Letter from Roraima – The Amazon Patrol

As mining devastates the rain forest, an armed environmental unit fights back.

- By Jon Lee Anderson. Photograph by Tommaso Protti

The G.E.F burns mining camps as part of a long-running counteroffensive against environmental depredation. "Wherever they go, the miners destroy everything," Felipe Finger, the unit's leader, says.

In a clearing in the Brazilian Amazon, I stood with a group of armed men, discussing a viral TikTok video. The video, shot from a helicopter full of illegal miners, showed a vast stretch of rain forest, with dense foliage extending in all directions. The only sign of human habitation was below: a dirt circle surrounded by fanlike lean-tos made of wooden poles and palm fronds. It was a maloca, a traditional compound of the Yanomami, an Indigenous group that inhabits a remote territory in the rainforest of northern Brazil.

As the helicopter hovered, five Yanomami ran into the clearing, gazing up at the intruders. Several lifted bows and shot arrows. The miners whooped with derisive laughter. “Look at the cannibals,” one of them cried. Another said, “Go on, throw the arrow,” before telling his friends, “Let’s get out of here.” They flew away, yelling, “Bunch of faggots!”

For many viewers, the video was a rare document of an encounter with isolados—members of a Yanomami community living with no links to the outside world. For the armed men I was with, it was evidence: a potential lead in a high-profile initiative, sponsored by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to dislodge thousands of illicit miners from Yanomami territory.