Bodies starved to the bone, sunken faces with empty eyes, sick children: the images from Yanomami territory that have been made public in recent days have alarmed Brazil.

The situation of the indigenous people living in Brazil's largest reserve on the border with Venezuela is alarming.

Tjerk Bruhwiller

Correspondent for Latin America based in São Paulo.

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In the past four years, 570 Yanomami children have died from curable diseases, mostly malnutrition but also malaria, diarrhea and mercury-related deformities.

Illegal gold miners, thousands of whom have settled in the area, have contaminated many water bodies and the fish stocks on which the indigenous people feed.

Studies show that residues of the heavy metal can be detected in many Yanomami today.

Medical emergency declared

The Brazilian Ministry of Health has now declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory.

In a decree, the new government announced that it would restore the health services for the indigenous people that had been "dismantled" by the previous government.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visiting a Yanomami health center in the city of Boa Vista, Roraima state on Saturday, condemned the conditions in the strongest possible terms: "What I saw in Roraima was more than a humanitarian crisis: a genocide, a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering,” he wrote on Twitter.

Over the weekend, the Brazilian Air Force began flying food packages into the reserve, which is home to some 26,000 Yanomami people in an area the size of Portugal.

At the same time, people who are particularly seriously affected are flown out of the villages by the air force to take them to hospitals for treatment.

The situation has escalated in recent years

The area has attracted illegal gold miners for decades.

However, the situation has escalated in recent years.

About 20,000 gold diggers are believed to be in the area.

They have built entire settlements with airstrips for logistics and supplies.

Hundreds of boats circulate on the rivers.

An illegal road leading far into the area was recently discovered.

There are also indications of the presence of organized crime in the area, which may also serve as a route for drug trafficking.

In 2022, indigenous people and federal police officers in the area were shot at with automatic weapons by men on speedboats.

Lula da Silva had already promised during the election campaign to put an end to illegal gold mining and illegal deforestation in Amazonia.

However, the expansion of the control bodies, which have had to struggle with budget and staff cuts in recent years, is likely to take time.

Nevertheless, a kind of escape movement among the illegal gold diggers is said to have started.

According to experts from the Brazilian organization Instituto Socioambiental, gold diggers increasingly seem to be looking for refuge in the neighboring countries of Guyana and Suriname, where, like in Venezuela, illegal gold mining is a major problem for people and the environment.

The government and various organizations blame the tolerant attitude of former President Jair Bolsonaro's government, which had repeatedly promised to legalize mining in protected areas, for the advance of illegal gold diggers into the Yanomami region and other protected areas in Amazonia.

Bolsonaro responds with a copy of an old message

"We have to blame the previous government for making this situation so worse," said Sônia Guajajara, Brazil's first indigenous minister, who heads the new ministry of indigenous affairs.

Brazil's Minister of Health also spoke of the "carelessness" of the previous government.

Reactions also came from the judiciary.

Constitutional judge Gilmar Mendes, for example, described the situation as a tragedy.

"The investigation into responsibilities is urgent."

Bolsonaro, who has been in Florida since the end of the year, has described the reports on the situation of the Yanomami as a "farce by the left" and has defended himself against the allegations by presenting data on the Ministry of Health's achievements in favor of indigenous peoples in the past published four years ago.

Indigenous health care is one of the government's priorities, according to Bolsonaro's message, which is a copy of a ministry statement released last year.