Army itself from time to time, or if there was an accident that needs rescue”, explains Isaías. The transmission time is split between messages for the city and the communities, health issues and the indigenous movement, and the concern with fake news is never ending.
“We were a victim of a fake a while ago, it was hard work”, recalled, on the morning of Sunday, May 26, at a cafe in the center of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, the president of FOIRN, Marivelton Rodrigues Barroso. “They got a video of a Globo news report, in which a former director of FOIRN said that at the time of the Health agreement, we were in charge of R$ 11 million, but the report was edited as if we were still in charge of it, a budget of R$ 11 million to promote actions in the communities. It was not true, but this has spread here in the city, which has a lot of people against here, there is a strong resistance among the population”.
According to Marivelton, FOIRN’s budget reaches R$ 1,6 million per year and most of it comes from outside the country, from organizations like the Climate Alliance, managed by Austria, which encompasses several councils from all over Europe to receive donations from European citizens who believe in the importance of preserving the Amazon. “This R$ 1,6 million has to cover traveling in these five regions where we operate for 12 months, and part of it stays at headquarters, to pay the internet service, our staff of five people, vehicles, maintenance of vessels, let’s say this reaches 55%, 60% of the fixed budget”. There is 40% left for the rest, including trips to communities like Irari Ponta.
The Irari Ponta workshop brought together nine of the 17 honey producers who work with instructor Genilton Apolinário, from the community of Tunuí, on a day’s journey up River Içana. Embryonic, the project is yet another attempt by FOIRN to foster a sustainable way of earning a living for the region’s inhabitants, as well as the Arumã basketry, the product that launched the country’s first indigenous brand, Baniwa, in 2000, on the 500 anniversary of the discovery of Brazil, when the president of FOIRN was André Baniwa. “I came down from Tucumã to São Paulo, me, my wife, my father, my brother, my sister, only the family was with me, many didn’t want to come, I asked people, but they were afraid to go. There was an old lady that we wanted to photograph and she was afraid of the photographer’s beard”.
Today, Baniwa pepper is the brand’s big star, but not even it, let alone others attempts at sustainable businesses, have been able to bring about significant changes in the lives of the region’s residents. “The associations start to demand production, the artisan, the farmer produce and not even one, two, five months go by, it´s over. Then other projects start, there is no continuity”, says councilman Basílio, who does not see progress even in the most profitable product of the Baniwa brand. “In Tucuí we have a pepper house, in other indigenous villages there is a pepper house, but the communities, in general, are not feeling the benefits, getting income to live, not even from the pepper, which is all over the world”.
André Baniwa recognizes that the programs “don’t have the speed to show big results in a short time”. “They are long term. Our work is to improve income, market, plan, brand, but they are not fast things, it’s difficult to assimilate that into your culture”, says the former president of FOIRN, who sees no other way. “It’s what is need to create a business, it takes time, pepper, chestnut (uará, or Rio Negro’s chestnut), tucupi, basketry, now honey, are important jobs, but they don’t have the speed that the market demands, that the next day we sell tons, it will not happen like that”.
The sustainable business initiatives in the Rio Negro Basin are part of the Territories of Socio-Environmental Diversity Project, a partnership between FOIRN and the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a non-governmental organization that is based in São Gabriel da Cachoeira as well.
"No one ever wants to accept a work agenda in a mosaic of protected areas. We dream of it, that we could show that it’s possible, our community development, in short, our physical survival itself”
The projects are planned in the Territorial and Environmental Management Plan from Rio Negro, the Wasu PGTA, as was named the document approved by 300 leaders of the 23 peoples of the region, during the 16th FOIRN Ordinary General Assembly, from November 27 to December 1, 2018. PGTAs are part of the National Policy for Environmental and Territorial Management of Indigenous Lands (PNGati), instituted by Federal Decree 7.747, of June 5, 2012. “There is a lot of experience and strategies outlined here, a regional plan for sustainable development that even federal entities have not embraced. No one ever wants to accept a work agenda in a mosaic of protected areas. We dream of it, that we could show that it’s possible, our community development, in short, our physical survival itself”, says Marivelton.
