The Parakanã Indigenous people are reoccupying their territory in Pará state after the eviction of around 3,000 invaders by federal forces.The intruders, however, are ready to come back if Brazil’s next administration carries a new anti-environmental agenda in 2027.Experts compare illegal activities such as gold mining to powerful bacteria that may return even stronger if you don’t use the proper antibiotic.Also in Pará, the state administration has the challenge of keeping deforestation under control after a successful operation in the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area.
For years, the Parakanã Indigenous people were restricted to less than a third of their territory, isolated in the middle of a vast pasture area occupied by around 100,000 heads of cattle. Illegal gold mining, illegal logging and land grabbing also proliferated inside their land, the Apyterewa Indigenous land, located in Brazil’s River Xingu basin, in Pará state.
“It is historically the most deforested Indigenous territory in Brazil, and perhaps in the world,” said Wallace Lopes, an environmental analyst in Brazil’s federal environmental agency, IBAMA.
The peak of deforestation happened amid the administration of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), who dismantled the country’s environmental enforcement. In 2022, an area nearly the size of Paris (102.23 kilometers squared or 25,261 acres) was cleared inside the Apyterewa land, according to Brazil’s space agency, INPE.
