The council is now chaired by Army General and Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourão and is composed of 16 ministries (seven of which were being directed by army officials at the time the decree established the council). In addition, in February 2020, the National Council of the Legal Amazon was also reestablished, with its presidency being transferred from the Ministry of the Environment to the vice presidency. The decrees of the operations provided Brazil’s Armed Forces with powers to take “preventive and repressive actions against environmental crimes,” and for “surveying and fighting fires.” In total, out of the 41 months that have elapsed since Bolsonaro’s government came to power, the Amazon has been under military control for almost 17 of them. Despite the press coverage of the dark skies that were witnessed by Brazil’s major cities during the daytime in August 2019, as the smoke from the wildfires enveloped the cities, revealing the extent of deforestation in the Amazon, one fact remained hidden: the militarization of the Amazon.ĭuring Bolsonaro’s rule, three military Law and Order Assurance Operations (GLOs) for reducing deforestation in the Amazon have been enacted: Operation Verde Brasil, which ran from August to October 2019 Operation Verde Brasil 2, between May 2020 and April 2021 and Operation Samaúma, between June and August 2021. Media attention has focused on deforestation during the tenure of the government under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. For them, the integration of the Amazon was a part of what the country’s military institutes now call a “national project.”

In the ’80s and ’90s, Brazil’s generals would focus their attention on the incursion of Colombian left-wing guerrillas and on the trafficking of drugs and weapons. During the military dictatorship, which began in 1964, the motto regarding the policy to be followed in the Amazon was “integrate not to surrender.” Later on, the motto conformed to the view that the forest was a site for a possible insurrection. The Amazon has been a multifaceted obsession of Brazil’s military for some time now. The study further stated that of the gold produced in the Amazon, 44 percent was found to be “irregular” or illegal, revealing how the activity continued unchecked in the region. Perhaps such a large influx of gold for some exceptional reason had an effect on the price paid out for mining it at a given time, or perhaps the information provided was fabricated by the source, we thought.

In August 2021, a study by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in partnership with the Brazilian Federal Public Ministry (MPF) showed that in two years-20-28 percent of all gold that was both produced by and sold in Brazil appeared to have been mined illegally. It was just another fascinating story that was buried in the green hell ( Inferno Verde) or El Dorado-terms often used to describe the immensity of the Amazon rainforest. ” There was no investigation based on this information since it would have required great resources and risks, neither of which we could afford. “If the nugget is a big one,” said the source, “they give the miner extra. Far from achieving this purpose, however, the military intervention has only led to tragedies in the region, directly or indirectly.Ī source from the Brazilian Amazon wrote to us at Revista Opera two years ago to warn us about something strange that was going on there: illegally mined gold was being sold at the same price as legally mined gold. The response of the government has been to increase military action to curb environmental crimes in Brazil. In the Brazilian Amazon, as deforestation reaches record levels and rivers are increasingly polluted, the illegal gold mining contributing to these problems continues largely unabated. Share on WhatsApp Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Telegram Share on Reddit Share on Email

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