The problematic relationship between Brazil’s military and illegal miners

One year ago, the world witnessed the horrific humanitarian crisis affecting the Yanomami indigenous people in northern Brazil.

Photographs taken inside Yanomami territory showed men, women, children, and the elderly, sick and physically ravaged, either with distended bellies or ribs so pronounced they seemed to burst from their chests. Between 2019 and 2022, the entire term of Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, 570 Yanomami under five died of malnutrition or treatable diseases. Malaria and malnutrition devastated the indigenous population.

Members of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration called the humanitarian catastrophe genocide and promised to do right by the Yanomami. But a year later, the humanitarian tragedy continues, although the severity of the indigenous health problems has decreased, according to Folha de S. Paulo.

The Yanomami indigenous land, the largest protected indigenous territory in Brazil, straddling two Amazonian states near the northern border with Venezuela, continues to be plagued by the same issues as in the recent past — namely, the side effects of illegal gold mining. 

In addition to the obvious environmental consequences (such as mercury contamination), illegal mining operations often bring with them other crimes such as modern slavery, drug trafficking, smuggling, and child prostitution. Meanwhile, health problems are typically rampant in these impromptu communities — with a harsh impact on indigenous peoples living in protected areas.

Despite promises to remove wildcat gold miners with the support of the Armed Forces, this illegal activity continues to run amok, despite a brief improvement in early 2023.

The lack of action by the Armed Forces, which is responsible for providing logistical support to environmental oversight and health teams, as well as for distributing food in the villages, has been identified by experts in the region as one of the main reasons for the failure to combat illegal mining. Some spoke of sabotage, which the military denies.

The Defense Ministry says the effort to combat wildcat mining in the region totaled 7,400 flight hours, or “more than 40 laps around the Earth.”

Historical ties

According to Piero Leirner, a professor of social anthropology at the Federal University of São Carlos and a researcher on the actions of the Armed Forces in the Amazon, this is not a question of military incompetence, but of the Army’s project for the region — intertwined with its own institutional identity.

Mr. Leirner explains that in the 1980s, with the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil and the perception that the country was being pushed out of the international Cold War game, the Army had to rethink its role. 

A new military doctrine then defined the Amazon as a target for a variety of conflicts (against communist guerrillas, then against drug trafficking, and then against so-called perceived foreign threats) and stated that a response to this would require an administration run by the military itself. 

It was...