SURUCU, Brazil, Sept 14 (Askume) – Brazil has all but halted an illegal gold rush that has sent thousands of wild miners into the Yanomami reservation in the Amazon rainforest and caused a major humanitarian crisis of disease and malnutrition.
South America’s largest isolated indigenous group, the Yanomami, have returned to their normal ways of growing crops and hunting, Nilton Tubino told Askume in an interview on Friday.
Tubino runs a government office set up by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to coordinate the operations of the police and military, environmentalists and health workers in the remote Amazon reservation, an area the size of Portugal, home to 27,000 Yanomami people.
“We saw many of them bathing in the river and then going out to hunt and clear areas to get food,” he said.
Army and navy forces backed by environmental and indigenous security agencies have carried out hundreds of operations to destroy mining camps and gold fields since March.
They blew up 42 secret airstrips used by miners in the rainforest, set fire to 18 planes, seized 92,000 liters of diesel, sank 45 dredger boats, destroyed 700 water pumps, and destroyed 90 Starlink antennae used by miners to alert each other about enforcement teams, Tubino said. Radars were installed on the reservation to monitor the secret planes.
Tubino said malaria deaths among miners have fallen and government food parcels have curbed malnutrition. The government has reopened medical checkpoints and plans to build a hospital in the remote village of Sulukuku, near the Venezuelan border.
Earlier this month, a Askume photographer in Surukuku saw evidence that illegal miners were still present in the reserve, but the situation was improving compared to last year.
Junior Hekurari, head of the Yanomami health council, Candisi, said the government had evicted the miners and overcome the health crisis, but mining affected their ability to obtain food and river water was contaminated with mercury.
“The water is polluted and there are no fish,” he said. “Our people believe the earth is polluted and that is why crops don’t grow.”
Soon after taking office, Lula launched a massive law enforcement campaign to expel some 25,000 gold miners from the Yanomami region in February 2023. Government operations, supported by the armed forces, succeeded in driving out 80% of the miners.
But after the army withdrew, the miners began to return and join others hiding in the forest.
It’s unclear how many miners remain, but operations this year have significantly reduced their presence and eliminated more than half of the gold exploration areas, Tubino said.
Tubino said steps are still needed to shut down the supply lines that keep miners in business, from fuel and food to buying gold bullion.