Of Baré ethnicity, the current FOIRN’s president is from the municipality of Santa Isabel do Rio Negro, in the Médio Rio Negro, where a sports fishing project has been operating on the river Marié since 2014. “We had institutional support from FUNAI, with the support of the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) and the Army, which also played a fundamental role, providing all the supervision, for more than five months there at the mouth of Marié, to structure it. We have been constantly working on the issue of tourism”, says Marivelton. Expeditions to communities in the Rio Negro Basin jointly planned by associations linked to FOIRN, by FUNAI, ISA and Ibama began last year, in partnership with Garupa, a NGO specialized in sustainable tourism. Now, organizations are finalizing a tourism project for Pico da Neblina, along with the Yanomami People.
One of the most traditional organizations of the indigenous movement, the FOIRN was founded in 1987, on the second period of great investments in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, during the Calha Norte Project, when José Sarney was the president of Brazil. “It was a project to strengthen the institutions, to protect the border, they sent platoons, each platoon was to have FUNAI, Ibama, Federal Police, Navy, everyone. It divided the population at the beginning, but a very strong force was created between them and they fought for the demarcation of the lands, so today, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, almost all the lands are indigenous”, says Ribamar, who was mayor during the Calha Norte.
Ribamar’s term (1989-1990) began at the time as that of ex-president Fernando Collor, who started his government in 1990 and suffered the first impeachment in the country’s Presidency history in 1992. “It was the worst period of my life, because he (Collor) stopped it all. There was a project to install 14 indigenous stations, there were 14 airstrips, the airport in the city was expanded, and the first thing he did was to sell FUNAI planes”. Faced with difficulties, Ribamar is proud to have completed at least the works in progress when he took over the municipality. “There was not even one project halted, but it was a very bad period for me, of stress”.
José Ribamar also achieved a rare feat in the city’s political history: he elected his successor, Juscelino Gonçalves, who would be elected once again in 2004, to become the mayor responsible for officializing indigenous languages in the municipality, in 2006. In the end of his term, he handed over the position to a historic slate, the first 100% indigenous in Brazil to be elected, with Tariano Pedro Garcia as mayor, for the PT, and as vice, for the PV (Green Party), André Baniwa. “It was conflicted. We had that historical victory, but there was a problem soon after, which is that Pedro totally changed what we had planned to do. We argued a lot, before the beginning of our term we were already fighting. The project we had in mind, he didn’t want to do it anymore”, says the former vice-mayor, who attributes the attitude of the former running mate to “people behind” him, to a “bad gang” of the PT of Manaus. André ran for the next election, won by Renê Coimbra (PCdoB), and came in sixth place, with 6.39% of the votes, behind Pedro Garcia, who came in fourth, with 8.99%.
The results of the last two elections in the city prove, according to Basílio Rodrigues, that the majority is against the demarcation. “Those who defend the demarcations are the indigenous organizations themselves, and when they launch their candidates they will not win”. Judging by the results of the last presidential election, however, the reasoning is mixed. Fernando Haddad (PT) had 77.58% of the votes in the second round, against 22.42% of Bolsonaro (PSL), who didn’t have the vote of a councilman from his party in São Gabriel da Cachoeira. “I voted for Haddad because I respect the decision of the people, the community. They are already beginning to understand politics, listening, following. I don’t even have the strength to come and reverse that”, said Basílio, hours before the plenary session every Thursday night, in the City Council.
“Those who defend the demarcations are the indigenous organizations themselves, and when they launch their candidates they will not win”
In the ordinary session of May 23, the main theme was the request for the setting of a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (CPI) to investigate the provision of school lunches in the communities, made by councilman Lindelbar Garrido (PRB). “Four or five mayors have gone by, it always arrives late, within 15 days of the mid-term holidays, the school meals materialize. I went up to my region last week, it hasn’t reached the last school yet”, told Basílio, in his office.
Invited to give testimony, the municipal secretary of Education, Rosivaldo Brazão Lopes, could not give a direct answer to any of the questions asked. “Each department is responsible for its part, so I let those who are responsible for that area reply”, said the secretary, in his first intervention and, with few differences, on the following questions, which provoked public objections from two councilors. “A secretary needs to accompany, not just delegate to others”, said Otacila Lemos (DEM). “You are totally unprepared for the job”, amended Feliciano Borges (PSL), also known as Sergeant Borjão. At the end of the session, which was attended by 12 of the 13 councilors in the municipality, the CPI was unanimously approved.
