The Quiet Start Of Brazil’s War On The Amazon

SAWRÉ MUYBU, Brazil ― It was like any other day in this remote corner of the Amazon, where macaws squawked and coasted on colorful wings overhead and the hot sun beat down on the gushing Tapajós River. Aboard a dirty, makeshift skiff belching diesel exhaust, gold prospectors sucked up murky sand from the riverbed to pan for the glinting metal. This time, though, they brought up something else: a perfectly intact set of ceramic plates and bowls. It was a bizarre find. But the prospector figured it might ingratiate him and his fellow fortune seekers with the Munduruku, a local Indigenous tribe of roughly 12,000. He chugged the skiff over to a Munduruku village and came ashore. 

Juarez Munduruku, the village chief, was immediately alarmed. The Munduruku believe another set of their tribesmen live parallel lives underwater. The village, he said, risked consequences for disrupting their aquatic brethren. Sure enough, within days, a little girl in the village fell ill. She couldn’t breathe or swallow. When a doctor examined her, he found a fish bone lodged in her throat....


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