In a world teetering on the verge of anthropogenic climate catastrophe, the Amazon increasingly occupies the popular imagination as both the emblematic victim of human-driven environmental destruction and a source of salvation where alternatives and solutions may be found. The newly released book The Amazon in Times of War by academic, filmmaker, and journalist Marcos Colón investigates these visions of the Amazon and the complex political realities between them. The book is a compilation of essays written between 2018 and 2022 documenting the physical, economic, and institutional violence waged by the government of Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian Amazon that resulted in the unprecedented acceleration of environmental destruction.
The essays, most of which were originally published in Brazilian news outlets during that period and then translated into English for this collection, represent dispatches from the frontlines of the increasingly dire crisis in the Amazon. Building on Colón’s longtime partnerships with Indigenous communities and their leaders, many of the essays also incorporate their experiences and perspectives.
Consisting of three parts, Colón opens the book by exposing what he terms the “environmental fascism” of the Bolsonaro regime. Colón shows how the Bolsonaro administration systematically dismantled protections for the region and its Indigenous inhabitants. The longstanding demarcation of protected Indigenous reserves, along with FUNAI, ICMBio, and IBAMA (the governmental agencies responsible for the protection of Indigenous communities and the environment), were radically undermined. At the same time, the right-wing administration, closely aligned with capitalist interests, encouraged the commercial exploitation of previously protected areas by agribusinesses and mega enterprises. Indigenous lives were expendable under these governmental policies and discourses that emphasized the ideals of “progress” and “development.” When catastrophic fires raged across the Amazon and grabbed international headlines in 2019, the government blamed the Indigenous communities themselves.
Unsurprisingly, the increased incursions on Indigenous territories by drug traffickers, loggers, and prospectors resulted in waves of violence against Indigenous communities and their leaders, as documented in reports by Human Rights Watch and other NGOs. Colón notes that 2018-2019 saw the most significant rise in the number of deaths of Indigenous leaders compared to preceding years, coinciding with the Bolsonaro administration’s policies. Furthermore, Brazilian authorities were slow to react and inefficient in investigating the growing number of homicides among Indigenous populations. Drug traffickers, loggers, and prospectors were essentially granted impunity in their incursions into Indigenous lands and subsequent conflicts with communities. Of particular concern are border areas such as the Brazilian-Colombian-Peruvian Triple Frontier area in Brazil’s Northern Arc, where the high-profile murder of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira took place in 2022. The lack of state presence in the densely forested and isolated region has facilitated the movement of drugs, weapons, and other illegal products by organized crime operations.
As the book is set during the Covid-19 pandemic, the theme of healthcare connects multiple essays in the collection. In the second section of the book, Colón argues that the acceleration of deforestation and environmental degradation under Bolsonaro magnified the lethality of diseases and other crises in the Amazon, as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic beginning in 2020. As Colón succinctly put it, the Bolsonaro government often appeared “to be working actively on the side of the virus.” Through a detailed analysis of policies and regulations, he shows how governmental neglect combined with longstanding organizational and infrastructural weaknesses in rural regions resulted in alarmingly high death rates across the Amazon.
Colón further uses two contrasting case studies of healthcare delivery to the Yanomami and Zo’é peoples to show that non-culturally based systems of Indigenous healthcare have failed communities in the Amazon, especially in the wake of the pandemic. In the case of the Yanomami, who have suffered alarming rates of malnutrition, illness, and absence of medical care, sub-standard medical services were characterized by inequality and capitalist logics. Healthcare was centralized in large hospitals rather than in communities. The Yanomami were also weakened by having to fight the ongoing invasion of thousands of illegal miners who contaminated their land and water, resulting in the death of many children. On the other hand, a culturally-based healthcare model has been in place for over twenty years in the Indigenous territory of the Zo’é people in northwest Pará, where traditional medical knowledge was valued alongside conventional medicine. Healthcare delivery was focused on bringing services to the forest itself without having to remove patients to the city, where they may be susceptible to other diseases. A longstanding buffer zone around their territory that restricted mining activities also helped reduce the impacts of extractivism on the community, leading to better health and overall outcomes.
