“He was like a father to me,” said the 31-year-old indigenous leader as his boat made its U-turn where Bruno Pereira was last seen. “Now he’s gone, I’m not sure what to do.” Dom Phillips in Brazil on November 14, 2019. Photo: João Laet / AFP / Getty Images Four days later, young indigenous men like Matisse – who Pereira was trained to use technology to protect his people’s ancestral lands from environmental criminals – spearheaded the investigation. “I wish we could find them or at least some sign that could give us hope,” Matisse said Thursday afternoon as he traveled along the river to a part of the jungle-surrounded Itaquaí River, where the operation is concentrated. As he swept the brown water, Matis said he was on the lookout for even the tiniest suggestion that Pereira and Phillips might have been there: a backpack or T-shirt, an oil box, a life buoy or perhaps a boat seat. However, there was nothing but the occasionally sunken tree trunk in the river that meanders towards the Javari Indigenous Shelter, whose residents Phillips was in the area to interview. Twenty-four hours earlier, the research team’s pulse was accelerating when they saw vultures circling over the canopy of the rainforest. But when they followed the path into the jungle, their hopes were dashed. “He was just a dead monkey and the vultures ate him,” Matis said, promising to continue the manhunt despite the lack of progress. Further along the murky river, a cluster of boats had anchored on its west coast. At the helm sat the man who helped coordinate the search and rescue mission – a 37-year-old indigenous specialist named Orlando Possuelo. Backed by heavily armed members of the military police, two dozen indigenous men spent this week searching the area’s forests and rivers for the missing couple, under Possuelo’s orders. Orlando Possuelo in the Javari Valley on June 9, 2022. Photo: João Laet / AFP / Getty Images “We have been here since Monday,” said the native, son of legendary Sydney Posuelo explorer and defender. “This is the area where it was last seen.” Posuelo, a close friend of Pereira, recalled just a week earlier helping the two missing men load their bags into a boat as they embarked on a three-day journey along the Itakuai River. Unable to return to their starting point – the secluded river town of Atalaia do Norte – by the time agreed on Sunday morning, Possuelo set out to find them for fear of an accident. “My first thought was that their engine was broken; I was looking for a damaged boat or one that had run out of gas – something like that.” map of the search area As the hours and days passed, darker thoughts began to swirl. When Possuelo arrived home, after three barren hours of trawling in the river, he began to “fear that something very bad had happened.” Carol Santana, a legal adviser to the Javari Native Association, said activists were now firmly focused on the theory that the couple were victims of “enforced disappearances”. “We are not necessarily saying that he is no longer alive,” said Santana, a lawyer who also represents Pereira’s wife, Beatriz de Almeida Matos. But few who took part in the rescue operation now believe the disappearances were the result of an innocent accident. Many suspect that the men became the target of illegal hunting and fishing gangs besieging the area’s native lands in search of gold and animals such as pirarucu fish and tracajá river turtles. In a letter to Bolsonaro this week, editors from some of the world’s leading media outlets, including the Guardian, Washington Post, NPR and the New York Times, denounced the government’s research operation as “scarce” and slow. On Thursday, as indigenous researchers from four ethnic groups – Matis, Marubo, Kanamari and Mayoruna – continued their search, gray navy vessels were spotted patrolling the river. A military helicopter soared as white storks hid on the river below. “I have 300 men in the area, two planes, 20 boats. We have already spent more than Rs 0.5 million (approximately £ 83,000). “Just to show that Brazil is taking action, it is not kidding,” Justice Minister Anderson Torres told reporters. But critics see such efforts as too little, too late. Indigenous activists, who were looking for Phillips and Pereira just hours after their disappearance, also expressed their disgust at Bolsonaro’s suggestion that the couple themselves were to blame for such a malicious “adventure”. “They went on an adventure – we’m sorry if the worst happened,” Bolsonaro said Thursday before meeting with US President Joe Biden at the US summit. “The one who has an adventure is the president who wastes public money on jet skis and motorcycles, when that money could be spent on health care,” said indigenous lawyer Eliesio Marubo, recalling how nearly 670,000 Brazilians have died. Covid. disease that Bolsonaro has degraded. As the Corona disaster swept through Brazil, Phillips also cited another disaster that accelerated after the shocking Bolsonaro election in 2018: the decimation of the world’s largest rainforest. Phillips’s trip to the Javari region was one of the last pieces of reference he designed for a book on the environmental crisis – and possible solutions. As he followed in his friend’s footsteps to where the missing were last seen, Laet spoke of the “magic” he shared with Brazil’s original rainforests and Phillips’ belief that indigenous communities needed human empowerment. such as Pereira to be able to repel the growing attack on their territories. “Dom was absolutely convinced of that.” Laet insisted he had not lost hope that Phillips would return to finish his book. “I have great faith,” said the photographer. But as the sun set over the jungle, there was no sign of discovery. “We are doing our best,” said a rainy Matisse investigator as he climbed back into the Possuelo floating research base near the village of Cachoeira, accompanied by five armed police guards. “But we did not find a single trace.”
