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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Tom Phillips in the Yanomami Indigenous territory

‘A war society doesn’t see’: the Brazilian force driving out mining gangs from Indigenous lands

Environmental special forces raid an illegal cassiterite mine near the Yanomami village of Xitei
Environmental special forces raid an illegal cassiterite mine near the Yanomami village of Xitei. Photograph: Tom Phillips/The Guardian

For the last four years Brazil’s rainforests bled. “They bled like never before,” said Felipe Finger as he prepared to venture into the jungle with his assault rifle to staunch the environmental carnage inflicted on the Amazon under the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Moments later Finger, a mettlesome special forces commander for Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama, was airborne in a single-engine helicopter, hurtling over the forest canopy towards the frontline of a ferocious war on nature and the Indigenous peoples who lived here long before Portuguese explorers arrived more than 500 years ago.

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