The pirarucu is an impressive fish: a huge, flailing Amazonian monster with red and black scales the size of serving spoons.
Still, it’s just a fish. How is it possible that British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were murdered?
Police say Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead on June 5 while returning from a research trip in Brazil’s remote Javari Valley.
At first glance, the jungle-covered region near the Peruvian and Colombian borders appears like one of the last pristine wildernesses, home to a vast indigenous reserve with the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes on earth.
But the double killing revealed the increasing violence in the region, fueled by illegal fishing, logging, mining and drug trafficking.
Pereira had received death threats for his work fighting poaching in the reserve, where non-natives are banned from hunting and fishing.
“He carried out a massive crackdown on illegal fishing. All these guys (the poachers in the area) knew Bruno,” says Orlando Possuelo, 37, who worked with Pereira to coordinate Indigenous anti-poaching patrols — a job that earned him death threats.
Investigators say Pereira and Phillips were going down the winding Itaquai River in a small boat when a group charged at them from behind and shot them dead.
Police have identified eight suspects and arrested three so far.
Locals in Atalaia do Norte, a sleepy river town near the northeastern edge of the reserve, say all three are poachers illegally fishing in the indigenous territory for pirarucu, a protected species that’s the largest freshwater fish in South America.
– ‘Everybody here knows it’ –
Fishermen in Atalaia say poaching pirarucu — a tasty, prized fish that can reach 4.5 meters (nearly 15 feet) and weigh up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) — is a big-money business done with drug dealers connected in Peru and Colombia.
The smugglers are said to be using the black market fish trade to launder drug money – part of what the Brazilian Public Safety Forum recently described as “complex national and transnational criminal chains operating in different economies” in the Amazon.
“What happened to Bruno and Dom is the result of an increase in organized crime, which in turn is explained by the absence of the state,” said Antenor Vaz, ex-head of Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency FUNAI, which operates in the Javari Valley is.
The alleged link to drug trafficking has raised questions about whether the suspects acted alone.
Federal police said on Friday that was the case and ruled out the involvement of a “mastermind or criminal organization”.
The statement enraged the indigenous rights group that Pereira worked for, UNIVAJA, which accused police of ignoring “substantial” evidence that a “powerful criminal organization” was behind the killings.
“Everyone here knows that organized crime was involved,” UNIVAJA chief Paulo Marubo told AFP.
– Pirarucu taboo –
At the Atalaia Fish Market, a noisy hangar with concrete floors and white tile stalls, Pirarucu has been missing since Phillips and Pereira went missing.
Some pirarucu sales are actually legal – there are six local lakes outside the indigenous reserve where restricted fishing is allowed.
But much of the Pirarucu on the market is probably illegal.
A report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature found that 83 percent of illegal fish confiscated in Brazil between 2012 and 2019 were pirarucu.
With the army, federal police and world media in town investigating the men’s disappearance, fishermen are taking no chances with Pirarucu these days, even if landing one of the giants can net hundreds of dollars — much-needed money for the most families in the region, one of the poorest in Brazil.
“Legal fishermen are afraid to go out right now because the army is here and everyone is blaming us for these atrocities,” said Roberto Pereira da Costa, 49, president of the local fishermen’s association.
Legal fishermen are unfairly vilified, he says.
“You can see the difference between the illegal fishermen and us. They have big boats, fast engines, they not only catch 15 kilos of fish to feed their families, they try to get everything they can out of it.”
– ‘A Greater Story’ –
In December, Al Jazeera English journalist Monica Yanakiew accompanied Pereira on an expedition like the one Phillips was accompanying.
Her crew even arrested him and warned the fisherman, who is now the prime suspect in the case, not to fish on tribal land.
Poachers became “angry” when Pereira’s patrols confiscated her fish, says Yanakiev.
But “it’s a bigger story than that,” she says.
Pereira would not have needed to deploy independent patrols if President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration had not slashed enforcement efforts by FUNAI and environmental agencies, critics say.
“The fact that the government has turned a blind eye to everything that’s going on has given criminals more power,” says Yanakiev.
“They think they can get away with murder.”
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