The Brazilian police have confirmed that the bodies found belong to the British journalist Dom Phillips and the anthropologist Bruno Araújo Pereira. The killings occur in the heart of the Amazon, in the indigenous lands of Javari.

Pereira entered the public structure FUNAI in 2010, dedicated to the defense of the rights and lands of Brazilian natives. He soon became passively immersed in isolated indigenous peoples and without contact with our civilization, and was appointed coordinator of the isolated indigenous peoples department in 2018, although for a single year Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro commissioned his expulsion. Since then he has been fighting in the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja) and his relatives have no doubt: they have been killed for defending the indigenous people. For the same cause they have murdered their journalist friend. Phillips was in The Guardian newspaper, but he was at a year-old work station to write a book about the Amazon and the local indigenous people. His headline, "How to Save the Amazon," was in charge of ending his book. Brazilian writer Eliane Brum claims that the murder of a white journalist from a well-known newspaper in a rich western country is significant: "Bolsonaro and his governments provide the guarantee of impunity to criminals against the jungle and its peoples." Yes, since 2018 anti-Amazon policy has hardened and worsened. Refuting the police version, the Univaja structure wanted to provide a documented accuracy: "There are not only two murderers, there is an organized team that has planned to lead since the beginning of the murder."

Because these latest killings must be placed in a more general context. "The disappearance of Bruno Araújo Pereira and Dom Phillips is not a surprise; it is the result of the policy led from the beginning by the National Foundation of the Indians FUNAI of the government of Bolsonaro", we can read the publication of the unpublished Dossie as Bolsonaro cumpriu a
promessa of 'foiçada no pescoço negables price bolsabaro" As a Member in 1998, he stated: “What a pity that the Brazilian cavalry was not as effective as the American one: at least they managed to destroy their Indians.” Besides being considered as a person of subcategory, it does so by the capitalist logic that prevents it from carrying it forward at its will; it cannot exploit the Brazilian lands as often as it wants.
Although land belongs to the federal state, the Brazilian Constitution requires the approval of those present and its exploitation is limited to the resident natives. This obligation is hampered by Bolsonaro and seeks to avoid it by all means. Once and for all, without hindrance, these land can be used for large land owners called Fazendeiros or for large mining and forestry companies. All the less bad for the Amazon and for all of us, the parliament showed earlier this year against the law PL 191/2020, which implied that change.

Another change that has not been able to lead to is the transfer of responsibility for the determination and protection of indigenous lands from FUNAI to the Ministry of Agriculture, Growth and Supply.

With obstacles to law and justice, the Brazilian President is carrying out the Nova FUNAI strategy, the internal destruction of the FUNAI created in 1967 to defend the rights and lands of the indigenous people. In the 2018 election campaign, he expressed his desire to “blow the neck” this structure, and is in it.

Funai: by military, evangelists and large landowners

After all in power, some are expelled and others introduced... instead of being an obstacle, the head of FUNAI now has in his favor. For example, Ricardo Lopes Dias has just held the high position of coordination of the isolated indigenous peoples. Who is the same? An evangelist missionary who worked between 1997 and 2007 for the American structure New Tribes Mission. This structure has a black past in Brazil due, among other things, to the introduction of diseases and the tax attitude. "Why does Jair Bolsonaro insult indigenous peoples? ". Article 11.

The evangelist Lopes Dias is not the only isolated case, it is part of a general trend – the Fundaçao anti-indigenous of 210 pages launched this month. Um portrait of FUNAI or governo Bolsonaro ("Anti-indigenous Foundation. A potrete from the FUNAI under the government of Bolsonaro") presented in detail in the research work. It is a publication by Indigenistas Associados e Inesc, and the current situation forces it, in the last point "Bruno Pereira, present! Dom Phillips, present!" have had to write on the first page.

"We have found in FUNAI a bakery with pasta and wonder what can we do now on behalf of indigenous peoples, officials, unity and life? Because that's how nobody else is going to be," explains anthropologist Leila Saraiva, in charge of research, and Inesc activist.

In July 2019 Bolsonaro names Marcelo Xavier as president of this structure. The federal police, the white man and this powerful man are intimately linked to the mining sector and the agricultural business. It is the basis of the order IN09. This change in legislation has been a major blow: the opening to private property of indigenous areas not yet approved, 237 territories, or 9.8 million hectares. "Since the 1988 Constitution we had committed ourselves to the indigenous people in the presidency of FUNAI. For the first time, we have as president a person who opposes indigenous peoples, and in addition to turning FUNAI into anti-indigenous, it involves the implementation of policies that go against the rights of these peoples," says the lawyer Deborah Duprat, former prosecutor and author of the research report.

Those who, far from favouring the indigenous people, would like their disappearance, control almost the entire FUNAI. In only two of the 39 regional coordinators, one official presides, in others military or police. As if this were not enough, the federal government has also cut subsidies to the structure. If it moves too much, the indigenous people and their defenders are rewarded with threats and penalties, including death like Bruno Pereira's.

Violence against indigenous people increases the extreme right from power. The Brazilian Land Commission has just concluded that last year was the most conflicting in the last 35 years and that the number of deaths in land conflicts in rural and forestry areas in Brazil increased by 75% between 2020 and 2021. The Indigenous Conselho Indigenista Missionário (Cimi) is also alarmed: officially, 263 illegal conquests – robberies – counted 256 lands in 2020 and 2019 – 141% after Bolsonaro came to power.

"Invaders are, in general, illegal loggers, carpenters, hunters and fishermen, farmers and land transporters. They invade the land to get firewood illegally, destroy entire rivers in search of gold and other minerals, increase deforestation and burn large areas of grasses," says the Cimi Association. The support of the federal government and the leaders of the FUNAI structure is not surprising that there are more invaders than ever.