- Brazil’s federal government celebrated a decrease in deaths and the decline in gold mining two years after agents started to evict invaders on the Yanomami Indigenous territory in the Amazon.
- The Yanomami report that rivers are cleaner, and people are finally healthy enough to work in fields and resume rituals.
- Once estimated as 20,000 in the territory, hundreds of illegal miners still remain and may expand business at the slightest sign of the security forces withdrawing.
“My people have got up again, they’ve recovered,” Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, an Indigenous leader from Brazil’s Yanomami territory, told Mongabay. After mourning hundreds of relatives and burying many infant bodies, he was now celebrating the resumption of rituals and plantations. “There are lots of bananas, lots of cassava,” he said, adding that communities are finally strong enough to return to work.
Located at the border with Venezuela, the Yanomami territory is Brazil’s largest Indigenous land and houses 27,000 people — including isolated communities. For many years, however, they were forced to share their lands with almost the same number of illegal gold miners, known in Brazil as garimpeiros.
The crisis peaked during former President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration (2019-22), which openly favored illegal miners and repeatedly neglected the Yanomami’s calls for help. Illegal miners brought diseases, chased away game, and contaminated rivers and poisoned fish with mercury, causing a humanitarian crisis.
Deaths from malnutrition increased by 330% under Bolsonaro’s tenure, and young children were the primary victims. Cases of malaria, which weakens the body and prevents work in the fields, also soared — in 2022 alone, 22,000 cases were registered.
“The Bolsonaro government almost killed us,” said Hekurari, who is also the president of the Yanomami and Yek’wana district Indigenous health council (Condisi-YY).
Once President Luiz Inácio da Silva took office in January 2023, images released of sick children shocked the world and prompted the authorities into action. On Jan. 20th, 2023, the federal administration declared a public health emergency and sent a task force to the territory composed of health and security agents. Police officers were tasked with the mission of expelling heavily armed illegal miners.
Two years later, the government released data showing improved living conditions and declining garimpeiro activities in the Yanomami territory. According to Brazil’s official news agency, security forces carried out 3,536 security operations in 2024, and the number of health professionals rose from 690 to 1,759.
Initially, federal forces struggled with the task as armed miners, several of whom were backed by large criminal organizations, fought back and kept returning to the territory. The Brazilian army, which had the role of providing support for security agents, was repeatedly accused by Indigenous associations and the Brazilian press of intentionally sabotaging the mission on ideological grounds — Brazil’s military has a long history of anti-Indigenous policies.
However, efforts have been successful, according to the government, and agents were able to destroy machinery and seize mining equipment. The task force also targeted the garimpeiros’ logistic support, such as airstrips, airplanes and fuel supply. Illegal miners faced an estimated loss of 267 million reais ($45 million) in total.
“The drastic reduction in illegal mining, the expansion of health services, environmental recovery, and the guarantee of food security are victories that reflect the joint efforts of various institutions to guarantee a dignified and sustainable future for these communities,” stated the Indigenous people minister, Sônia Guajajara, in an official statement.
Data on death tolls, however, are incomplete. The administration only released figures from the first half of 2024, when 155 people died — 27% less than the 213 registered in the same period of 2023. “More transparency is needed on the Yanomami crisis,” demanded Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, in an op-ed.
For those on the ground, the perception is that things got better. “The rivers where people consume water have become a lot cleaner in the last two years,” Hekurari said, celebrating nature’s recovery after most of the garimpeiros fled. Small groups of illegal miners, however, remain in the territory. “In the region bordering Venezuela, there are still some, and when the security forces arrive, they cross the border into Venezuela. There are maybe five or eight garimpeiros hotspots,” he said.
According to the mapping network MapBiomas, which tracks changes in land use, 50 new hectares (123 acres) of illegal mines were opened in the Yanomami territory in 2024. The figure is almost eight times smaller than that registered in 2023, when garimpeiros destroyed 390 hectares (963 acres) of forest, but shows the persistence of the activity.
“We can say that the illegal gold mining continues to find ways to establish itself in the territory, either by adapting to surveillance or by moving to areas further away from the state presence,” Gregor Daflon, the spokesperson of Greenpeace Brasil, told Mongabay. “In any absence of the government, [the mining areas] could grow exponentially again.”
The continued presence of state forces on the ground is also Hekurari’s primary concern. “That’s what we say to the government: ‘Don’t leave, because there are a lot of people [garimpeiros] in the city just waiting to see if the government is going to leave so they can come back in.’”
The mercury contamination, which could remain in the environment for around 100 years, is also a problem with no short-term solution. Used by garimpeiros to separate the gold from the ore, the substance contaminates the water and accumulates in high concentrations in carnivorous fish, which are an important source of food for local communities.
In 2024, research from Brazil’s leading federal health research center, Fiocruz, found mercury traces in all 300 Yanomami individuals tested. “The protein most used by the Yanomami is fish, so we continue to eat contaminated fish,” Hekurari said.
Mercury acts mainly on the brain and may cause trembling, weakness, memory loss and cognitive difficulties. It can pass from a pregnant woman to her children inside the uterus. The baby may be born with rare neurological syndromes such as cerebral palsy or experience learning difficulties throughout its life.
According to Daflon, raids in Yanomami territory caused a spillover of illegal mining activity, with garimpeiros migrating to neighboring countries like Guiana, Suriname and Venezuela, and other protected areas inside Brazil. Between September and October 2024, for example, Greenpeace found that illegal miners destroyed 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest in 15 conservation units.
“It is important to go beyond repression operations, acting with more investigation and intelligence, identifying and holding accountable the entire supply chain responsible for the operation of the mines,” said Daflon, referring to those trading with illegal gold and providing financial and logistic support to garimpeiros on the ground.
Banner image: A Yanomami child feeds in Boa Vista, in the state of Roraima, in front of the emergency hospital set up by the government to respond to the health emergency in the Yanomami Indigenous Land in 2023. Image courtesy of Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil.
Organized crime brings renewed threats to Yanomami in Brazil
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