Police followed the suspect’s directions to the bodies in the woods, but forensic analysis to identify them has yet to be completed.
“While we are still waiting for definitive confirmations, this tragic outcome puts an end to the suffering of not knowing where Dom and Bruno are. Now we can bring them home. and said goodbye lovingly,” Phillips’ wife, Alessandra Sampaio, said in a statement.
Pereira, a 41-year-old father of three, has spent most of his life serving the country’s indigenous peoples since joining the Brazilian government’s indigenous agency (FUNAI) in 2010. He told CNN that the agency’s isolated and newly-contacted Indigenous Peoples Coordination Office. made a major expedition to contact isolated indigenous peoples under his leadership in 2018 and that he participated in many activities to expel illegal miners from the areas protected land.
Pereira’s passion was evident in an interview with CNN last year. “I can’t stay away for too long from parents‘, he said, referring to the indigenous people of the region with the affectionate term ‘relative’.
Phillips, 57, a widely respected British journalist who has lived in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, has covered environmental issues and the Amazon on the pages of the Financial Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times and the New York Times. Mainly The Guardian. Pereira took a sabbatical from FUNAI amid a broader shake-up when he joined Phillips to support research for a new book.
The book is slated to be titled “How to Save the Amazon.”
In a video shot in May in an Ashaninka village in the northwestern state of Acre and released by the Ashaninka association, Phillips can be heard explaining his endeavor: “Here I come (… ) to learn with you, about your culture, how you view the forest, how you live here and how you deal with threats from invaders and gold diggers and everything else.”
A dangerous job
Home to thousands of indigenous people and more than a dozen unrelated populations, Brazil’s vast Javari Valley is a collection of rivers and jungles that make access very difficult. Criminal activity there is often targeted, or just confronted by local patrols – sometimes ending in bloody conflict.
In September 2019, indigenous affairs officer Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was murdered in the same area, according to the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office. In a statement, a union group FUNAI cited evidence that the killing of dos Santos was in retaliation for efforts to combat illegal commercial mining in the Javari Valley, Reuters reported at the time. .
Across Brazil, fighting illegal activity in the Amazon can be deadly, as CNN previously reported. Between 2009 and 2019, more than 300 people were killed in Brazil amid conflicts over land and resources in the Amazon, according to the Catholic Pastoral Land Commission, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Nonprofit.
Pereira last year lamented the decline of Brazil’s indigenous and environmental protection agencies under Bolsonaro as president. But he also sees a bright side, telling CNN he thinks the change will push the indigenous people of the Javari Valley to overcome historical divisions and form alliances to protect common interests. their.
However, in another interview with CNN, later that year, he was more cautious about the dangers. Having just returned from a tour in the rainforest, limbs covered with mosquito bites, Pereira described the backlash from criminal groups to squads patrolling the native territory.
“[The patrols] I think that surprised them. They thought that since the government withdrew from the operation, they would be free to enter the area,” Pereira said.
But neither Pereira nor Phillips allow Amazon mining.
“Dom knows the risks of coming to the Javari Valley, but he thinks the story is important enough to accept those risks,” Jonathan Watts, Guardian’s global environment editor told CNN.
“We know it’s a dangerous place, but Dom believes it’s possible to protect nature and the livelihoods of indigenous peoples,” his sister, Sian Phillips, said in a video last week urging Bolsonaro’s government. Enhanced double search.
On Wednesday, Jaime Matsés, another indigenous leader in the Javari Valley, told CNN he recently met with Pereira to discuss a potential new project monitoring illegal activity in the community territory. your.
“He seemed happy,” Matsés recalls. “He’s not afraid to do the right thing. We consider him a fighter just like us.”
And if their disappearance was intended to instill fear in those who would follow in their footsteps, that backfired, Kora Kamanari, another local leader, told CNN Wednesday.
“We are more united than before and will continue to fight until the last native is killed.”
Julia Koch contributed reporting.
