The Amazon rainforest is 55 million years old. It produces 20% of the world’s oxygen, sequesters 2.2 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere1, and its largest river contains 20% of the worlds supply of fresh water.2 It is home to one million indigenous peoples of 400 different tribes,3 40,000 species of plants, 16,000 tree species, 5600 species of fish, 1300 species of birds, 400 species of reptiles, 430 mammals, and 1000 species of amphibians.4 There is no place like it on Earth. But it is being destroyed because of the shortsightedness and greed of invaders who see it as a resource to be exploited.
According to data from the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE), there have been more than 185,000 outbreaks of forest fires this year in Brazil, a 46% increase from last year and more than 43,000 outbreaks in Bolivia, an increase of 82% from last year.5 National Geographic reported in August that “7,000 square miles [4,480,000 acres] of the forest were in flames, an area just smaller than the size of New Jersey,”6 and on August 19th smoke from the fires in the Brazilian Amazon was so intense, it traveled thousands of kilometers to São Paulo, bringing darkness to the city at 3 PM.7
Despite a drop in news coverage, the fires have continued to ravage the Amazon. Meanwhile, from January to September, 3,032 square miles of the Amazon were cut down for timber, an area 10 times the size of NYC.8 In the month of September alone 1,447 square kilometers of the Amazon was cut down for timber. By September of this year in Bolivia, “5.3 million hectares (about 13.1 million acres) — an area larger than the whole of Costa Rica — have been destroyed,”9 38% of which was forested. 94% of the forest fires in Bolivia were located in the department of Santa Cruz, the economy of which is not coincidentally driven by agriculture. The area is also rich in natural gas, iron ore, and magnesium that extractive industries and their lackey politicians hope to exploit. Professor Sandra Quiroga of Santa Cruz University estimates these fires in Bolivia have killed 2.3 million animals. 10
Burned region of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia state, Brazil, on August 24. CARLOS FABAL AFP GETTY IMAGES
Monga Bay’s Ignacio Amigo reported back in August that data from the Brazilian NGO, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia (Institute of Environmental Research in Amazonia) showed that “the 10 municipalities with the highest deforestation rates are also the ones with the highest number of fire occurrences this year.”11 This is no coincidence. These fires are primarily man-made and exacerbated by the record breaking heat the Amazon saw in June and July, a direct result of climate change. Loggers are clear cutting the forest for lumber and then burning what’s left behind so that cattle ranchers can move in. Much of this was very much planned this year. For example, on August 5, 2019, a newspaper in Para near the Areia settlement where illegal loggers are based reported that a “Day of Fire” was planned for August 10. Their goal was to burn 2000 square kilometers in a conservation reserve to show Bolsonaro they were ready to work.
The rise of extremist politicians in South America like Jair Bolsonaro can be blamed for many of these fires. This spike in forest fires in the Amazon began as soon as he entered office. Aljazeera reported that even before he entered office deforestation increased by nearly 50 percent during the August to October election period.12 Bolsonaro’s political career has been marked by racist, anti-indigenous and ecocidal rhetoric. He has compared indigenous peoples to “animals trapped in a zoo” and he has even lamented “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.” In 2017 he remarked “where there is indigenous land, there is wealth underneath it”13 He promised in his campaign he would end demarcation of protected forests where indigenous people call home so that extractive industries could exploit the Amazon and he made good on those promises. In the first month of Bolsonaro’s presidency, there were at least 14 illegal invasions into indigenous lands by those seeking to exploit the forest, including Karipuna Indigenous Land in Rondônia where trees hundreds of years old were cut down.14
At least five of the 14 indigenous lands that were invaded this year recorded logging and clear cutting for livestock and agriculture.16 On Karipuna land, invaders are trying to settle there permanently. Soon after Bolsonaro’s election, the Yanomami Amazon reserve was also invaded by 20,000 miners, spreading malaria, polluting the reserves rivers with mercury and silt, destroying fisheries, and forcing some women into prostitution.17 The miners cut trees down to make three landing strips for planes and three open pit mines.
Anarchists in Sao Paulo protesting on August 23, 2019. The sign reads “Burn fascists, not forests!”
