Just a short walk from where British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira set out on their latest journey, people sit in the scorching sun and smash rocks into pieces with hammers.
It looks like a scene from a movie set in biblical times, but this is 21st-century Brazil in the city of Atalaia do Norte – the jumping-off point for adventurers, missionaries, poachers, smugglers and others who make it to Javar- Tal Zug, a sprawling jungle in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were driving back to Atalaia after a research trip to the region when they were murdered on June 5. Indigenous leaders say the crime was paid back by illegal fishermen for Pereira’s fight against poaching on indigenous land.
The grim case has put the Javari Valley, home to an indigenous reserve larger than Austria and the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes on earth, into the international limelight.
The region has been hit by a wave of illegal fishing, logging, mining and drug trafficking — crimes that security experts say are fueled by poverty.
In Atalaia, the county seat, Carmen Magalhaes da Roxa explains why she sits on a log in the dirt and uses a hammer to smash rocks to sell for construction projects at four reais (less than $1) a bucket.
“There is no other work here. If I don’t smash these rocks, I won’t have money to buy gas, pay the electric bills, buy my meds,” says Roxa, 54, who trudges around in a floral-print dress and flip-flops with half a dozen other “quebra-pedras” or rock-breakers.
“We are suffering here – a lot. I smash my fingers, I’m hit by flying splinters. But what can you do?” asks the grandmother of three, twitching her sore hands.
– Missing options –
75 percent of the population live in poverty in Atalaia do Norte, a colorful but run-down river town of 20,000 people near where Brazil meets Peru and Colombia.
Almost everything in the city is produced locally or brought in by boat from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state – an eight-day journey.
There are few ways to escape poverty.
Locals often say they have three job options: farming, fishing, or City Hall, the largest employer in the county.
Analysts say the growing lawlessness has created a fourth: environmental crime, backed by money from drug gangs that thrive on the anarchy of a triple border deep in the jungle.
“Drug traffickers are incorporating impoverished local populations into their networks and presenting this as an opportunity,” wrote security specialist Aiala Colares of Para State University in a recent article, adding that cartels operating in the Amazon are looking forward to the “task by feed the state.
“We cannot tackle environmental crime without tackling poverty,” Brazilian journalist Yan Boechat said on Twitter.
“Economic development in the Amazon region is a failure. What happened to Bruno and Dom is related to that,” he wrote alongside a video of the Atalaia quarrymen.
– Heavy mix –
Poverty and lawlessness have proven to be a violent mix.
Critics say the weak state presence — a long-standing problem across the Amazon — has become even more acute since 2019 under President Jair Bolsonaro, whose government has shrunk environmental enforcement and indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI.
A wave of violence followed in the Javari Valley.
The FUNAI base on the edge of the indigenous reserve was the target of several gun attacks in 2019.
That same year, FUNAI’s anti-poaching chief in the region was assassinated in the nearby town of Tabatinga. The crime remains unsolved.
Across the border, gunmen in speedboats attacked a Peruvian police station in January, injuring four officers and brazenly stealing a weapons cache. The post has yet to be opened.
Marivonea Moreira de Mello, a 45-year-old mother of four who works at Atalaia City Hall, recalls sleeping with the front door open a decade ago. Now she wouldn’t dare, she says.
“Our young people are getting addicted to drugs. My own son is one of them. He’s 20,” she says.
She was happy when the army, navy, federal police and world media came to Atalaia after Phillips and Pereira disappeared.
Now that they’re mostly gone, she worries about what’s going to happen. The local police have only two officers.
“Atalaia do Norte is in a very dangerous situation,” she says.
“There is a lack of police, security, everything is missing.”
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