A Mongabay investigation that revealed an illegal cattle boom amid a record-high number of killings of Indigenous Guajajara has been cited by Brazilian authorities to remove thousands of head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.

“Your report is very similar to what we’re actually finding in the field. It showed an accurate reality and this helped us a lot in practical terms,” Marcos Kaingang, national secretary for Indigenous territorial rights at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, told Mongabay in a video interview.

In June 2024, Mongabay published a yearlong investigation, with funding and editorial support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, revealing that large portions of the Arariboia territory, in northeastern Maranhão state, had been taken over by commercial cattle ranching, in violation of the Constitution.

“There was a large presence of cattle that shouldn’t be on the Indigenous land, thousands of head of cattle,” Kaingang said.

The investigation also revealed details that authorities said they hadn’t been aware of, including the physical alteration of Arariboia’s boundaries by moving border markers. “It was a topic that I would say had gone a bit unnoticed,” Kaingang said, adding he only found out about this through the investigation. “I remember you mentioned it in one of our conversations and this also came up in the publication of your report,” he told this reporter. “We brought it up as an important point in our discussions and we verified that the milestones had in fact been changed.”

Launched in February, the federal government operation removed between 1,000 and 2,000 head of cattle from Arariboia, Kaingang said, adding it’s difficult to give an exact number. “All the cattle that were there and belonged to non-Indigenous people were removed. We gave them a deadline of no more than 30 days to remove the cattle and, in fact, the cattle were removed.”

The alternative was that the cattle would be seized, as determined by a Supreme Federal Court decision, which Kaingang said was key to the success of the operation. “The only cattle left on the Indigenous land are the ones belonging to Indigenous people for their own livelihood,” he said, noting that this represents a small number.

In late 2023, when this reporter went to Arariboia for this investigation, the trip involved having to pass through two farm gates blocking an unpaved road in the Indigenous territory. The road leads to the home of José Maria Paulino Guajajara, whose son, Paulo Paulino Guajajara, was killed in an ambush by loggers in 2019. José Maria’s mother and his brother-in-law were also allegedly killed by loggers.

The village where José Maria lives was surrounded entirely by large, fenced cattle ranches, but now he says there are no more cattle. “The authorities came and removed everything. They removed all the cattle from this area,” José Maria told Mongabay by phone.

Graphic by Andrés Alegría/Mongabay.

Following the government operation closely have been the Guardians of the Forest, a Guajajara patrol group set up a decade ago, of which Paulo was a member, who risk their lives to fight illegal loggers and environmental crimes in Arariboia. “The cattle have disappeared,” Lucimar Carvalho, a lawyer with the guardians, told Mongabay by phone. “If you look at the number of cattle in Arariboia today, I think it’s 10% of what it was a month ago. Too many cattle have left the territory.”

Carvalho said she mentioned the Mongabay investigation to the authorities carrying out the operation and they were all aware of it. According to her, they said it had been very relevant for the operation as it gave an accurate picture of Arariboia’s complexities, including the fact that several Indigenous Guajajara had been co-opted by the ranchers, and revealed previously unknown information.

Carvalho said she sent a copy of the Mongabay investigation upon its publication to COIAB, an umbrella group of Indigenous organizations in the Amazon. COIAB is responsible for producing a report assessing the Brazilian government’s duties to ensure the protection to Arariboia’s Indigenous Guajajara and uncontacted Awá peoples, to be submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

“There’s an injunction that says there must be protection for the Guajajara and the Awá. When there isn’t this protection, we have to denounce it,” Carvalho said. “The invasions are a threat to the health of the Awá and the Guajajara. It’s noncompliance by the state, so they have an obligation to provide some form of protection.”

Carvalho said she also sent a copy of the investigation to multiple authorities, including the Federal Public Ministry, the Federal Police, and Funai, the Indigenous affairs agency, demanding due measures to protect Arariboia.

