Inspection operations by Funai (Fundação Nacional do Índio) in Vale do Javari, in Amazonas, fell after the departure of indigenist Bruno Pereira from coordinating isolated peoples, in the first year of the Bolsonaro government.
data to which the Sheet had access through the Access to Information Law show that, until 2018, the number of actions in the region had been growing, but then plummeted.
Five surveillance, monitoring and inspection processes were recorded in 2016, seven in 2017, the same number as the following year. In 2019, it returns to five, before dropping to three in 2020, two in 2021 and two in 2022 — one in May, just before the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips (in early June), and another afterward, in August. .
The report requested data prior to 2016, but Funai considered the survey a “disproportionate demand”. “Nevertheless, we present below a non-exhaustive list of processes related to surveillance, monitoring and inspection actions carried out in the TIVJ [Terra Indígena Vale do Javari] from 2016 to the present,” the folder said in the response.
Bruno Pereira was appointed to the position of general coordinator of isolated indigenous peoples at Funai in 2018 and exonerated at the end of October 2019 — the last operation of that year ended in June, shortly before the current president, Marcelo Xavier, took office, in July.
There were, therefore, 12 inspection and monitoring operations in 2018 and 2019, all with the support of Bruno, and five in the two years following his departure, 2020 and 2021 — part of this period, under the Covid pandemic.
The Bolsonaro government also blocked the hiring of new civil servants for the foundation, which suffers from the low number of employees, which, in turn, makes it difficult to fulfill its duties, especially in the field.
THE Sheet asked Funai about the reasons for the drop in the number of shares, whether there is any relation to Bruno’s departure from the body. There was no response.
In a document sent by Funai to the Justice Department, the foundation said that “innumerable prevention and inspection actions were carried out to protect indigenous areas throughout Brazil” and that there was a 23.3% reduction in the total deforestation of primary vegetation in the TIs of the Legal Amazon.
Bruno was dismissed from his position shortly after coordinating an action against prospectors in the Yanomami Indigenous Land, in Roraima.
The indigenist made a career in Vale do Javari, where he was killed along with the English journalist Dom Phillips, in early June of this year.
At the end of July, the Court accepted the complaint made by the Federal Public Ministry against three people involved in the murder. According to prosecutors, what motivated the crime was that Bruno asked Dom to photograph a fisherman in the region, named Pelado, who the next day killed them – and later confessed the act to the authorities.
The Prosecutor’s Office relied on prints and testimonies to determine the motivation, considered futile, which can aggravate the penalty.
Bruno joined Funai in 2010 to work in the region. There, he was coordinator, integrated the ethno-environmental protection front and moved to the general coordination of isolated people, in Brasília, in July 2018.
After being exonerated, just over a year later, during the Xavier administration during the Bolsonaro government, he decided to take a leave of absence from the foundation and began to work as a collaborator for Univaja (União dos Povos Indígenas do Vale do Javari).
According to people close to him, what motivated his departure was the fact that he felt harassed by superiors, with difficulties in exercising his position and disagreed with the policies adopted by the entity – he was a confessed critic of the Bolsonaro government.
After Bruno left his post, the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land remained almost a year without being the site of any monitoring and inspection action, according to the Funai document. The first of 2020 took place between April and June, during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil.
Between 2018 and 2019, according to data provided by Funai, half of the actions were supported by the Military Police. Afterwards, no operation was aided by the police.
According to the document, these actions aimed, for example, at inspecting the activities of fishermen and hunters, curbing environmental crimes, carrying out access control, executing territorial monitoring and promoting surveillance in general.
The Javari Valley is the indigenous land that concentrates the most isolated peoples in the world, with 19 in its 8.5 million hectares.
In recent years, the place has suffered an escalation of violence. In 2019, Funai server Maxciel Pereira was shot dead in the region. Foundation bases were also attacked by gunfire more than once.
Even after the death of Dom and Bruno caused worldwide repercussion, an armed group in the service of prospectors harassed employees of one of the foundation’s bases in Vale do Javari, on July 16.
According to Bruno Pereira’s partner, Beatriz de Almeida Matos, also an indigenist and a scholar of the region, the escalation of violence has been noticeable throughout Brazil since 2019. In an interview with Sheetshe stated that the double murder is an unprecedented affront to the indigenous people of Javari.
