Brazil’s Lula is losing his war against illegal miners in the Amazon
The small plane hovers low above the scrappy forest canopy, with rivers below colored a murky yellow due to mining waste. On the ground, deep in the Amazon rainforest, an armed Brazilian government agent watches as a dredge used to illegally mine gold from the Yanomami Indigenous Territory erupts into flames – destroyed on orders from the Federal Police.
The scene unfolded earlier this year, and was part of a government crackdown on the illegal mining that has ushered in deforestation, hunger, and conflict in Brazil’s Amazon. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged millions of dollars for high-profile environmental protection operations, in which authorities destroyed 340 mining camps in the first four months of 2023 alone, and
