Peaceful indigenous land shaken by disappearance after arrival of illegal loggers

“There’s no way he’s lost,” says Manoel do Carmo da Silva Campos, of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in the state of Amazonas. “He’s born and bred in that area, he knows the forest too well.”

On April 28, eight weeks ago, 20-year-old Reinaldo Santana Magalhães Sateré Mawé was last seen when he left to hunt near the Urupadi River in the Brazilian Amazon, some 320 kilometers from the city of Manaus.

“When they go hunting, they leave a trail in case something happens to them. Reinaldo left no trail,” adds Mr. Campos.

Locals believe a group of illegal loggers has murdered Reinaldo.

A member of the Sateré Mawé indigenous community and resident of the protected Andirá-Marau territory that straddles the states of Amazonas and Pará, Reinaldo had been working for a group of loggers that appeared on the outskirts of the indigenous land earlier this year.

Established in an area set aside for environmental conservation, the loggers began illegally cutting down ipê trees and luring people from nearby indigenous and riverine communities to work for them in exchange for pay.

Reinaldo, his father, and his two teenage brothers were among those recruited by the loggers as manual laborers, being promised pay in return for transporting lumber from the deforestation area to the banks of the Urupadi River.

Their task was to move 150 trunks in the space of 15 days, an unreasonable ask for anyone without the right equipment. Ipê is a protected tree species, and its trunks can measure up to 30 meters in...