Slaughter and resistance: Reminiscing about facts of Yanomami reality

In the Yanomami indigenous territory, covering an area of 9.6 million hectares, the way how mining impacts the communities has been denounced for decades, both by local leaders and by independent journalists. The Yanomami people are constantly recalling one of the most striking and extreme events of rights violation, known as the Haximu Massacre. This was the first case recognized by Brazilian justice as a crime of genocide.

The massacre took place in August 1993. The conflict began when illegal miners from Alto Orinoco failed to comply with an agreement made with the Yanomami people living in a mountainous region on the border between Brazil and Venezuela. On June 15, seven miners invited six indigenous people to go hunting. The miners executed four of them along the way.

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In retaliation, the Yanomami indigenous people murdered one of the miners. A little over a month later, on July 23, a group of miners invaded a village, where indigenous people lived – mostly women and children – and killed 12 members of the tribe with gunshots and machetes. The victims were a man, a woman, three teenagers, two old women, four children and a baby.

2022 marks the 30th anniversary since the approval of the indigenous land, and problems that have no definitive solution still persist. According to the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), in June, the Xihopi community held a celebration to mark the date, and used the occasion to share reports of episodes of violence caused, even today, by miners. In all, it is estimated that there are currently about 20,000 miners in the indigenous territory.

Eight months earlier, on October 13, 2021, leaders of the Macuxi Yano community, in the region of the Parima river, reported to the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY) the disappearance of two children, ages 5 and 7, while they were playing in the water near a mining raft. Firemen immediately began searching and, on the same day, found the body of the younger boy. The next day, they found the second child, also lifeless.

In April 2022, another tragedy struck the Yanomami people. The loss of a 12-year-old girl, raped and killed by miners, in the community of Aracaçá, located in the Waiakás region, Roraima state, was the cause of the mourning. This is one of the most impacted regions by mining.

Malaria and Food Insecurity

In the area, hunger, malaria, and contamination by mercury coexist. In response, the Ministry of Health declared a Public Health Emergency of National Importance (Espin) and set up the Public Health Emergency Operations Center (Yanomami COE).

Threats to food security, specifically, had already been identified in October 2019 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), which warned of hunger among Yanomami children. At the time, it was estimated that eight out of ten children under the age of 5 living in the village suffered from chronic malnutrition, a condition that can irreversibly compromise mental, motor and cognitive development of children, or even lead to death.

Since images of malnourished Yanomami people were disclosed, debates have also been raised, including the need to follow a certain protocol of disclosure, in order to respect the memory of the victims of the socio-environmental crisis that is tearing this indigenous territory apart.