Those Who Want to Destroy the Amazon Have Taken Over Brazil's Politics

On June 5, Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Araújo Pereira, his Brazilian guide, set off into the Amazon to do research for a book Phillips was working on. The book had a working title: How to Save the Amazon. But, within days, both men would be dead, having made the fatal mistake of meeting with an indigenous group that had been documenting illegal logging, fishing, and panning for gold.

Pereira, an indigenous affairs representative for the government, was rumored to have been receiving threats before his murder — all related to his work protecting indigenous land.

Phillips explained some of the dynamics of the area in a 2019 letter to his friend Jon Lee Anderson, a New Yorker writer: “Well, the dismantling of protection, agencies, etc is scarily drastic and there are signs this is already having an impact. My view is that this would prove disastrous because it’s a green light to loggers, land grabbers, garimpeiros[gold prospectors] and so on in an already lawless area.”

He wrote that letter just six months after President Jair Bolsonaro took office. Bolsonaro’s rule has pushed deforestation and fires in the Amazon to “their highest levels,” said Stephanie Sy of PBS NewsHour — and Phillips had challenged the president on that during a press conference in 2019.”

A year ago, Jonathan Watts wrote in The Guardian: “Despite evidence that fire, drought and land clearance are pushing the Amazon towards a point of no return, they say the far-right leader is more interested in placating the powerful agribusiness lobby and tapping global markets that reward destructive behavior."

He said that the “onslaught on forest safeguards has picked up pace.”

So perhaps it is no surprise that the people involved in that onslaught have found their ways into positions in which they can “legally” make decisions about the Amazon’s precious trees and fauna.

“Those who deforest the Amazon completely dominate local politics, both through economic power and through violence,” Alexandre Saraiva, who was chief of the federal police in Amazonas state until last year, told The Washington Post. “The representatives of the people are, in fact, the representatives of those who deforest.”

And deforestation is happening at an astounding rate. Reuters reported that 166 square miles of trees in the Amazon were destroyed in January, which was five times higher than in January 2021, according to preliminary satellite data from government space research agency Inpe. As one of the world’s largest carbon sinks, the Amazon is one big key to slowing global warming. On a local level, the destruction of the rainforest means less freshwater for agriculture. And with deforestation comes the destruction of indigenous peoples' worlds. No more land, food, medicines, and so on. Not only that, but illegal and legal loggers and miners have pushed indigenous people off their land, or even killed them.

A new report from the Post looked at thousands of federal infractions as well as candidate data in the Amazon.

“In the Amazon, there is little political cost to destroying the forest," write Terrence McCoy and Cecília do Lago. “Here, a vice mayor in Mato Grosso is cited three times for deforestation and is reelected the next year. A mayor in Amazonas is arrested and accused by federal police of participating in a protest that destroyed an environmental law enforcement base — and stays in office. The ‘King of Gold Mining,’ as he was dubbed by a national magazine, is sentenced to nearly five years for illegal deforestation — but coasts to reelection as a mayor in Pará.”

And these anti-environment politicians are spending millions and millions of dollars to reach office, in what the Post calls a “parallel political system.”

“This is the rule, not the exception,” said Alexandre Saraiva, the former chief of the federal police in Amazonas state. “Those who deforest the Amazon completely dominate local politics, both through economic power and through violence. The representatives of the people are, in fact, the representatives of those who deforest.”