Illegal mining on indigenous lands in the Amazon rose by 787% under the governments of Temer and Bolsonaro.

Illegal gold mining in local reserves in the Amazonian states has skyrocketed by 787% over the past six years, which includes two years in office of former President Michel Temer and four years of former President Jair Bolsonaro. The alarming data was released by INPE, the National Institute for Space Research, which monitors the Amazon region in real time.

Between 2016 (when Michel Temer was president) and 2022 (the last year of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency), the INPE report shows that there was a real incursion by miners into gold-rich indigenous territories in the states of Roraima and Para. suffered the most, first because of Temer’s passivity, and then with the support of Bolsonaro. At Roraima, prospectors invaded the largest Yanomami reserve in Brazil, an area equal to mainland Portugal, and at Para they invaded the territories of the Sai Chinza, Munduruku, Bau, Kayapo, Apitereva and Trincheira Bakaha peoples.

Also according to INPE, which uses the Deter program to detect real-time deforestation of areas equal to or greater than three hectares in 2016, when Temer took over the remainder of the mandate of ousted President Dilma Rousseff, the area of ​​illegal mining on the lands Indigenous peoples in these two states amounted to 12.87 km2. At the end of the reign of Jair Bolsonaro, who went so far as to visit illegal mines on Yanomami lands but refused to talk to indigenous leaders, the area of ​​illegal gold mining in these two states jumped to 114.26 km2.

In the Yanomami Reserve alone, which since last week has been the target of a major police and military operation to expel the miners, there were more than 20,000 a few days ago, almost as many invaders as the total indigenous population, estimated at 30,000. Not to mention other non-Indians who remained in the reserve until a few days ago, such as hundreds of prostitutes, cooks, laundresses, well-armed guards and others who went to the mines to support the men looking for gold.

The consequence of this invasion was massive environmental damage, with vast tracts of forest being cleared, rivers polluted with mercury and other highly toxic substances used in the mining industry, and indigenous people being held hostage in their own villages surrounded by the occupiers, reports of those who resisted being killed, sexual violence over children and adolescents and the enslavement of indigenous people for forced labor in the mines. The negative impact on the Yanomami people was so strong that out of an estimated 30,000 indigenous people, at least 14,000 fell ill, more than a thousand had to be rescued by helicopters in the middle of the forest to the hospitals of Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, and the weakness of the state due to hunger and disease prevents many indigenous peoples even stand to be weighed by relief teams sent by the central government.