Amazon wild west Drugs, logging and fish are big money but life is cheap

Near a sharp bend on the Itaquaí River, perched on a steep muddy bank, a lone wooden structure marks the last outpost of a fragile resistance.

This is the informal checkpoint used by the Indigenous rights advocate Bruno Pereira, an isolated stilted shack he hoped could help curb the rampant organised crime that threatens the pristine rainforest of the remote Javari Valley, the ecosystems within it and the Indigenous communities who call it home. But two weeks after the bodies of Pereira and the journalist Dom Phillips were recovered, there is little to suggest any improvement in security.

The outpost is intermittently frequented by members of Univaja, the Indigenous rights collective for whom Pereira had worked. But it is manned by a