Brazil: the “agricultural mafia” assault the Rondônia forest

Published on : 03/12/2021 – 14:30

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Encouraged by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the local authorities who wish to see the development of intensive agro-industrial exploitation, a veritable “agricultural mafia” is seizing the Amazon. In Rondônia state, organized groups are setting up settlements of small peasants, sometimes the size of a city, within national forest parks supposedly protected by law or on land stolen from indigenous peoples. Fanny Lothaire and Lena Lopes have traced the trail of this agricultural mafia, from the small peasant who is promised a piece of land and a future, to the politicians who pull the strings of these invasions.

Although the local government and that of Jair Bolsonaro ensure that they are acting to prevent their actions, the new camps continue to multiply and the destruction of vegetation is accelerating: between January and August 2021, the Brazilian Amazon thus lost 7,715 km² of forest, the equivalent of a million football fields. This is the worst level of deforestation recorded over this period in the last ten years.

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