Operating within the ancestral territory, the Comando Vermelho vies for control alongside schools, health clinics, the local office of Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs (Funai), garimpeiros and militias, while controlling the machinery driving deforestation in Mato Grosso, a Brazilian state that borders Bolivia.
Category: long form
The Brazilian government keeps giving out mining licenses in the Amazon – in spite of evidence of gold ‘laundering’
An InfoAmazonia investigation found patterns of illegal gold laundering in the Tapajós River basin in Pará state, where Indigenous communities like the Munduruku people face mercury contamination from mining activity.
Eneva is authorized to drill the only active gas block on Indigenous Land in the Legal Amazon
Over 75% of the Krenyê territory, in the Brazilian Maranhão state, overlaps a block granted for fossil exploration where drilling could begin in 2026. Allegedly to help the energy transition, expansion of production at the Parnaíba Thermoelectric Complex bets on energy generation and the transformation of the MATOPIBA area into a logistics corridor for gas and grains, impacting quilombola territories and protected areas.
Energy transition creates a race for strategic minerals with 5,000 applications in the Amazon
Copper, lithium and nickel, among others, are raw materials used to produce electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. The Amazon holds part of these minerals, and large companies want to exploit it. Most mining applications are in Pará state, and some of them will have direct impact on areas located in Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, oil threatens decades of Indigenous-led conservation
Ecuador’s Socio Bosque project has been key to safeguarding the rainforest. Now the country’s state-owned oil company is exploiting its many loopholes.
Drug gangs threaten communities in Amazon ‘cocaine corridor’
Indigenous, African-descended and other traditional communities are caught in escalating violence from drug trafficking in Amazon “cocaine corridor.”
For young Venezuelan migrants in Brazil, drugs, gold and early death
Brazilian criminal groups prey on young Venezuelan migrants, especially unaccompanied minors, who cross border in search of jobs.
In Venezuela, Colombian guerrillas recruit Indigenous youth
Along border with Venezuela, Colombian guerrillas lure unemployed Indigenous youths into drug trade, extortion rackets and armed conflict.
Brazilian drug gang takes root in Peruvian Amazon
The notorious Brazilian gang Comando Vermelho has seized control of the cocaine trade in Peru’s Ucayali region.
Colombian drug runners turn to shamans for protection
Before embarking on a perilous trek through the jungle, drug couriers in Colombia turn to shamans for protection.