Amazon’s ‘Guardian of the Forest’ shot dead by illegal loggers
A Brazilian indigenous “Guardian of the Forest” — who worked to protect the Amazon rainforest from illegal loggers — was shot dead by a group of the invaders, leaders of his tribe said.
Paulo Paulino Guajajara, also known as Lobo, which means “wolf” in Portuguese, was hunting Friday inside the Arariboia reservation in Maranhao state when he was shot in the head during an ambush, according to the leaders of the Guajajara tribe in northern Brazil.
Another member of the tribe named Laercio was wounded but escaped.
The slaying comes as illegal loggers and miners have increasingly invaded the forest — bolstered by President Jair Bolsonaro’s vows to open up protected indigenous lands to economic development.
“The Bolsonaro government has indigenous blood on its hands,” Brazil’s pan-indigenous organization APIB said in a Saturday statement. “The increase in violence in indigenous territories is a direct result of his hateful speeches and steps taken against our people.”
Sonia Guajajara, leader of the organization, said that the government had been dismantling environmental and indigenous agencies, leaving tribes to fend for themselves as invaders enter their lands.
“It’s time to stop this institutionalized genocide!” she wrote. “Stop authorizing the bloodshed of our people!”
The guardian’s body was still lying in the forest where he was killed, the organization said. Brazil’s federal police sent a team to investigate.
The Guajajaras, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous groups with some 20,000 people, launched the Guardians of the Forest in 2012 to patrol their massive reservation.
“I’m scared at times, but we have to lift up our heads and act,” Paulino Guajajara told Reuters in a September interview. “We’re here fighting.”
“We are protecting our land and the life on it, the animals, the birds, even the Awá [a small, endangered tribe] who are here too,” he continued. “There is so much destruction of nature happening, good trees with wood as hard as steel being cut down and taken away.”
“We have to preserve this life for our children’s future,” added Paulino Guajajara, who was in his 20s and leaves behind one son.
With Post wires