As criminal groups combine forces with miners in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous Territory, officials have found it more difficult to control the spread of crime and violence that have killed hundreds of Yanomami. Following a brief period of calm last June, the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Roraima state, stretching more than 8 million hectares (about 19.7 million acres) — nearly the size of Portugal — saw an explosion of illegal mining and violence at the end of 2023. Measures to combat environmental crimes and remove offenders were ineffective, the Public Ministry said in a press release. This is in part due to the logistical, financial and weapons support provided by criminal groups to garimpeiros (illegal miners). Many of the garimpeiros are increasingly well-armed and have equal or greater access to resources than state officials, experts said. “Both drug trafficking and illegal mining have coexisted since the 1980s, but now they are merging,” Rodrigo Chagas, a researcher at the Society and Borders Postgraduate Program at the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) and the Brazilian Public Security Forum, told Mongabay. Alisson Marugal, the federal prosecutor responsible for the Yanomami case, said in a call that members from criminal organizations provide security for garimpeiros or, in their language, “discipline” and “order.” These groups mainly operate in the mines of the Uraricoera River, one of the main rivers in the Yanomami territory, where they can “profit from the provision of security services.” Illegal mining within the Yanomami Territory. Although the law forbids outsiders to enter…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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