According to the authorities, illegal gold miners ambushed Brazilian police and environmental protection agents on vast Indigenous land in the Amazon jungle, killing four miners in an exchange of gunfire. The Ministry of Environment said on Monday that its crew was attacked the day before while attempting to destroy a wildcat mining camp controlled by an organised crime group on the Yanomami reserve. According to the ministry, federal police in Brazil are investigating the event, which occurred after an attack on Saturday left one man dead and two others critically injured in Yanomami territory.
The violence comes after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration launched operations early this year to remove illegal miners who had infiltrated the country’s largest Indigenous reservation. For years, Indigenous leaders have advocated for increased protection to safeguard their villages from illegal miners, accusing them of inciting violence. According to a study published this year by the Hutukara Yanomami Association, the area damaged by “garimpo,” or wildcat gold mining, in the Yanomami reservation climbed by 46 percent in 2021, to 3,272 hectares (8,085 acres), the biggest yearly rise since monitoring began in 2018.
“In addition to deforesting our lands and destroying our waters, illegal gold and cassiterite [a key tin ingredient] mining on Yanomami territory has resulted in an explosion of malaria and other infectious diseases… and a terrifying surge of violence against Indigenous people,” the organization warned. More than 20,000 miners are said to have populated the huge Yanomami reserve, which spans the states of Roraima and Amazonas in the northwest corner of the Brazilian Amazon. Former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro encouraged expanded development in the Amazon while undermining Brazil’s environmental protection and Indigenous rights organizations. The Yanomami, who number around 28,000 people, have claimed that Bolsonaro’s policies have contributed to rising threats against them. According to Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara, around 80% of the gold miners who entered the reserve have now been expelled, and those who remain are opposing deportation more forcefully.
The Ministry of the Environment claimed in a statement on Monday that 327 mining camps had been demolished, and that 18 aircraft, one helicopter, and dozens of watercraft had been destroyed in the effort to clear Yanomami land. President Lula has promised a zero-tolerance policy towards mining on Indigenous land protected by the Brazilian constitution. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment is planning evictions on five other reservations where illegal logging and mining have increased under Bolsonaro.
