Leaders of the Yanomami culture in the Brazilian Amazon blame illegal gold miners for health problems and increased violence.
Brazil has launched a crackdown on illegal gold miners who it blames for a crisis in the country’s large landholdings, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed to protect the Yanomami people after years of neglect and the rise of violence.
Brazilian and indigenous environmental organizations said Wednesday that government workers are working on the project, which began earlier this week.
The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) said in a statement that agents destroyed helicopters, planes, bulldozers and equipment to support miners in the Yanomami region of Roraima in northern Brazil.
Two pieces of equipment and three boats with 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of fuel were also captured.
For years, leaders of the Yanomami culture have said that the spread of illegal mining in their communities is causing environmental damage, as well as an increase in threats, violence, and disease.
Last year, the Hutukara Yanomami Association reported that the area scarred by “garimpo” – or wild gold mines – on the Yanomami reservation would increase by 46 percent in 2021, to 3,272 hectares (8,085 acres).
“This is the worst period of attacks since the site was established 30 years ago,” the human rights group said in an April 2022 report, which was based on satellite images and interviews with local residents.
More than 20,000 miners are said to live in the region, which is the size of Portugal and straddles the Roraima and Amazonas regions of Brazil’s northwestern Amazon.
The country’s right-wing ex-president Jair Bolsonaro promoted development in the Amazon while his administration weakened Brazil’s environmental protection and human rights groups.
The Yanomami, estimated to be around 28,000 people, say Bolsonaro’s policies have helped to intimidate them.
On Wednesday, IBAMA said a checkpoint had been set up near a Yanomami village on the Uraricoera River to disrupt the miners’ work.
Aid workers grabbed 12-meter (39-foot) boats, loaded with tons of food, refrigerators, generators, and internet antennas, which will now be used by government workers. No more boats carrying oil and equipment will be allowed to pass through the barrier.
Some of the miners are believed to have fled the Yanomami mine before work began and crossed the border into neighboring French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana.
The government has declared a public emergency for the Yanomami people, who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria as a result of illegal mining. Game has disappeared and river water has been contaminated with mercury from mining.
A report published on Tuesday by the Ministry of Health found that gold miners entered four hospitals within the Yanomami region, leaving them without work.
In the town of Boa Vista, where starving and sick villagers have been temporarily airlifted to hospital, there are 700 Yanomami, more than three times the population of the area.
“The problem of malnutrition is still very serious. We believe that the re-opening of the medical units will be possible when all the miners have been removed,” Environmental Health Secretary Ricardo Weibe Tapeba said in a press conference.
Later on Tuesday, President Lula said on Twitter that his government would not allow illegal mining in indigenous lands, which made the Yanomamis “humiliated”. “We also need to find out who caused the incident,” he said.