The guardians themselves also sent authorities claims backed up by photos and videos with geographical coordinates of illegal cattle in Arariboia, which Kaingang said was also used in the operation, in addition to information from Funai, other federal and state government departments, academic research, among others.

Operation tied to Mongabay probe

The planning of the operation started in January and the analysis of all materials, including the Mongabay investigation, was key to drawing up the action plan to remove the illegal cattle and combat other illegalities in Arariboia, Kaingang said. He mentioned key points, all of them revealed in our investigation.

One was the moving of border markers. “In our initial preliminary survey, one of our diagnoses showed that the [markers]had been altered significantly,” Kaingang said.

Fieldwork carried out by Funai reviewed the markers, and the agency is now replacing them where they should be, per the 1990 decree that demarcated the Arariboia territory. “We’ve already carried out the first topographical survey of the alteration of the physical landmarks. Funai teams have already gone into the field, identified them and we’re already putting some of these landmarks back in place,” Kaingang said.

A second key point cited by Kaingang was proof of the presence of illegal cattle in Arariboia as a result of some Indigenous inhabitants leasing out part of the territory for grazing. Authorities warned farmers whose fences violated the territory’s borders that it’s a federal crime; they’re also being investigated by the Federal Police for this offense and for leasing Indigenous land, Kaingang said.

The third point revealed in the Mongabay investigation and cited by authorities was the extensive presence of fences inside and around Arariboia. “The whole territory was fenced off,” Kaingang said. “Kilometers and kilometers of the territory were fenced off for [cattle] grazing. This interferes with [the right] to come and go and the movement of Indigenous people in the territory as it becomes a kind of private property.”

Authorities determined that these fences has been paid for by non-Indigenous people who had co-opted certain Indigenous residents, which was also revealed in the investigation. Several kilometers of fences were removed, Kaingang said.

The fourth key point centered on illegal deforestation in parts of Arariboia, which the operation has also been tackling, according to Kaingang. Our investigation showed that while illegal logging wasn’t a big issue anymore thanks to the guardians’ actions, a new wave of deforestation was triggered by timber extraction to build the fence posts.

Kaingang also highlighted the cattle ranches and sawmills around Arariboia as drivers of deforestation. As revealed in the Mongabay investigation, the lack of a buffer zone around Arariboia and the presence of the sawmills and ranches in such close proximity to the protected area are directly connected to environmental crimes and fueling violence in the territory.

The fifth key point cited was the significant rate of marriages between Indigenous women and non-Indigenous men, who brought to Arariboia illegal cattle and a “model of exploitation into the territory,” Kaingang said. This issue was also revealed by Mongabay last year.

In accordance with Indigenous autonomy, non-Indigenous people may only live in the territory with the consent of the community, Kaingang said, and must agree with the community’s rules.

To minimize conflicts amid this complex situation, Kaingang said, the operation held a dozen meetings in different parts of the territory, explaining what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. Authorities found that hundreds of head of cattle were registered with the Maranhão state agricultural defense agency under the names of Indigenous people; these registrations were all cancelled, Kaingang said.

“We blocked the registration of new cattle, because one of the strategies of the non-Indigenous people was to try to take this herd of cattle and register it in the name of an Indigenous person within the territory,” Kaingang said. “And we saw a lot of movement overnight, some Indigenous people registering 600, 500 head of cattle in their names and claiming this registration.”

‘Impunity will be properly combated’

The Mongabay investigation also unveiled a clear rise in environmental crimes in and around Arariboia in 2023, when four Guajajara people were killed and three others survived attempts on their lives, marking 2023 as the deadliest year for Indigenous people in Arariboia in seven years.

The findings showed a pattern of targeted killings of Guajajara individuals amid the expansion of illegal cattle ranching and logging in and around Arariboia: areas with the most violent incidents coincided with illegal activities tracked by Mongabay and with police operations aimed at curbing illegal logging.