In spite of the lack of school meals and proper structure, the indigenous school is praised even by those who do not spare criticism for the movement. “The indigenous movement is maintaining the indigenous school, languages, culture, these things are advancing a lot, but in terms of structure...” said Basílio Rodrigues. The Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (9.394) of 1996, guarantees to the indigenous, in its Article 32, the teaching in their mother tongue, in addition to Portuguese. The General and Transitorial Provisions Act of the 1988 Constitution, in its articles 78 and 79, says that it is the duty of the State to offer bilingual and intercultural education that values the socio-cultural practices of each community.
In the Rio Negro Basin, according to André Baniwa, progress began in 2000. “We created our school. We had no teacher and today we have more than two hundred teachers with experience, with university degrees, some of them started studying inside our schools”. Juvêncio Cardoso is one of them. “I was one of the first class of students who studied at the first indigenous school created by this movement”, says the FOIRN coordinator, currently pursuing a master’s degree on a national program for teaching environmental sciences at the Federal University of Amazonas (Ufam). “At the time, we only had two elementary schools in the region, today we have 25, but most without a school building”.
It’s no coincidence then, the number of indigenous teachers in this article, such as Tiago Paché, a multidisciplinary teacher who, on the night of Irari Ponta, the workshop already finished, told what had happened in his community, Barcellos, in bank of the Iauiari River, almost in Colombia. “An Army captain came, saying that he was now chief of the community, that the president had authorized, but he came by himself and the people did not accept that, no, he ended up leaving”. Earlier, Meraldino Cordeiro told an even more significant episode. “They killed a guy in Inambu (community on the bank of the Ayari River), an indigenous man, he was fishing. He was shot. Now that this is happening closer to the communities, people are more comfortable to enter our land here”, said the president of Aibri, who already plans some action in response. “We’re going to get together so as not to let them invade our lands, do inspections, we will think about what can be done”.
Among the options, an open conflict is not ruled out. “In the past there was a drum that we beat before contact. The indigenous army, in order not to be attacked, already had this organization”, recalled Anderson Tomaz Ferreira, who is also a teacher at the indigenous school. Beside him, Meraldino amended: “it could be that at some point we will have to raise the arrows”. In the same conversation under the roof of the Irari Ponta community center, Meraldino’s brother, Enok, joked about the situation, remembering that they could now raise arrows, pistol and shotgun, since Bolsonaro “wants to make it easier to buy a gun”. But he soon realized the other side: “powerful weapon is expensive, for us it will complicate, become more dangerous”.
“It could be that at some point we will have to raise the arrows”
On Monday, June 29, the United Nations (UN) high commissioner for Human Rights, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, condemned the death of chief Emyra Waiãpi, 62, leader of Mariry community, in state of Amapá. The Waiãpi People denounced the invasion of the indigenous village on Saturday, June 27, by garimpeiros. Emyra’s son, Aikyry Waiãpi claimed that his father died in confrontation with the invaders. Bachelet, in an official statement, said that the chief’s death is “a disturbing symptom of the growing problem of invasion of indigenous lands – especially forests – by miners, loggers and farmers in Brazil”. On the same day as the UN high commissioner’s statement, president Jair Bolsonaro said that there was still “no strong indication” that the indigenous leader had been murdered. On August 16, the Federal Police released the report of the Amapá Technical Police that saw no signs of violence in the chief’s body, suggesting drowning as a probable cause of death. Emyra was not the first indigenous leader killed this year. In February, chief Francisco de Souza Pereira, Tukano, 53, was shot dead in the house where he lived, in Manaus, in front of his wife and 11-year-old daughter.
The Upper Rio Negro also has its history of conflicts. “It was already happening in the late 70’s, in the 80’s. The guys got there, asked about the way to go to Serra do Porco, and they needed help from the community to carry the dredge”, tells André Baniwa. The deal, he said, was for the gold panners to pay for the service, which included opening an airstrip, in gold. “They didn’t pay, so the indigenous gathered together willing to confront them, without a shotgun, but with borduna (club), body painted, and the warriors did just that, expelled the guys. My father participated, my brother joined this war, they went there, they scared them and everybody left”.
