How the Brazilian military sabotaged protection of Indigenous people in the Amazon

The Brazilian military has been involved in a series of controversial episodes undermining emergency efforts to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory .

Reports show it failed (or sabotaged) airspace control and food deliveries to the Indigenous people, who suffer from malnutrition as a result of mercury contamination from illegal mining.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has spent millions trying to evict the illegal miners.

Experts blame the military’s inaction of action on illegal miners on a colonial ideology that was prevalent under the former military dictatorship.

The Brazilian military has long advocated for occupation as the best way to protect the country’s Amazonian region against foreign enemies.

Despite having platoons on Yanomami land, the military has done little to combat the illegal mining, according to experts.

Experts say the military considers them “authentic Brazilians , an ideology that erases the millennia-old presence of native populations”.

The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples estimates that 7,000 illegal miners are still active in the Yanomami territory.

The military doesn't recognize the sovereignty of Indigenous lands when it’s the Indigenous inhabitants who struggle to achieve demarcation, experts say.

The Government House is an attempt to minimize the illegal miners’ activity, but it's not yet a centralized effort.