Bolsonaro’s minister of the environment, Ricardo Salles, blamed the Amazon fires on dry weather and wind, despite the fact that moisture levels were higher in the first half of August than in the previous three years. Before joining the administration, Salles was convicted of illegally doctoring maps of a conservation reserve in 2017 so that mining companies could set up their operations inside of it. In February of this year he fired 21 of 27 of the regional directors of IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, which fights deforestation. Their anti-logging operations have been drastically reduced since. Bolsonaro has also directly gutted the institute. In April he established a policy that requires all fines for environmental crimes to be reviewed at a “conciliation” hearing led by someone outside IBAMA. The hearing itself can take years to convene and the panel can reduce fines or eliminate them. Bolsonaro also instructed IBAMA officials to no longer burn seized logging equipment from illegal logging operations. More recently on the 1st of this month, Bolsonaro suggested IBAMA agents should be sent to a military base where political prisoners were executed during the military dictatorship of Brazil.18 Bolsonaro has even decreased Brazil’s capacity to fight forest fires by reducing the budget of the Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade to combat forest fires by 20 percent.
Because the fires this year have been concentrated in indigenous territories like Para, Amazonas, (which has 166 indigenous territories, the most of any state in Brazil.19) and Mato Grosso, it’s possible indigenous people were being targeted by arsonists emboldened by Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous, racist rhetoric. According to Human Rights Watch, more indigenous land defenders are killed in Para than in any other state in Brazil.20 The municipality of Altamira in Para saw the third most fires of all of Brazil’s municipalities in August and is also the site of the Belo Monte hydro dam under construction on the Xingú river, which Bolsonaro’s administration pledged they would complete. It’s possible the fires here were set to clear the area for construction and vehicles. Not surprisingly, the majority of Altamira’s GDP comes from agriculture.
While the fires ravaged pristine forest, farms and plantations were left virtually untouched. 19% of this year’s forest fire outbreaks in Brazil occurred in WDPA protected areas. All of the fires were outside of palm oil concession areas, and only 3% spread to plantations.21 In Bolivia 18% of the fires occurred in protected areas, and all of the fires have been outside of mining areas and oil palm plantations.
The Bolsonaro administration seeks to destroy all remaining indigenous territories so that they can be exploited by extractive industries and these fires serve those ends. They argue that because indigenous peoples make up such a small portion of the population they shouldn’t own so much land, yet the same is true of billionaires and far fewer people are making the argument to take land away from the super rich. Descendants of Portuguese royalty that once ruled Brazil are still paid taxes for land that has since been bought by residents of Brazil.22 The Logemann Family of Brazil in Porto Alegre owns SLC Agricola which consists of 16 farms encompassing 458,000 hectares or 1,131,742.65 acres. Chilean forestry company CMPC, owned by the billionaire offspring of its founder, Eliodoro Matte, holds one million hectares of land in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.23 The largest land owner in South America, Celulosa Arauco y Constitución, is responsible for dumping dioxins, (the same toxins that were used in Vietnam that still cause birth defects) into the Valdivia river in Chile. Yet where is the outrage about these parasites? Most people likely don’t even know their names. Instead, indigenous people are scapegoated as the problem when they are the only people defending the forests. What is most disturbing about the Bolsonaro administration’s argument for taking away indigenous land is that it omits the reason there are so few indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples used to be the only inhabitants of what is now called Brazil until Portuguese colonizers invaded and committed genocide some 500 years ago. The state in effect makes the argument that because there are so few left out of those they’ve killed, they don’t need as much land.
Bolivia’s former president, Evo Morales, who was in charge up until the military coup of November 10th this year is the more surprising driver behind the forest fires in Bolivia. His administration lacked the anti-indigenous, racist rhetoric of Bolsonaro. In fact, Morales was the first indigenous person to serve as president and he initially took steps forward, such as redistributing millions of acres of land to indigenous peoples and peasant communities.24 However, in recent years his policies took a sharp turn. For example, in 2017 he approved the construction of a 190 mile highway thorough Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park and also sanctioned slash and burn methods of farming that are behind much of Bolivia’s forest fires, as well as settlement in protected portions of the Amazon in an attempt to increase Bolivia’s agricultural production 25 According to a report published in April by Bolivia’s forest authority, deforestation for farming doubled from 2014-2018.
Otuquis National Park in eastern Bolivia After the Fires
Much of the US press isn’t helping the situation in the Amazon. Not surprisingly back in August Forbes published an article “Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It’s The ‘Lungs Of The World,’ Is Wrong” likely in hopes that no one pull their investments from agribusiness, mining, or logging in the Amazon. While priceless biodiversity, the product of billions of years of evolution burns to extinction, they rejoice for agribusiness plunderers and timber tycoons. Their sympathies lie with the arsonists burning the Amazon to the ground because capital is their only concern. The article understates the severity of the fires to quell investors concerns and essentially says they were worse some other years so this concern about them now is just sensationalist.
The Atlantic published a similar article entitled “The Amazon Is Not Earth’s Lungs Humans could burn every living thing on the planet and still not dent its oxygen supply,” which is erroneous and horrifying. Organisms that breathe oxygen (such as us) only evolved because of carbon sequestering photosythesizers that evolved 3 billion years ago. If all plant life was immolated there would be nothing to sequester the carbon in the carbon dioxide that organisms like us exhale. More and more oxygen would stay trapped in C02 molecules without a return of plant life and eventually all oxygen would be consumed and aerobic organisms would die. Although the article certainly doesn’t endorse burning every living thing to the ground, the ultimate message isn’t a call to action but is more of a call to inaction. The article downplays the importance of our current forests and other photosynthesizing organisms. It says because most of the oxygen we have is due to billions of years of photosynthesis and fossilization of carbon based lifeforms, our current photosyntheziers don’t matter because “In the long run, and from the perspective of oxygen, it’s a wash. As much is consumed as is created” but that process of creation would stop without photosynthesizers. This psuedoscientific article has no citations except for quotations from one geologist and it ultimately contradicts itself, acknowledging that “Left to its own devices, oxygen will disappear all by itself.”
Fortunately, there are people more concerned with the existence of the Amazon and the life it supports than the bank accounts of multinational corporations. Calls for boycotts, such as those made by Sonia Guajajara and the APIB (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil or Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples’ Articulation) of Brazilian timber and cattle (or all their agricultural products), are a good start. To this end Amazon Watch published a report entitled “Complicity in Destruction” that details which states and financial institutions provide the most funding to Brazil’s agribusiness industry. The report identifies cattle ranching as the industry most responsible for deforestation. In fact, Brazil has 200 million cattle and 80% of deforestation is driven by cattle ranching.26 HSBC and Banco Santander are called out as the top two funders of Brazilian cattle exportation, both providing more than $1.5 billion in credit. Among the companies to boycott, JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company in the world, may be one of the most significant. Headquartered in São Paulo, they have a daily bovine slaughtering capacity of 30,000 in Brazil alone and their 2017 revenue was $51.5 billion. Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Tereza Cristina Corrêa da Costa Dias has significant ties to the company.. As Mato Grosso do Sul state Secretary for Agrarian Development, she gave the company enormous tax breaks and access to state credit in exchange for large donations to her political party. Last year she approved Bill 6,299 to end regulations on pesticides. Trump also funded the company in 2018 via a USDA bailout worth $22.3 million. Subsidiaries of JBS include Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, Plumrose USA, and Primo smallgoods. As consumers, the least we can do is avoid buying meat from these companies as well as not doing business with their funders like Santander, JPMorgan Chase, and Barclay’s.
The report by Amazon Watch explains ranching giant Agropecuária Santa Barbara Xinguara received the largest fines for deforestation of the Amazon in 2017. Some of their cattle is slaughtered in JBS slaughterhouses, despite the fact that JBS signed a “Zero Deforestation Cattle Agreement” in 2009 along with Mafrig. Agropecuária Rio da Areia LTDA was fined over one million for deforestation of the Amazon in 2017 and 2018. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported in September of this year that Marfrig, another one of the largest cattle companies in Brazil that supplies McDonalds and Burger King, has bought meat from deforested land in the Amazon ravaged by this years forest fires.27
As stated Pará and Mato Grosso have seen the most forest fires in Brazil this year. Not coincidentally, the majority of timber sourced from these states is illegally logged.28 139,867 hectares was illegally logged in Mato Grosso from 2012-2013.29 Fires are sometimes set as a diversionary tactic so that local resources will be drained on efforts to extinguish them while the arsonists can log nearby without notice. Fires are also sometimes set to cover the tracks of illegal loggers and other times they are set to destroy the remaining trees that weren’t seen as worthwhile to cut for timber so that the area will be completely clear for cattle ranching or agriculture. Deforestation also makes natural forest fires more likely as it significantly reduces moisture in the air and rain and dry wood is left to burn like kindling. Arnaldo Andrade Betzel, owner of timber giant, Benevides Madeiras, and fruit pump company Argus is a major cause of the logging in Para. He was fined 2.2 million rubles between 2017 and 2018 for illegal deforestation in Para. Amazon Watch reveals in their report that he is tied with a number of European timber companies. Argus exports fruit pump to Acai GmbH – Fine Fruits Club in Germany which supply organic chain stores Alnatura and Denn’s. Ironically, these stores are appealing to consumers who want to reduce their negative impacts on the environment by eating organic. (This can be done by eating local and sustainably grown organic foods.) British timber company Nordisk Timber Eireli is another major offender of Amazon deforestation. It was fined $3.9 million for “lack of environmental oversights” from 2017-2018 and it supplies a number of European and US timber companies.