Between 1991 and 2023, 81 Guajajara were killed in Maranhão, more than two-thirds of total killings of Indigenous people in the state, according to data from the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), an advocacy group affiliated with the Catholic Church, and from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), an arm of the Catholic Church that works with Brazilian rural workers seeking agrarian land reform. None of the perpetrators have been brought to trial.

Nearly half of these killings, 38, occurred in Arariboia, the data show. Six members of the Guardians of the Forest were killed, the Guajajara people say. Among them was Paulo Paulino Guajajara, killed in 2019. His case is expected to set a legal landmark, once it goes to trial, as the first killing of an Indigenous leader to go before a federal jury. In most cases, killings are considered crimes against individuals and are tried by a state jury. But Paulo’s death was escalated to the federal level because prosecutors made the case that it represented an aggression against the entire Guajajara community and Indigenous culture.

Alfredo Falcão, the federal prosecutor leading the case, said the impact of the investigation driving the removal of illegal cattle from Arariboia is “a great joy” and will “strengthen the local community’s sense of justice and trust in the judicial system, in the sense that impunity will be properly combated.”

Almost six years since the crime, the trial of Paulo’s killing still depends on an anthropological report of the collective damages to the Indigenous community as a result of the crimes. His father, José Maria, said he feels outraged by the delay. “The trial is taking too long,” he told Mongabay by phone.

In an emailed statement, the court said “there is still no information on the conclusion of the anthropological report.” The latest information provided by the expert commissioned to carry out the report, it added, is that the research in Arariboia started on Feb. 13 and the report is likely to be completed by the end of April.

Without the anthropological report, there’s no estimate for when the trial into the 2019 killing can begin. “The date of the jury can only be set after the anthropological report has been presented, which must be seen by all parties, so that, for the time being, there is no way of estimating the date on which the jury will be held,” the court added.

The cattle operation in Arariboia is expected to last three months, which means it’s entered its final phase this month. The results so far are good, according to Kaingang, as all cattle owned by non-Indigenous people have been removed and deforestation has been halted, satellite imagery showed. The key outstanding issue now, he added, is to come up with a definitive number for the cattle that the Guajajara inhabitants can raise for their own livelihoods.

One of the main criticisms from the Guajajara people regarding government operations like the ongoing one is that once they’re over and officials have left, the crime returns — as does the violence. According to Kaingang, ensuring the safety of the Guajajara and Awá peoples in Arariboia on a permanent basis is a priority.

“We are already discussing with the Indigenous leaders how to guarantee the minimum permanence of the security forces in the region to avoid threats, retaliation against the Indigenous leaders, and to avoid the cattle returning to the Indigenous land,” he said.

He added the information provided by the Mongabay investigation about violence in the region, along with other reports, was critical. “We were able to capture all the information we already have about violence in the region — against the guardians too — so that we could subsidize the construction of a very strategic action plan that meets the needs of the territory.”

To make a “post-intrusion plan sustainable,” Kaingang said, the government will have a permanent base in Arariboia with Funai representatives and security forces. The idea is that this will prevent threats to Indigenous people and the return of illegal activities to the region. The location of this base has yet to be determined.

Mongabay’s illegal cattle investigation was part of our yearlong “Blood Timber” series. This reporter carried out the reporting as a fellow of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, which provided funding and editorial support. The series has also achieved other relevant impacts, including an honorable mention at the Banrisul ARI Journalism Award, a prize recognizing excellence in journalism in Brazil, in December 2024. In May 2024, a video about impunity for Paulo’s killing was streamed at Chile’s Supreme Court and nationwide by Chilean TV channel Poder Judicial Chile as part of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago. Falcão, the prosecutor leading Paulo’s case, has said he will use excerpts from the Mongabay video in the trial.

Banner image: Paulo Paulino Guajajara’s killing has become the symbol of the guardians’ fight to protect Arariboia. Image by Ingrid Barros for Mongabay.

Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and a member of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.She is the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.

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Revealed: Illegal cattle ranching booms in Arariboia territory during deadly year for Indigenous Guajajara