According to a former senior federal police chief, Alexandre Saraiva, the rapid growth of organized crime groups in the Brazilian Amazon may turn the region into a vast area of conflict, full of heavily armed criminal insurgents.
He fears that the increasing presence of drug-trafficking mafias could lead to a situation similar to the drug conflict in Rio de Janeiro, where thousands of lives have been lost due to the police's fight against drug gangs and paramilitaries over several decades, as reported by The Guardian.
Losing Control?
Saraiva shared his firsthand experience of the state losing control of public safety in Rio de Janeiro and expressed concern that if nothing is done to improve public security in the Amazon, the region could become similar to Rio de Janeiro on a continental scale. This would be worsened by the presence of borders with major drug producers and the challenges posed by the dense jungle setting.
Saraiva cautioned that if criminal gangs were allowed to gain power like the rebel factions in Colombia, the consequences for the rainforest and its inhabitants could be dire. He predicted the emergence of criminal insurgents whose main motivation is money.
The police chief, who wrote a book about corruption in the Amazon called Jungle, warned that there would be violent clashes between groups fighting over illegal gold and timber extraction, which would hurt the indigenous people. He also mentioned that it would be very difficult to combat this issue due to logistical challenges.
A warning was issued before the first anniversary of the deaths of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira. Their murders highlighted the severe environmental damage and the increasing influence of criminal organizations in the Amazon.
The FBSP reported that Brazil's Amazon region had 10 out of the 30 most violent cities in the country. These cities were involved in illegal activities like mining and drug smuggling and were located in remote areas like Jacareacanga, Japurá, and Novo Progresso, also known for deforestation. The murder rate in these cities was alarmingly high, with more than 100 murders per 100,000 people.
Last year, the murders of Pereira and Phillips in the Javari Valley exposed the growth of organized crime groups in the Amazon region. The Javari Valley is a vast area of rivers and rainforests as big as Austria, located on the border between Brazil and the top two cocaine-producing countries in the world, Colombia and Peru.
Read also: Amazon Rainforest: Nearly Half Of All Tree Species In Serious Danger, But There May Still Be Hope
What else is happening?
The threat of illegal gold and timber extraction in the Amazon rainforest has not only led to violent clashes between rival groups but also caused irreversible damage to the environment. The loss of trees due to deforestation contributes significantly towards climate change, impacting weather patterns globally.
Moreover, indigenous communities living in these regions are facing displacement from their ancestral lands as a result of these activities. They lose access to their traditional sources of food, water, and medicine, which leads them into poverty.
Despite efforts by authorities such as increased surveillance and arrests made on criminals involved with illegal mining or logging operations, it is proving challenging due to logistical constraints like vast areas that need monitoring with limited resources available for enforcement agencies.
To address this problem effectively requires collaboration among governments across borders where criminal networks operate freely without any restriction creating problems beyond national boundaries. It calls for international cooperation aimed at combating organized crime syndicates engaged in environmental crimes affecting natural reserves worldwide.
Related article: Amazon Slowly Loses Ability To Recover, Could Soon Become a Savannah, New Study Finds
