Indigenous leaders who say Brazil’s new president is trying to force them from their lands are braced for a new era of ruin
As a blood-orange sunset drifted towards the forest canopy, Raimundo Kanamari sat on the riverbank and pondered the future of his tribe under Brazil’s far-right president.
Related: Video of uncontacted Amazon tribe highlights threat from illegal loggers
Continue reading...Informal settlements are expanding, with a new occupation attempt every 11 days, and the threat to the rainforest is severe
Antonio Pinto’s makeshift home on the outskirts of Manaus is an open-air shack, one of dozens of similar dwellings of timber and tarpaulin scattered around the hills.
Around them is the evidence of the use of flame and iron: the hills are scorched and brown, littered with fallen logs and toppled, twisted trees.
Continue reading...Clip shows a bare-chested man with a spear, who is believed to belong to the Awá people, the world’s most threatened tribe
Remarkable close-up footage that appears to show an uncontacted tribesman in the Amazon rainforest has been released by an indigenous media group that wants to raise awareness of the threat posed by illegal loggers, miners and drug traffickers.
Related: The Amazon tribe protecting the forest with bows, arrows, GPS and camera traps
Continue reading...Far-right president said Brazil is open to partnerships exploiting biodiversity and mining in a conversation with journalists
The Amazon belongs to Brazil and European countries can mind their own business because they have already destroyed their own environment, said Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who also described his own government’s satellite data showing an alarming rise in deforestation as “lies”.
“You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours,” Bolsonaro said on Friday. “If all this devastation you accuse us of doing was done in the past the Amazon would have stopped existing, it would be a big desert.”
Continue reading...How an urbanist dream of fixing Brazil’s chaotic metropolises became a nightmare
Inside Maria Cleudimar da Silva’s flat, gospel music plays softly on the stereo, family photos and religious posters decorate the walls, and a wicker rocking chair and computer furnish the living room. The only evidence of her past life is a faded photo of the home she lived in for 11 years, a shack she called Noah’s Ark for its frequent floods.
She moved in in 1996, pursuing the promise of a better life from Brazil’s rural north-east to São Paulo, its largest city, where she settled in Paraisópolis, the city’s largest favela.
Continue reading...Father and son accused of offering the cars on social media for $45,000 to $60,000 – a fraction of the price of the real thing
Police in Brazil say they’ve shut down a clandestine factory that was producing fake Ferraris and sham Lamborghinis.
A father and son who owned the workshop in the southern state of Santa Catarina have been arrested on industrial property charges.
Continue reading...Politicians, academics and writers have fled a climate of death threats and hostility reminiscent of the military dictatorship
At times, the solitude and separation from family and friends have plunged Jean Wyllys into despair. “I’ve been through moments of deep sadness, I’ve spent the whole night crying,” he said, speaking by phone from his new home in Berlin. “So I avoid thinking about it too much. I’ve kept very busy, I’ve written a lot.”
A writer and university professor, Wyllys won Brazil’s version of Big Brother before becoming one of the country’s best-known leftwing politicians, and the only openly gay lawmaker in congress.
Continue reading...Nicola Assisi, member of the organized crime group ’Ndrangheta was arrested with his son and await extradition to Italy
After five years on the run, one of Italy’s top cocaine dealers has been arrested in São Paulo along with his son.
Nicola Assisi, 61, a member of the Calabrian organised crime group ’Ndrangheta was arrested on Monday by Brazilian federal police, with his son Patrick, 36, who is also accused of drug trafficking.
Continue reading...Sérgio Moro became a national hero for his role as a judge in the sweeping graft scandal Operation Car Wash
Brazil’s justice minister, Sérgio Moro, has been granted a leave of absence following a slew of damaging leaks that have cast serious doubts over his impartiality as a judge in a sweeping graft scandal.
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, approved the break, from 15-19 July, for Moro to “deal with personal matters”, according to an official government document published on Monday.
Continue reading...Dictatorships of six countries conspired to kidnap and kill political opponents in 1970s
An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.
Related: How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
Continue reading...Bossa nova legend, 88, earns warm tributes – but not from president Jair Bolsonaro
Brazil is mourning the death of João Gilberto, one of the country’s greatest musicians and composers, a reclusive genius in a nation of extroverts whose work recalled happier, more optimistic times for a deeply divided nation.
