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In the early hours of September 3, Brazilian indigenous Janildo Oliveira Guajajara was shot several times in the back and died shortly after.
His 14-year-old nephew was also shot but survived.
That same night, another indigenous person, Israel Carlos Miranda Guajajara, died the victim of a hit that, according to the leaders of his town, was intentional, not an accident.
A week later, six shots ended the life of Antonio Cafeteiro Silva Guajajara.
All the crimes against this indigenous ethnic group have as a backdrop the illegal invasions that the Guajajara have been suffering for a long time in their territory, in the state of Maranhão, in the eastern end of the Brazilian Amazon.
A decade ago, to confront the loggers and make up for the absence of the State that should protect them,
the indigenous people created the Guardians of the Jungle group.
Since then, they have paid with their lives for the audacity of wanting to protect their territory.
The Araribóia land is a piece of Amazonia the size of more than 400,000 soccer fields where some 5,300 Guajajara indigenous people live and between 60 and 70 Awá Guajá, another ethnic group that never had contact with non-indigenous people.
As with many other lands in Brazil in legal possession of indigenous peoples, it is a verdant island beset by the pressure of crops and cattle pastures that dominate the surrounding landscape.
The climate in the small border cities, where the Guajajara usually travel, is one of total hostility, as Sônia Guajajara, one of the main indigenous activists in Brazil, comments on the phone.
“They are very young people who do not have any type of security.
The villages are very exposed, on the side of the road, and in the cities they suffer a lot of racism and prejudice, especially because of the issue of the guardians of the territory”, she explains.
Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara (left), during a protest against illegal logging, mining, and ranching in the Amazon jungles, on September 18, 2022, in São Paulo.
André Penner (AP)
Before the guardians began their mission a decade ago, there were 72 illegal logging driveways.
Now there are only five.
Janildo, one of those killed this month, had been acting as a guardian since 2018, in a village near a forest track opened by poachers.
As it was illegal, the indigenous people, who guard the land on motorcycles, closed the access, which raised the tone of the threats.
In 2019, the death of the guard Paulo Paulinho Guajajara, killed in an ambush by loggers, and three other indigenous people, including two caciques, already had a lot of repercussions.
What happens at the Guajajara house is not an isolated case.
The indigenous Ka'apor, neighbors in the state of Maranhão, also formed their own control patrols.
In the savannahs of Mato Grosso do Sul, a state dominated by large estates, the Guaraní-Kaiowá count their deaths by the dozens in the “retakes” in which they reclaim the land that historically belongs to them.
In the state of Rondônia, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous people use cell phones, radio transmitters and drones to detect poachers.
The family formed by the activist Neidinha, the leader Almir Suruí and the young Txai Suruí, has been receiving constant death threats for years.
His story is told in the recently released documentary The Territory by Alex Pritz.
The indigenous lands are the best preserved in the Amazon, a region where deforestation has increased dramatically in recent years.
In the first three years of the Government of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil lost more than 42,000 square kilometers of native vegetation, according to a MapBiomas study based on official numbers.
It is an area the size of Switzerland.
The Amazon took the worst part.
A man cuts down a tree with an electric saw in a forest near the municipality of Itaituba, in Pará state, on August 7, 2017. NACHO DOCE (Reuters)
Last June, the murder of journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous activist Bruno Pereira highlighted the climate of impunity that reigns in the largest tropical forest on the planet.
The absence of control by the State is not something new, but the belligerent discourse against indigenous rights installed with the Bolsonaro Government is.
In the electoral campaign four years ago, the current president promised not to dedicate "one more centimeter" to indigenous territories, and he complied.
Last year, the Missionary Indigenous Council (CIMI), linked to the Catholic Church, compiled 355 cases of violence against indigenous people, including 176 murders and 148 suicides, the highest number to date.
For Sonia Guajajara, who for years coordinated the entity that brings together all the indigenous organizations in the country, the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), there is a clear link between the increase in violence and the official discourse.
“The murders have already been trivialized, it is a normalized situation.
Everything is caused by the hate speech that dominates the country, which comes from the Presidency of the Republic itself.
The government ends up inciting this violence, and those who practice it feel authorized, because they know that nothing is going to happen to them,” she criticizes.
In the elections to be held in October, Sonia Guajajara will seek a seat as a deputy in the National Congress and assures that the legal recognition and protection of the lands of the native populations will be a priority.
Joenia Wapichana is currently the only native parliamentarian in Brasilia.
The records of deforestation and attacks on the guardians of the jungle are accompanied by another record in the number of indigenous candidates.
This year 182 are presented, the majority for the legislative assemblies of the States.