Still according to the account of former president of FOIRN, the garimpeiros managed to communicate with an Army platoon in São Joaquim. "They had a way of communicating that no one grasped, they must have had some sort of pact with the military at the time. They went up, they got the chief of the Indians, and the army couldn't do this but they mistreated him, made him sleep on top of a rifle. But they didn't beat him. When the warriors heard about it, they gathered fifty rifles, because they had all been gold panners, they had already bought rifles, the Indians. So they got fifty people who were ready to go back and kill the guys. But, maybe because they got lucky, the military released the chief and that's why nothing happened"
"We learned a lot, there are instruments for you to make an agreement, it’s not the same as in the old days, but if something happens, it can become even worse”
Another case in the 1980’s, this time involving the Tukano People, ended up, according to André, in death. “They killed about ten or fifteen to get respect there, because the guys got there enslaving the indigenous”. André avoids leaving home when there is an attack by indigenous peoples on white men. “I’m even afraid to walk in the city. It’s very dangerous. We wouldn’t want that to happen. We learned a lot, there are instruments for you to make an agreement, it’s not the same as in the old days, but if something happens, it can become even worse”.
At night, with sudden breezes, the weather is refreshing in Irari Ponta. After the meliponiculture workshop was over, a group chats outdoors, near the soccer pitch pavilion, another group moves closer to the riverbank, on the way to the house with the largest number of tied hammocks, where visitors from other communities slept the four nights. There are those who stay in the community center, telling stories and laughing, like Carlos de Jesus, Juvêncio, Lucas, Laura, Rosiclaudio and Isaías, who does not believe as much in the possibility of major conflicts in Alto Rio Negro. “In the state of Amazonas, we never reached the limit, as is in the south of Pará, which involves many farms, agriculture and livestock. There are limited lands there, if you cross, the farmer, shoots you straight away. Here, for now, we’re still in the ‘good living’, as we say, with the preservation, without having the tractor on the side of your territory, knocking it down, we still don’t have this big exploitation”, said the director of FOIRN two days earlier, in the interview at NGO’s headquarters, in the Center of São Gabriel da Cachoeira.
In Irari Ponta, as everyone else in the conversation, Isaías laughed at Carlos de Jesus, the main storyteller again, telling about his time in the Army when he climbed Pico da Neblina. “Very cold, difficult, but getting there at the top is beautiful, it gives a thrill, there is a book, you write your name there, in the highest place in Brazil”, said the teacher, just before everyone went to sleep, around ten, eleven, midnight at most. Alone in the room, with a Vasco crest and other drawings painted on the wall, one of them of Wolverine, the night was tranquil, with the protection of the mosquito net and the highly mineral waters of the Içana, which, like those of the Rio Negro, breeds few mosquitoes. With the first rays of sunshine, Ovídio, the captain, left his house, which stood just behind the goal at the other end of the pitch, carrying the tray with the manioc bread and the cornstarch biscuits. He placed the tray on the table and went to the pipe hanging by the rope that works as a bell, which the captain rang by tapping with another pipe, warning everyone that breakfast was served.
Then, after saying goodbye to the entourages of other communities, shaking hands in a line, the FOIRN and FUNAI people also left, giving a ride to Carlos de Jesus, who stayed in Boavista. After leaving his relative, Isaías made the round trip with the flyboat at the mouth of Içana to go up the Negro a little further to the community of São Pedro. “We are going to buy fish”, he warned. Smaller than Irari Ponta, São Pedro also has an evangelical church and, unlike the other, where the children study in Boavista, has the school house, empty that Saturday morning, when the fisherman took his clients to the cages made of wooden friezes, which floated tied to bamboos, with the fish trapped in the waters of the Rio Negro, alive. “It’s his freezer”, joked Isaías, with almost two dozen fish in the boat, all killed with a single dry blow, from the fisherman’s machete before throwing the product in the plastic bag. Isaías started the engine by pulling the cord to go down the river under the light rain, in one of the most preserved regions of the Amazon Rainforest, where, despite the difficult access, the invasions and the threats of conflicts also increased.