Related: João Gilberto obituary
Continue reading...A rare concert in 1998 was a chance to see the great musical pioneer emerge from hiding – and why his glorious talent lifted him beyond pop fads
In 1998, I had the rare experience of seeing bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto live in concert in San Francisco. Gilberto, who died on Saturday at age 88, was a famous recluse known both for his magical music-making as well as his stage fright. If you had the chance to watch him perform live, you seized the opportunity because it might never happen again. This is my account of that memorable evening.
Related: Brazilian musician João Gilberto dies aged 88
Continue reading...In new disclosures, conservative magazine Veja says Sergio Moro, who led Operation Car Wash, guilty of serious ‘irregularities’
Brazil’s justice minister Sérgio Moro is facing renewed pressure to resign after the country’s leading conservative magazine waded into a snowballing scandal over his role in a mammoth anti-corruption investigation that helped reshape South America’s political landscape.
Related: Outcry after reports Brazil plans to investigate Glenn Greenwald
Continue reading...Deforestation in Brazil’s portion of the Amazon rainforest rose more than 88% in June compared with the same month a year ago, the second consecutive month of rising forest destruction under the rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.
According to data from Brazil’s space agency, deforestation in the world’s largest tropical rainforest totaled 920 sq km (355 sq miles).
Continue reading...Federal police reportedly asked money laundering unit to investigate the ‘financial activities’ of the US journalist
Brazil’s Bar Association, journalists and opposition lawmakers have reacted with outrage to reports that the country’s federal police plan to investigate the bank accounts of an American journalist who published leaked conversations between prosecutors and the graft-busting judge who is now Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister.
The rightwing site the Antagonist (O Antagonista) reported on Tuesday that federal police had asked a money-laundering unit at Brazil’s finance ministry to investigate the “financial activities” of Glenn Greenwald.
Continue reading...Investigation exposes how Brazil’s huge beef sector continues to threaten health of world’s largest rainforest
The cows grazed under the midday Amazon sun, near a wooden bridge spanning a river. It was an idyllic scene of pastoral quiet, occasionally broken by a motorbike growling on the dirt road that cuts through part of the Lagoa do Triunfo cattle farm to a nearby community.
But this pasture is land that the farm has been forbidden to use for cattle since 2010, when it was embargoed by Brazil’s government environment agency Ibama for illegal deforestation. Nearby were more signs of fresh pasture: short grass, feeding troughs, and salt for cattle.
Continue reading...The EU-Mercosur trade deal is good news for Brazil’s huge beef industry but devastating for the rainforest and environment
European leaders have thrown the Amazon rainforest under a Volkswagen bus in a massive cows-for-cars trade deal with Brazil and three other South American nations.
The EU-Mercosur agreement – the largest in Europe’s history, according to officials – will make it cheaper for Brazilian farmers to export agricultural products, particularly beef, despite growing evidence that cattle ranching is the primary driver of deforestation.
Continue reading...Dengue fever is one of the most deadly mosquito-borne diseases – half the world’s population is at risk from it. Adrienne Surprenant’s photos from the World Mosquito Program in Brazil capture the fight against it
Former ambassadors say far-right leader has cuddled up to rightwing nationalists, irked China, infuriated Middle Eastern partners, and jettisoned its position as climate crisis leader
It has long been considered one of the jewels of Latin American statecraft; a shrewd, dependable and highly trained foreign service that helped make Brazil a global climate leader and soft power heavyweight.
But six months into the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, even veteran diplomats struggle to mask their horror at the wrecking ball being taken to the country’s nearly two century-old foreign office, known as Itamaraty after the Rio palace where it was once housed.
Continue reading...Petra Costa’s powerful documentary charts the state’s descent into populism and the fraying of its democratic fabric
Brazilian actor-writer-director Petra Costa is known for mining her personal and family history for material. Her first feature, Elena, turned her search for her absent older sister into a deeply evocative documentary about loss, familial love, rivalry and displacement as it flutters between São Paulo in Brazil and New York City.
Costa’s latest documentary, The Edge of Democracy, finds her intersecting the personal and political on an even bigger public stage, and in the process documents a crisis erupting in slow motion at the heart of Brazilian politics. Thanks to extraordinary access to figures at the centre of the story – former leftist Workers’ Party presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (AKA Lula) and Dilma Rousseff, as well as rightwingers Michel Temer and current president Jair Bolsonaro – Costa manages to craft an intimate primer about the state’s descent into populism and the fraying of the country’s democratic fabric.
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