Despite the glamor of the surroundings, Davi’s mind was more than 2,000 miles away, deep in the forests of Brazil, where a health crisis has gripped his people. “I’m in mourning…for my people, who I’ve lost,” he said, referring to recent images that emerged from the territory showing emaciated Yanomami adults and children, some with swollen bellies from hunger.
Disease and malnutrition have torn through Yanomami villages over the last four years — a crisis that experts lay at the feet of the scores of illegal miners who have set up camp in their sprawling territory, spurred by the high price of gold.
Yanomami children are dying at a disproportionate rate from preventable diseases, like malaria and malnutrition. At least 570 Yanomami children have died from preventable causes since 2018, Brazil’s health ministry told CNN.
Government health workers, who might have mitigated the crisis, have been intimidated and even driven out of the area by miners who took over health facilities and airstrips, Junior Hekurari Yanomami, president of the Urihi Yanomami Association, told CNN.
The emergency is the latest test for Brazil’s newly inaugurated President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has made environmental protection a priority for his term in office. In January, he launched a crackdown on illegal mines in Yanomami territory, and the country’s military, environmental agencies and police forces are currently sweeping through the area to clear it of miners.
Lula’s administration has brought hope, says Davi, especially through his appointment of the country’s first minister for indigenous people, Sonia Guajajara.
“But he’s going to need a lot of support,” the activist said of Brazil’s bitterly polarized political landscape.
A gold rush emboldened by Bolsonaro
Yanomami territory, which spans the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas, is supposed to be a protected reservation where mining is illegal. But miners have flooded the area over the last several years as gold prices boomed, stripping the natural environment and in some cases driving away vital health workers.
While it is hard to get an accurate number of mines in the sprawling territory, which equals the size of Portugal, a report by Brazilian NGO Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), based on satellite imaging, found that mines on Yanomami land had risen from four in 2015 to 1,556 by the end of 2021.
As hunter-agriculturalists, the Yanomami maintain a symbiotic relationship with their environment. Some 30,400 Yanomami live in the territory, and as they are largely isolated from the outside world, they are more vulnerable to common viruses. Exploitation and encroachment in the forest by extractive industries has proven to be fatal for the indigenous group and their traditional way of life.
The building of the Trans Amazonian highway, started in the 1970s by the Brazilian military dictatorship who were keen to develop the Amazon basin, introduced measles, malaria and the flu that decimated Yanomami communities, said Watson.
A goldrush in 1986 later saw an estimated 20% of the Yanomami community die in a seven-year period, according to Watson. Many of those miners were driven out in 1992, when the area was demarcated by the government of then-President Fernando Collor de Mello.
Davi says he noticed a shift when former President Jair Bolsonaro was in power. Miners felt emboldened to enter the territory armed “with a lot of heavy equipment, the mechanised dredgers, and they were using petrol, mercury, and then they… used planes and small landing strips and helicopters,” Davi said.
The arrival of new miners brought misery, said Davi, including reported threats and attacks against Yanomami communities. In May 2021, a half-hour shootout with miners left four dead, including two Yanomami children — a video of the incident showed women and children running for cover as a boat passed the riverbanks of their village.
“It’s his fault. He let the illness of mining in,” Davi says of Bolsonaro.
Brazil cracks down on illegal mining
There has been momentum since Lula’s intervention in the territory. Speaking from Boa Vista in late January, Lula pledged to eliminate illegal mining, saying he was “shocked” by the Yanomami’s poor health.
In a later statement to CNN, Denarium’s office said the quotes were “taken out of context,” adding that “the desire for people’s lives to improve is the desire of anyone who values the dignity of indigenous or non-indigenous people.”
For Davi, there has been little evidence that authorities valued Yanomami dignity in recent years.
“We indigenous peoples are badly treated, as are our rivers, the animals — but it’s not just indigenous peoples who are dying, the city people are suffering as well,” Davi said from his hotel room. “These two worlds really need to come together in a big embrace and not let our world be ruined.”
CNN’s Marcia Reverdosa contributed to this report.