An area of the Amazon the size of Belgium was burned during Jair Bolsonaro’s Presidency. After Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reëlected, late last year, he committed to protect the rain forest from miners and loggers.
, but his supporters, the Bolsonaristas, still regard him as an emblem of belligerent resistance to anything regarded as aligned with the left.
After Lula was reëlected, late last year, he appointed Marina Silva, a widely admired conservationist, as his environment minister. She had served in that role for five years during Lula’s earlier stint as President, but had resigned over his insistence on balancing conservation and development. Now Lula had invited her back, promising to halt deforestation. After the election, Lula told me that he intended to fulfill his pledge.
This was Bolsonaro country. There were no Lula posters to be seen, but on the way to town we had passed a roadside camp of Bolsonaristas, hung with protest banners decrying the Supreme Court’s decision that Lula had won the election fairly, and calling for “Impeachment Now!” Zaidan and I had been warned to be discreet in Novo Progresso, where many residents were hostile toward journalists, and toward anyone connected with environmental causes.
Dulce Sousa, a resident of Novo Progresso, agrees with the former President Jair Bolsonaro that local residents should be free to profit from the forest’s resources. Dulce, like Bolsonaro, insisted that the Indigenous people should be allowed to profit from the forest, even if it means abandoning their traditions. “For me, democracy means that they can choose what they want to do,” she said. “If they want to live from farming, that’s fine.
Many of the region’s Indigenous activists rejected this idea. On Novo Progresso’s main strip, a Kayapo N.G.O. called Instituto Kabu maintained a walled compound, patrolled by an armed guard. When we arrived, we found a sturdily built man with a headdress of parrot feathers working on a laptop. He was Mydjere Mekrãgnotire, the organization’s vice-president. Mydjere, who also served as the coördinator of Indigenous education for Pará state, spoke urgently about a dire situation.
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