Colón was in Iquitos, Peru, when the Covid-19 lockdowns went into effect. Amidst the chaos, he managed to hitch a ride on a cargo boat headed for the border city of Tabatinga located at the Brazilian-Colombian-Peruvian Triple Frontier area. This section of the book, which documented the journey through his photographs of riverine Indigenous communities and interviews with residents, is one of the most poignant in the book. Given the economic and food insecurity experienced by riverine communities along the Amazon and its tributaries, the cargo boats are often their only lifeline. Many families do not have access to land ownership nor to the means of sustainable agriculture, and controls placed on land use have limited traditional hunting and gathering practices. Locals also reported that it was difficult to find fish in the rivers, meaning that communities are becoming increasingly dependent on the outside goods brought in by cargo boats for their basic food and necessities. As Colón reflected at the time, “The true danger for many in the Amazon was not the pandemic, but the hunger that would come with it.”
Indeed, one of the book’s strengths is its focus on the lived realities of Amazonian communities who are actively fighting back. In the third and final section, “Beyond War: Life in the Amazon,” Colón features the voices and perspectives of Indigenous leaders alongside his critical examination of discourses and characterizations of the Amazon that have been used to undermine Indigenous sovereignty over centuries. Colonial imaginaries of the Amazon have characterized it as a “green hell” or “dubious paradise”—a mysterious landscape hostile to ideals of civilization. It is a place where the forces of nature should be conquered and dominated by man. Scientific and artistic representations of the Amazon also played a significant role in casting the landscape and its “almost humans” as “strange, distant territories and cultures.” These narratives are not just discursive in nature but are deeply political—they have underpinned waves of violent colonization efforts in the Amazon over centuries.
The epilogue is a tentative reflection on Lula’s reelection in 2022 and what it means for the Amazon. His narrow victory saw a return of the environmental protections and brought some measure of reprieve for Indigenous communities. However, there is still more work to be done. When asked if Lula is a friend to Indigenous peoples, Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa pondered the question carefully and responded, “He is half a friend.” It remains unclear the extent to which Lula is an ally for Indigenous communities and environmental protections. Furthermore, “Bolsonarism” is not dead, and agribusinesses and other powerful corporate interests still hold plenty of clout in Lula’s administration. Notably, Lula’s government still actively supports the implementation of damaging, large-scale infrastructure projects such as oil exploration projects, the Ferrogrão, an old railway project defended by the agribusiness sector, and the reopening of work on the BR-319 highway (connecting Manaus to Porto Velho), all without taking into account the opposition of affected Indigenous communities.
Colón calls on us to recognize that the survival of the Amazon is also about the survival of humanity in general. The large-scale planetary stakes of the destruction of the Amazon necessitates that we harness a broader coalition of resistance and solidarity, learning from those who have resisted these forces for many centuries. In particular, Colón calls for us to interrogate the “biocultural amnesia” at the center of capitalism and recognize that “life is not restricted to humans.” In rethinking our relationship with nature, Colón draws inspiration from how the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon incorporate “complementary and reciprocal relations of societies and nature to increase and produce diversity, to make food, homes, medicine, healing, paths and thus reproduce communities.” In the pursuit of solutions for a shared future, Colón emphasizes that Indigenous communities cannot bear the responsibility alone. Collective action, mutual understanding, and forging alliances are integral. The ending of the book makes a case for us to move beyond the rhetoric of environmentalism and actively engage with the knowledge-systems that have sustained diverse ecosystems for millennia.
Overall, this book is an accessible compilation for English-language audiences seeking to gain an introduction to the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental threats to the Brazilian Amazon and its inhabitants. With its impressive breadth of coverage, from the political, social, and economic to the ecological and cosmological, it is a handy and convenient volume. It will be useful to those seeking a grounded and contextualized perspective of the contemporary challenges Amazonian communities face in Brazil.
Robyn Yzelman is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis studying the legacies of extractivism in the Bolivian Amazon.
