ISA's founding partner Márcio Santilli analyzes the situation of violence in the Amazon in the light of Bolsonaro's mismanagement and his empty speech about the region. Article originally published on the Mídia Ninja portal, on 23/06/2022
The last week was strongly marked by the cathartic pain caused by the confirmation of the murder of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, near the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land, in the extreme west of the Amazon. Three of the perpetrators of the crime are in custody, one of them confessed and another turned himself in to the police. There is talk of masterminds linked to drug trafficking and there are political responsibilities to be held. The Federal Police hesitates to deepen the investigations, which President Bolsonaro, in the midst of his reelection campaign, wants to close.
Among the abject aberrations uttered by Bolsonaro, trying to hold the victims responsible for the murder itself, it was up to the Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, to officially inform about the location of the bodies, which he called “human remnants”. The ministerial verbal juggling was due to the circumstance that Bruno and Dom, after death, had their bodies dismembered. The extreme brutality of the crime inspired the minister's poetic license.
What remains of this history stinks very bad for Torres, Bolsonaro and Armed Forces ideologues, who resort to rhetorical defense of national sovereignty to attack critics of government policies for the Amazon, indigenous peoples, human rights, climate change, etc. The whole world watched a horror movie in real time, in a lawless territory, in a runaway country, with a plot determined by organized crime.
Whose defense?
During the recent democratic period, Brazil has made considerable investments to increase military control over borders. Several Army units were transferred from other regions to the Amazon and a collar of battalions was installed along the northern border. The Amazon Surveillance System Project (Sivam), with the installation of powerful radars at strategic points, should allow the control of regional airspace. The Navy also had its structure reinforced in some areas, including Alto Solimões.
Article 17-A of Complementary Law No. 97/1999 provides for the exercise of police power in the range of 150 km along national borders: “It is up to the Brazilian Army, in addition to other relevant actions, […]: IV – to act, through preventive and repressive actions, in the land border strip, against cross-border and environmental crimes, alone or in coordination with other bodies of the Executive Power, […]”. These are attributions related to several of the recent cases of violence that occurred in Rondônia, Roraima and also in Vale do Javari.
That's why the note issued by the Military Command of the Amazon, shortly after Bruno and Dom's disappearance, was astonished, saying that it was still waiting for "superior orders" to react to the fact. It seemed like a way of saying there was some order not to act. It is the Federal Police that leads the investigations. There isn't enough military intelligence for that.
The position of the Ministry of Defense has generated criticism and suspicion of misappropriation of function. While it allows itself to be used in strange movements that question the electoral system, it gives successive demonstrations of leniency in the face of drug trafficking, predatory mining and other criminal enterprises in the Amazon. The High Command seems not to notice, or not to care, with the wear and tear that this situation generates among the best informed.
Resistance to change
The most inhumane remnant is Bolsonaro himself. He manages to dehumanize almost a third of the population. But for that, he crystallizes his rejection by the other two-thirds. The Brazilian people will be able to get rid of his stupidity in the October elections. This step will be essential to prevent the country from sinking once and for all, multiplying human remnants.
This will just be the first step. Violence is resilient. Organized crime will remain and try to maintain the sovereignty conquered over much of the Amazon during the Bolsonaro government. Crime is armed and capitalized. To reverse this situation, it will take strategy, intelligence and perseverance to sever your internal and international connections. Meanwhile, the violence could intensify even more in the short term.
Under a new government, with renewed military commands, there will be an opportunity to review the current defense structure, which has been slow and ineffective in preventing or reacting to Amazonian illicit actions. But the experience of recent years shows that there remains, in the Armed Forces, a corporate political culture completely detached from the civilizational challenges of this century.
It is not the existence of the forest and the presence of indigenous peoples that undermine Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon. It is not credible that governments of neighboring countries or others would dare to threaten our borders. The shock comes from the demonstration of the country's inability to manage the region in a rational way, the uncontrolled advance of deforestation and predatory mining, the grabbing of public lands and the action of organized crime. In addition to harming the country, predation in the Amazon objectively affects the entire world.
The rescue of national sovereignty in the Amazon does not need empty rhetoric, but depends on the demonstration of the country's effective capacity to combat illicit acts and to privilege sustainable development at the expense of predation of natural resources. It depends on the role of forest peoples, threatened and trapped in the current cycle of violence. And it is completed with fair international recognition.