Indigenous Leaders Say Crime Groups Are Taking Communities Hostage on Brazil-Peru Border

Indigenous leaders on the Brazilian-Peruvian border have said their communities are being “taken hostage” by organised crime groups who are running rampant across the region, destroying rainforest, building roads and trafficking drugs.

Earlier this month, masked men armed with semi-automatic weapons entered homes in Apiwtxa, a village in the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous territory, intimidating people and searching for targets.

The Asháninka people, who have faced threats from intruders for decades because of their efforts to protect the forest and eject narco smugglers, say this is the worst danger they have faced, prompting an emergency delegation to Brasília this week to appeal for support from the government of the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Either the state steps in to provide protection, or communities will start organising to defend themselves – and that would be disastrous,” said Francisco Piyãko, the general coordinator of the Organisation of Indigenous People of the Juruá River, who is part of the delegation. “We are not facing a local conflict. We are facing the expansion of transnational criminal networks into Indigenous territories that currently represent one of the last barriers against the illegal occupation of this region of the Amazon.”

The petition of the Asháninka people comes amid growing concerns about the nexus of drug trafficking and environmental crime, which Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre has described as the greatest new threat to the Amazon Forest.

The Brazilian side of the border is in Acre state, where the forest is still relatively healthy compared with the Peruvian side, which has experienced heavy logging and violence. Acre has sometimes been a perilous area for environmental and land defenders. One of the country’s most celebrated forest campaigners, Chico Mendes, was shot dead there in 1988. After that, there was a period of relative peace in Acre, compared with other countries in the Amazon or other Brazilian states such as Pará. More recently, however, there has been a rise in tension, much of it from the outside. Isolated Indigenous communities from Peru have been increasingly crossing the border to escape confrontation with loggers and drug cartels.

Apiwtxa was the last Indigenous village visited by the British journalist Dom Phillips before he was murdered in the neighbouring Brazilian border state of Amazonas in 2022 while researching illegal extractivist activities in another area menaced by arms and drug smugglers.

According to the Asháninka petition to the Brazilian government, the most recent intrusion into Apiwtxa involved five heavily armed, Spanish-speaking men arriving on the evening of 6 July at the home of one of the Asháninka leaders, who was out of the village at the time. “They were clearly poised to attack with lethal intent,” said one member of the community. It was the second time in several days that masked gunmen had entered the village looking for leaders.

Frightened villagers took their children into one building for protection and notified the authorities. The army arrived at midnight, by which time the would-be assassins had disappeared back into the forest, leaving only tracks.

“For us, this was a threat unlike any other, because they came right into our home – they entered our house,” said Piyãko. “We realise that the context we’re living in now isn’t just about drug trafficking; you can see it’s a movement involving everything from wildcat mining and illegal mining to illegal logging, drug trafficking and other issues.”

The Asháninka delegation in Brasília is calling for a permanent security presence along the border to prevent the free movement of drug traffickers, illegal loggers and the illicit construction of “virus roads” that push into the forest without environmental oversight. They also want greater protection for their leaders and operations to combat organised crime in the area.

The neighbouring Peruvian department of Ucayali has the widest network of illegal roads in the Peruvian Amazon, providing transport for gangs involved in environmental crime, gold, money laundering and drugs. In the past five years, coca cultivation in Ucayali has tripled.

The Igarapé Institute, a public security thinktank, has said that organised crime – which often intersects with narcotics and illegal extraction of natural resources – needs a more robust response by governments across the region: “It is increasingly clear that the fight against organised environmental crime in the Amazon ultimately demands better intelligence and strategic prioritisation. The goal must be to strengthen Brazilian state authority to deter and repress crimes and those who commit them.”

Piyãko said this was now a matter of urgency. He added: “If the Peruvian and Brazilian governments joined forces and wanted to resolve the situation, they could. Because they have the means to combat this.”

“If the state doesn’t protect these territories, they will be dominated by this criminal system, or the people will be forced to defend themselves on their own. This could lead to very serious situations, because as the net tightens around these territories, tensions rise.”