Soy farming is another major driver of deforestation in the Amazon. The value of Brazil’s soy has tripled since Trump threatened to start a trade war with China, which also produces a great deal of the world’s soy. The primary agricultural traders in Brazil, ABC Indústria e Comércio SA, JJ Samar Agronegócios Eireli, Uniggel Proteção de Plantas Ltda, Cargill, and Bunge Ltda have all purchased soy from farms that were fined by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources for clearing land in the Cerrado biome. The majority of Brazil’s soy is purchased by China so a boycott of these companies in China along with a shift to domestic, sustainable soy production in the country or alternatives would be a good start. All of the banks funding these agricultural companies profit when the forest burns and they bring in their toxic farming methods on the ashen remains but Blackrock may the worst offender. It owns $2.5 billion in shares of these companies and publicly supports the Bolsonaro administration. It also manages nearly $6 trillion, making it the worlds largest asset manager.
The threats made by French President Macron to block the Mercosur farming deal that would allow Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay to export agricultural products without tariffs to the EU seemed to be the only reason Bolsonaro was forced to act on the fires, sending in the army to drown the fires with water. Unconscionably, he rejected an offer of 20 million euros from the G7 to help stop the forest fires, claiming he would only accept the aid if Macron apologized for saying Bolsonaro lied when he claimed he was committed to confronting climate change at the G20. It is clear he is willing to let the Amazon burn just because of his fragile little ego. Macron’s threat made a difference because the EU is the second largest purchaser of Brazilian agricultural exports next to China. More than 40% of the EU’s beef imports come from Brazil”30
As important as boycotts are as without the financial incentive people wouldn’t light the forest alight destroying our future, what I believe is just as effective is people on the ground physically confronting the arsonists and protecting the Amazon like the Guajajara Guardians of the Guajajara tribe in Maranhão state.31
Guajajara Forest Guardians
The Guajajara call their forest guards Wazayzar or “keepers of the culture.” The Guardians use GPS equipment to find loggers trespassing on their territory, destroy their equipment ,and confront them with weapons..They also protect their neighbors, the uncontacted Awá who are frequently on the move as loggers and smoke from forest fires invade their land. Only 600 continue to live in the forest due to the pressures of the outside world.32 The direct actions of the Forest Guardians are far more effective than typical, symbolic protest, dressing up like a tree in the street, waving signs, and appealing to or writing to authority figures who do not care. But the job the Guardians have is a dangerous one, which is why more people don’t do it. In recent years several guardians have been killed protecting their home in the Amazon. In 2016 six members of the tribe were “brutally dismembered” by loggers.33 In the past ten years the Pastoral Land Commission has documented 300 killings of indigenous peoples in the Amazon who were trying to protect their land, only fourteen of which even went to trial. Just this month, another Guardian, Paulo Paulino (Kwahu) Guajajara, was shot dead in an ambush by loggers who also shot Tainaky Tenetehar, another Guardian, in the back as he fled.34 Most forest guardians go on their patrols unarmed and they need weapons.
Similar forest guards have been set up in Alto Turiaçu by the Ka’apor people who use similar tactics, intercepting logging trucks and burning them. Loggers are told to never return and those who refuse are beaten up. The Ka’apor also make homes on former logging camps to ensure the invaders don’t return. Other forest guards have been set up in Caru by the Guajajara and in Governador by the Pyhcop Catiji (or Gavião) peoples 35 Governador, Caru, Alto Turiaçu, and Arariboia are all a part of Maranhão where 85,700 square kilometers of forest have been destroyed by outsiders mostly for cattle ranches.36 About half of the remaining forest in Maranhão lies within these indigenous territories and it remains because of the efforts of these tribes. 
