Like mechanised Valkyries, nine helicopters filled with armed men and women in camouflage uniforms swoop over dense forests and remote rivers – but this is not a scene from Apocalypse Now, it is a Brazilian government mission to forestall catastrophe in the Amazon rainforest.
The aircraft from the country’s two main environmental agencies, Ibama and ICMBio, fly for hours above the Tapajós basin, then break formation when they approach their targets: illegal goldmining camps that are contaminating the waters and earth of the forest.
As the helicopters descend in a cloud of dust, the surprised prospectors flee, abandoning their excavators, dredges and high-pressure pumps. The environmental agents leap out and secure a perimeter, then set fire to every piece of equipment and every drop of fuel. Plumes of thick, black smoke billow up into the sky, a signal that illegal mining will no longer be permitted in conservation parks, Indigenous territories and other areas under the protection of the state. The agents then fly off to refuel and move on to the next target.
For the past four days, this has been the routine of Hugo Loss, an Ibama agent who says he and his team have neutralised 43 dredges, 33 excavators and 30 pump engines in Operation Xapiri, one of the biggest federal actions against illegal mining in more than a decade.
For him, it’s about not just protecting the environment but fighting for justice. The goldmines enrich criminals, he explains, which gives them economic and political power that they use to promote a vision of society in which a wealthy minority benefits at the expense of a poor majority and a wrecked habitat.
“This model is unsustainable,” he says in a call between flights. “By destroying the equipment of these criminal groups, we are removing their ability to exploit natural resources and bolster their finances and power. It’s not just about the law. It’s about society. We need something more inclusive and healthy instead of their values, which destroy all the rivers and streams, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.”
The ongoing operation in the Tapajós basin is Brazil’s third major operation against garimpos (illegal mining camps) since the leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office at the start of the year with a promise to end deforestation and drive invaders out of Indigenous territories, conservation areas and other public lands.
The first part of Operation Xapiri, which took place earlier this year farther north in the hilly forests of the Yanomami people close to the border with Venezuela, had mixed results. Although the number of camps has been reduced and many miners have fled the area, others – allegedly aligned with narco-trafficking gangs –have fired at Ibama aircraft, hidden equipment in the forest, and bought the support of Venezuelan military pilots to transport them back and forth across the border.
“If anyone tells you the problem is solved, they are lying,” Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, an influential shaman and spiritual leader, told a gathering of Indigenous people last month. “Our people are still suffering.”
There have also been operations to remove illegal miners from the Alto Rio Guamá Indigenous territory in Pará, which is home to about 2,500 Indigenous people of the Tembé, Timbira and Kaapor ethnic groups.
The situation in the Tapajós region is on a different scale. Instead of scattered secluded camps, there is more heavy equipment, which is harder to hide and easier to destroy. Heavily armed narco-traffickers are believed to have less of a presence, so the risks of armed resistance is lower. But many of the nearby municipalities – Itaituba, Jacareacanga and Novo Progresso – have illicitly issued mining licences and witnessed violence in the past against Ibama agents. The agents involved in the latest operation have to be careful to avoid revenge attacks.
A war of sorts is under way between two visions of the Amazon. On one side is a coalition of global markets, the military and local politicians, miners and ranchers who see the forest as a resource to be exploited for the greatest profit possible. On the other is a coalition of traditional forest communities, environmentalists and scientists who warn that the forest, which is one of the world’s most important climate regulators, is degrading close to the point of no return as a result of forest clearance and river contamination. In between is the Brazilian state, which has become a political battleground for these two conflicting outlooks. This has resulted in a to and fro of sharply contradictory policies in recent years, often in tandem with the health of Brazil’s democracy.
The problem dates back several decades. In the 1970s and 80s, mining was encouraged by the military dictatorship, leading to an invasion of tens of thousands of garimpeiros into Indigenous land, bringing disease and violence. In the 90s and 00s, they were largely driven out as the Brazilian state demarcated more Indigenous territories and conservation areas. Over the past decade, they have returned under successive presidents who put more focus on the economy than the environment, culminating in the ultra-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who tore up restrictions and ran down protections, leading to a fresh tsunami of land invasions, fires, mines and forest clearance.
Operation Xapiri – named for the Yanomami people’s forest guardian spirits that refresh the land, cure the body and prevent epidemics – aims to reverse the tide. It has been timed to mark the anniversary of the notorious “dia do fogo” (day of fire), a nadir of the Bolsonarist era when land grabbers were so emboldened by the weakening of federal protections that they coordinated a mass burn-off of the rainforest.
The latest operation aims to declare that the state is back. As well as Ibama and ICMBio, the action involves federal police, transport police and other government bodies. The army has provided a base but no personnel or other logistical assistance – a far weaker level of support than in the past, reflecting the Bolsonarist pro-garimpeiro sentiment of many senior officers.
In the coming days and weeks, Operation Xapiri aims to destroy the remaining mining camps in the Tapajós region and set up permanent Ibama bases to prevent the miners from returning and to protect local opponents of the mines.
“The bases are fundamental to ensure this is not just a temporary change. We can’t control the region without them,” Loss said. “In these four years of Bolsonaro, criminal miners have advanced a long way into the forest and made it more difficult for us. They are in very isolated areas of the Amazon now so we need permanent bases to counter that.”
After Operation Xapiri, the authorities will turn their attention to other areas, such as the huge illegal mines in Kayapo territory. In the longer term, the Brazilian government also needs financial support from other nations so that it can provide alternative ways of life for the miners, many of whom are from poor families or co-opted Indigenous people who work in almost slave-like conditions.
At the Amazon summit in Belém last week, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, said other jobs had to be provided, but she said this “should not detract from the primary problem which was that these land invasions were illegal”.
