MASTERS OF THE LOST LAND

A potent narrative that lays out “the factors that have made the largest rainforest on Earth the world’s most dangerous place for environmental and land activists.”

When colonization began in earnest in the Amazon in the 1960s, it unleashed decades of environmental devastation and violent crime, both of which are particularly evident in Rondon do Pará, a settlement in the Pará state in northern Brazil. In 1966, the then-military government launched Operation Amazonia, which encouraged citizens to develop and settle the jungle, colonizing the Kayapó tribal land to create agricultural plots. In the following decades, this region of Brazil would become known for extreme deforestation—one statistic noted that “each year between 1978 to 1988 the Amazon lost an area of forest bigger than the state of Connecticut”—as well as rampant violence and the destruction of Indigenous ways of life. The fazendeiros, Brazilian cattle farmers and planters, who often gained possession of their land through nefarious means, controlled populations of impoverished laborers through capital and viciousness. As Araujo reports, by the early 2000s, “almost everyone was armed…and strong men ruled the roost through extreme violence.” Refreshingly, the author resists restricting the text to bleak negativity. In fact, he focuses equally on positive aspects, using activist Maria Joel’s courageous life story as a thread running throughout the book. Even as activists were disappeared, the protest movement grew, and across the decades, justice was served. Araujo delivers on his promise to showcase the diverse factors that made Rondon do Pará such a dangerous place, though in covering such a wide time frame and large range of issues, the narrative sometimes rushes from one large idea to the next. Nonetheless, the author provides an excellent overview of the multitude of challenges in the region, and the work is characterized by meticulous research and investigative rigor.

An arresting examination of the history of extreme deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon.