Around 500 people recently invaded Indigenous land in the Brazilian Amazon, home to an uncontacted Indigenous group. But this was no spontaneous land grab. Behind the occupation was a carefully coordinated political campaign.
The territory is home to the isolated Indigenous group known as the Igarapé Ipiaçava. Yet this year, a campaign by politicians and their supporters helped fuel efforts to occupy the land, using a questionable new state law to justify the push.
A new Mongabay investigation traced how this political campaign intersected with a broader effort to open up the territory. We analyzed hundreds of illegal land registrations inside Ituna/Itatá and found that 97% were registered as medium or large properties — not the small holdings of struggling rural producers frequently invoked by politicians and influential agribusiness figures in their speeches and on social media.
Who is really behind the push to occupy this territory? The investigation reveals a much bigger story about land, politics and agribusiness in one of the Amazon’s most contested regions. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Experts warn that continued occupation could expose the isolated Indigenous people to violence, disease and potentially genocide.
How did hundreds of people come to believe they had a right to occupy this land? And who stands to benefit?
Watch the video and read Mongabay’s investigation to find out.