The forest guardians in all of the these territories face danger. Over the last decade, five Ka’apor leaders were assassinated. Many Ka’apor believe the state colludes with land grabbers looking to steal their land. Miraté Ka’apor, for example, one of the leaders of Ka’apor forest guard told interviewers in 2015,“Even the local authorities are involved. They grant licences to the sawmills and that encourages the loggers. The way the brancos [white or non-indigenous people] are organised also promotes death. They make a profit from this.”37 In 2016 forest guardians in Caru alerted environmental police of an illegal logging operation, to which they escorted them, but the police let the loggers go because they claimed they were too far from a police station.
Just as the remaining forests in Maranhão exist because of the protection efforts of the tribes that live there, the same is true of Trincheira Bacaja in Para thanks to the 1,100 member Xikrin tribe in Para who expel invaders armed with rifles and batons. However, they have faced increased invasions this year. In June invaders entered their territory using a road cut into the forest by loggers and in July they were able to raze an area the “size of 1500 football pitches” One landgrabber warned of a 300 person invasion of a Xikrin indigenous village. Thais Santi, a federal prosecutor for the area requested police take action by August 26th but they did nothing. Neighbouring Apyterewa indigenous territory home to the Parakanã people has experienced similar invasions by cattle ranchers. Land grabbers have been there for years and despite the fact that the federal supreme court ordered their eviction in 2015, invasions have increased because most police don’t care and side with invaders.
Xikrin warriors
Although the Munduruku tribe in Para doesn’t have an official forest guard, members of the tribe have also expelled miners and loggers seeking to exploit their land.38 and they are now working to shut down a logging road that spans from the Jamanxim River to their forests.39
An illegal gold mine in Posto de Vigilância, or Lookout Point, Munduruku territory. Photo credit: Meridith Kohut for NYT
The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau have also expelled invaders looking to steal their land in recent years and are another one the tribes that have faced significant invasions into their land this year.
A sign marking Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous territory was found shot up by the tribes leaders. This is supposed to serve as a warning left by invaders to the tribe.
As fires were set in the Peruvian Amazon this year, it was indigenous peoples there who took the initiative to fight them.40 “21% of Peru’s territory consists of mining concessions, which are superimposed upon 47.8% of the territory of peasant communities. Similarly, 75% of the Peruvian Amazon is covered by oil and gas concessions”41 Fires serve as a means to clear the land for these purposes.
In just an 11 year period from “2006 through 2017, Brazil’s part of the Amazon lost roughly 91,890 square miles of forest cover—an area larger than New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Connecticut combined, according to an analysis of satellite images by Global Forest Watch.”42 
Carlos Nobre, senior researcher at the University of Saõ Paulo’s Institute for Advanced Studies, estimates humans have already destroyed 15-17% of the Amazon and if 20-25% is destroyed, this will reduce the rain there to the point at which it will transform the Amazon into a savanna, destroying this treasure forever.
Clearing and setting fires to the rainforest for extractive and agrochemical industries is unbelievably short-sighted. It is ruining the Earth’s true wealth: biodiversity, food, clean water, clean air, and forests that sequester carbon for short-term wealth in the form of fiat currency, which is worthless without a habitable planet. Indigenous people who live in the forest understand this and are the last reliable protectors of the Amazon. They need the means to defend themselves and right now they are outgunned by loggers who are much better funded. Average environmentalists need to become more radical. Pacifist street protest won’t save the forest. Burning logging vehicles will. If there was a gofundme set up by indigenous forest guardians looking to buy more and better guns, bows, and arrows to defend the forest and themselves from those who wish to exploit it, I would be the first to donate. If the indigenous forest guards were open to it, I think another way outsiders could help is by setting up armed patrols around the borders of indigenous reserves, ensuring no one seeking to exploit the forest could enter. Efforts should also be made to reforest parts of the Amazon that have been destroyed.
Perhaps most importantly, those of us who aren’t indigenous can learn from them. Many indigenous peoples of the Amazon survive and thrive in the forest without money or any assistance from the market or the state. They don’t need to sell their labor to survive. They take care of the forest and it takes care of them. They know how to live in harmony with nature, taking only the food, water, and materials for shelter that they need. Many outsiders claim they resort to logging, mining, and burning forest for cattle ranching because they are poor and lack options. They want the state to provide other types of jobs. But if they could instead learn from indigenous peoples, they wouldn’t need to sell their labor or steal the Earth’s natural wealth. We shouldn’t have to justify our existence by making money and producing on the terms of capitalist states .We must change our perspectives about development and “economic progress” that are so seemingly anthropocentric. In reality they are suicidal and ecocidal. Some new technological toy or “development” project are not “progress.” We can only truly progress if fight these perverted concepts of “progress”, and we recognize the legitimate land claims of indigenous peoples and learn from them, so that we may stop our own course of self-destruction. It is not an exaggeration to say that the fight for the forests is a fight for our own survival.
