RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – It was dusk on April 14 when Francisco Curuaia heard a boat approaching the river near his village in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. He suggested that it was an ordinary delivery boat that delivered gasoline for generators and outboard engines to remote villages like his. Instead, Kuruaya discovered a barge dredging the virgin river of his people in search of gold.
Kuruaya had never seen a dredge operating in this area in the territory of the Xipaia people, let alone such a massive one; it looked like a floating factory.
Kuruaya, 47, headed for the barge, boarded and faced the gold diggers. They responded in harsh voices, and he withdrew for fear of being armed. But so was he — by phone — the first to have one. Back in his village of Karimaa, his son Thaylewa Xipaia forwarded photos of the mining boat to WhatsApp chat groups.
“Guys, this is an emergency!” he told members of his tribe in an audio message reviewed by the Associated Press. “There’s a barge here on Pigeons Island. It is huge and destroys the whole island. My father just went there and they almost took his phone. “
On a few days’ trip to the nearby town of Altamira, Kuruaya’s daughter Juma Shipaya received frantic reports. She recorded her own video with a strangled voice and teary eyes, warning that armed conflict was imminent – then uploaded it on social media.
A few hours later it became known around the world.
The episode illustrates the Internet’s penetration of vast, remote rainforests that until recently lacked the means to quickly share visual evidence of environmental crime. The fast-growing network of antennas allows local groups to use telephones, video cameras and social media to stimulate the public and put pressure on authorities to respond quickly to threats from diggers, looters and loggers.
Until now, indigenous communities have relied on radio to broadcast their disaster calls. The groups for the protection of the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples then passed them on to the media and the public. But nonprofits have been disgraced by Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who advocates legalizing the extraction and rental of land in indigenous protected areas. He called the organizations unreliable actors who have nothing to do with the true desires of indigenous peoples and are on the list of global environmental benefactors.
Videos and photos coming directly from the indigenous population are more difficult to reject, forcing the authorities as well as the public to take into account the realities on the ground.
“When used properly, the technology helps a lot in real-time surveillance and exposure,” said Nara Barre, head of the coordination group for local organizations in the Brazilian Amazon, in a telephone interview. “External pressure to get the federal government to operate in Xipaia was very important. Technology was the main tool for that. “
Connectivity not only allows for publicity on social media. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Brazil has set up a website to register reported crimes and receive uploaded visuals. Before that, people in remote communities had to make the long and expensive trip to the nearest city with a federal prosecutor’s office.
Xipaia is part of a pristine rainforest known as Terra do Meio (Middle Earth), dotted with dozens of local and traditional river communities. The internet connection was rare until mid-2020, when a group of non-profit organizations, including Health in Harmony and the Socio-Environmental Institute, funded the installation of 17 antennas in the vast region.
Priority was given to communities with health centers or market centers for the production and sale of forest products, such as Brazil nuts. The signal can be painfully slow, especially on rainy days, but it has connected people who were previously offline and is enough to allow photos and videos to flow from the forest.
“The strategy was to improve communication and avoid unnecessary travel to the city,” said Marcelo Salazar, coordinator of the Health in Harmony program for Brazil. “The Internet makes it easier to tackle health, education and forestry.” Fighting environmental crime is an added benefit, he added.
Four of the five Xipaia communities are already connected. Karima, the village where the barge was first spotted, has had internet since July 2020. Just three days after the installation, when a teenager injured his head, a city doctor was able to assess his condition using photos sent on WhatsApp. This avoided costly and complex medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the dredging case marked the first time Xipaia used the Internet to protect its territory. In addition to the alarm, four villages used WhatsApp to quickly organize a group of warriors to counter the miners. Painted with urukum, a local fruit that produces red ink, and armed with bows, arrows and shotguns, they crowded into a small boat, according to Juma Shipaya. By the time they reached the barge, however, it was gone.
About 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) west, in the Amazon state of Rondonia, Internet access has allowed people in Uru-Eu-Wow-Wow to take photography and video lessons online so they can record deforestation by land robbers. The three-day training in 2020 was conducted through Zoom.
This effort was made by the documentary “The Territory”, which won awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival and others. During his production, American director Alex Pritz relied on WhatsApp to communicate with his recently trained camera operators.
Tangaãi Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau is a teacher who became an operator who traveled to the Danish festival and later spoke to the AP via WhatsApp from his remote village. He said the film changes people’s perceptions of Brazil’s indigenous people. “In Copenhagen … I got a lot of questions. They knew about the natural wonders of Brazil, but they did not know about the indigenous peoples fighting for their territories.
Elsewhere in the Amazon, the Internet has not yet arrived. So when illegal gold diggers killed two members of the Yanomami tribe in June 2020, news of the crime took two weeks to arrive due to the remoteness of the area. To avoid a repeat of this, Yanomami organizations are looking for better connectivity. After the village of Palimiu along the Urarikoera River suffered a series of attacks by miners in May 2021, Yanomami was able to install an antenna there. Violence has decreased since then.
Bolsonaro’s repeated promises to legalize mining and other activities in indigenous lands have invaded areas that are often forested islands among vast ranches. Local and environmental groups estimate that there are about 20,000 illegal miners in Ianomami, roughly the same as Portugal. The Bolsonaro government says there are 3,500.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 76% in 2021 compared to 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took office, according to official figures from the Brazilian space agency, which uses satellites to monitor forest loss.
Most Internet connections on Amazon remain slow, even in medium-sized cities. That may soon change. Last November, Brazilian Communications Minister Fabio Faria met with billionaire Elon Musk to discuss a partnership to improve rural connectivity in the world’s largest rainforest.
However, the communications ministry says negotiations have not developed and no progress has been made. Musk’s company SpaceX did not respond to email requests for comment.
Some worry that local groups like Xipaia will not be the only ones to benefit from greater Internet penetration in the Amazon region. Illegal miners often co-opt local leaders, communicating secretly in messaging apps. Conversations, sometimes aided by secret networks, can allow miners to hide heavy machinery or warn them of impending attacks by authorities, allowing them to escape.
In the state of Roraima, where most of Yanomami’s territory is located, the AP contacted an ISP that offers Wi-Fi on an illegal gold mine for $ 2,600, plus $ 690 a month. Secret small vessels supply the installation equipment.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Salazar of Health in Harmony, referring to increased connectivity.
But for Juma Shipaya, the new relationship means additional protection and visibility for her people. After she published her tearful video, it garnered views and was picked up by local and international media. Within two days, an air operation involving the federal police, the National Guard and environmental agencies invaded. They find the dredge hidden behind the vegetation on the banks of the Iriri River with seven miners on board.
In a country where environmental crime in the Amazon usually remains unchecked, a quick and successful response has highlighted the strength of local networks.
“After making many calls for help, I decided to make the video. Then it worked. The phone kept ringing, “Juma Shipaya said on the phone. “It was very fast after the video.”
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