Brazil: ‘The Forest is Shedding Tears’: The Women Defending Their Amazon Homeland

Dec 21, 2019 | Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
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It is midnight at an almost deserted bus station and one of the Amazon’s most courageous warriors is sitting on a plastic chair and breastfeeding her child, apparently indifferent to the hefty price on her head.

Illegal miners have offered 100g of gold to anyone who kills Maria Leusa Munduruku, a forest defender, indigenous leader and women’s rights activist who has spearheaded campaigns to halt invasions of the Tapajós river basin by polluters, loggers and dam builders.

After some of the men of her tribe – the Munduruku – were co-opted by gold prospectors, she formed a women’s association that now takes an increasingly prominent role in dangerous missions to demarcate territory and evict illegal occupants.

“We need to be brave,” she says, adjusting a heavy nylon bag that serves as a suitcase while another child pulls at her painted arm.