Citations:
1 https://www.livescience.com/44235-amazon-rainforest-carbon-cycle-measured.html
2 https://amazonaid.org/water/
3 https://www.survivalinternational.org/about/amazontribes
4 Rhett A. Butler: Animals of the Amazon rainforest. 4/1/19. https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_wildlife.html
5 INPE: Automatic Daily Report: http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/cadastro/v2/#tabela_focos_pais_ano
6 ALEJANDRA BORUNDA: See how much of the Amazon is burning, how it compares to other years. 8/29/19.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/amazon-fires-cause-deforestation-graphic-map/
9 Claire Wordley: Fires still being set in blazing Bolivia (commentary). October 1st 2019 news.mongabay.com/2019/10/fires-still-being-set-in-blazing-bolivia-commentary/
10 Wildfires in Bolivia Have Killed an Estimated 2 Million Animals So Far This Year. 10/1/19 https://e360.yale.edu/digest/wildfires-in-bolivia-have-killed-an-estimated-2-million-animals-so-far-this-year
11 Ignacio Amigo: Amazon rainforest fires leave São Paulo in the dark. August 21 2019. https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/amazon-rainforest-fires-leave-sao-paulo-in-the-dark/
14 Joana Moncau e Thais Lazzeri: Sob ataque pós-eleição, terras indígenas estão desprotegidas com desmonte da Funai. 10/2/19 reporterbrasil.org.br/2019/02/sob-ataque-pos-eleicao-terras-indigenas-estao-desprotegidas-com-desmonte-da-funai/
17 Sue Branford: Yanomami Amazon reserve invaded by 20,000 miners; Bolsonaro fails to act. 7/12/19.https://news.mongabay.com/2019/07/yanomami-amazon-reserve-invaded-by-20000-miners-bolsonaro-fails-to-act/
19 “Caracterização Socioambiental das Terras Indígenas no Brasil”. Povos Indígenas no Brasil Instituto Socioambiental.
21 Global Forest Watch: Fire Report for Brazil 1 Jan 2019 – 11 24 2019. https://fires.globalforestwatch.org/report/index.html#aoitype=GLOBAL&reporttype=globalcountryreport&country=Brazil&dates=fYear-2019!fMonth-1!fDay-1!tYear-2019!tMonth-11!tDay-24
23 Revealed: the world’s 101 biggest private landowners: https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/70168/revealed-the-worlds-101-biggest-private-landowners
24 https://nacla.org/blog/2013/3/31/bolivia-unfinished-business-land-reform
26 Kuepper, Barbara.“Cattle-Driven Deforestation: A Major Risk to Brazilian Retailers.” Chain Reaction Research. 6 September 2018, https://chainreactionresearch.com/report/cattle-driven-deforestation-a-major-risk-to-brazilian-retailers/
28 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0207855
29 Silgueiro V, Thuault A, Micol L, Abad R. Transparência Florestal Mato Grosso. Cuiabá, Brazil; 2015
33 Temo Dias: IF YOU WANT TO PROTECT THE FORESTS, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE. https://www.indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/all-global-news/1112-if-you-want-to-protect-the-forests-you-have-to-protect-the-people
34 Sarah Shenker: Amazon Guardian killed, another shot, as loggers attack in Brazil. November 2nd 2019.https://survivalinternational.org/news/12253
37 Johnathon Watts: The Amazon tribe protecting the forest with bows, arrows, GPS and camera traps 9/9/15. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/09/amazon-tribe-protecting-forest-bows-arrows-gps-camera-traps
38 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/world/americas/brazil-indigenous-mining-bolsonaro.html and https://crimethinc.com/2019/09/24/what-is-burning-the-amazon-a-plea-from-brazilian-anarchists
39 https://amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2019-07-29-brazil-threats-to-Indigenous-peoples.pdf
41 Indigenous peoples in Peru. iwgia.org/en/peru?start=4
42 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/world/americas/brazil-indigenous-mining-bolsonaro.html
Tools of control 