Violence Against Social Activists in the Brazilian Amazon: The Role of Deforestation

The Brazilian Amazon is a dangerous place for social activists, particularly those who fight for land rights and environmental protection. In our recent study, published in the Journal of Peace Research, we find that high levels of deforestation are strongly linked to the assassination of activists. We argue that this is due to the highly territorialized nature of this criminal practice, which involves dispossessing local communities of their land. This violence is driven by local criminalpolitical networks protecting illegal profits as well as local authoritarian orders underpinning them. It poses serious threats to local civic spaces, democratic participation, and environmental protection.

The ongoing violence against social activists in the Brazilian Amazon has raised alarm across civil society, policy circles, and international organizations. Between
2006 and 2019, at least 490 activists were assassinated across the 772 municipalities that make up Brazil’s Amazon region (Amazônia Legal). These killings are not random acts of crime, but rather politically charged attacks targeting individuals who defend land rights, the environment, and the livelihoods of local communities. Understanding the causes and mechanisms behind this violence is crucial for designing effective protection strategies while also addressing underlying structural factors.

The Amazon region is shaped by a complex interplay of criminal actors, foreign and domestic corporations, and local elite networks that compete for control over land and resources. Our research distinguishes two criminal economies that fuel violence in the region: drug trafficking and large-scale deforestation. While both generate violence, they differ in their spatial and social logic. Drug trafficking networks in the Amazon region primarily require territorial access to trafficking corridors rather than territorial control or (dis)possession. This often leads to violent turf wars among criminal groups. However, these conflicts do not necessarily pit these groups against local communities.

In contrast, large-scale deforestation represents what we call a highly territorialized criminal practice. It involves the physical clearing of forested land, frequently through violent dispossession of small farmers, indigenous communities, and environmental defenders on the part of local criminal-political networks. Typically, deforestation starts with logging of valuable timber, followed by land clearing via uncontrolled fires, before the land is illegally appropriated, registered through fraudulent means and finally used for large-scale pasture or agriculture. These practices often provoke resistance on the part of local communities, movements and NGOs. Local criminal-political networks respond to this resistance with targeted killings of activists.

In this TraCe Policy Brief, we briefly summarize the key findings from a study published by the authors in the Journal of Peace Research. For further publications on the topic of violence against social activists from TraCe, see Box 1.

Key findings

Our study (see Box 2) employs a mixed-methods approach combining a statistical analysis of municipal-level data with an in-depth case study of Altamira. Altamira is the largest municipality in Brazil and is located in the state of Pará (see map). Using data on social activist assassinations, deforestation rates, drug trafficking proxies, and other socioeconomic indicators, we uncover a consistent pattern: activist assassinations are strongly associated with high deforestation rates but not with drug trafficking.

Quantitative analysis shows that municipalities experiencing deforestation rates at or above the annual median are more likely to witness activist killings. The strongest effects appear in the first three years after deforestation intensifies. These delayed effects suggest that the process of territorial expansion by criminal groups creates sustained conflict over time, culminating in targeted violence against social activists

To make sense of this pattern, we distinguish between three levels of territorialization that characterize illiciteconomies in the Brazilian Amazon and beyond. In some cases, illicit economies merely require (1) territorial access. Transnational drug trafficking, for instance, typically requires access to certain routes and areas (e.g. ports) to move products. This often pits rivaling criminal groups against each other but does not necessarily imply conflict with local communities. In the case of (2) territorial control, activities like coca cultivation, local (retail) drug trade, or extortion rackets usually come with the need for criminal groups to establish some kind of rule over a territory and at least part of the population. In particular, this implies the need to establish governance of territorial access. This can lead to conflicts with local communities and, hence, high levels of violence. However, as we discuss in the theory section of our study (see Box 2), territorial access can also involve more cooperative relations paired with low levels of violence.

This is different in the case of (3) territorial dispossession. Here, the illicit activity – as in the case of large-scale deforestation – requires criminal groups to seize control of physical space and resources in a way that deprives communities of land, property, and/or means of survival. In response, communities as well as local organizations and movements that support land and environmental rights are practically forced to resist, which is why confrontation and violence is all but predetermined. At the same time, large-scale deforestation and other forms of territorial dispossession require protection and active cooperation from state actors like police officers, notaries, judges, and politicians. This facilitates the impunity that characterize most of the assassinations of activists, in Brazil’s Amazon region, but also beyond.

The municipality of Altamira vividly illustrates these dynamics. Despite its dual status as both a site of intense deforestation and a drug trafficking hub, activist assassinations are not related to drug trafficking. The latter is concentrated in Altamira’s urban center and is accompanied by general homicides and violent disputes between organized criminal groups. Instead, the targeted killings of activists occur almost exclusively in the municipality’s high-deforestation zones, spatially distant from drug trafficking corridors. As we show in our study, these killings are closely linked to resistance against land grabbing, illegal logging, and environmental destruction. In fact, eight of the ten cases registered in Altamira between 2002 and 2020 occurred in the Castelo dos Sonhos district, characterized by high deforestation rates. These cases concerned local land activists resisting land grabbers’ logging of public lands and unlawfully occupying smallholder land. The two remaining cases can also be traced back to socio-environmental conflict: One victim was the municipal secretary of environmental affairs, the other a rural workers’ leader.

The case of Bartolomeu Morais da Silva (known as Brasília) exemplifies how criminal-political networks wield lethal violence to protect their territorial control and profits. Brasília was a leader of the rural workers’ union (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Altamira), a member of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Castelo dos Sonhos and a well-known activist denouncing land grabbing, deforestation, and corrupt local authorities. In 2002, he was brutally tortured and murdered by armed men serving loggers and land grabbers known as the Mafia de Castelo. Still, his murderers were not convicted, and the crime’s masterminds were never prosecuted.

Conclusion

The assassination of social activists in the Brazilian Amazon is a multifaceted problem rooted in territorial struggles between criminal-political networks and local communities. Our research highlights how large-scale deforestation – as a highly territorialized criminal practice – drives lethal violence aimed at silencing resistance, reaping illicit profits, and preserving de facto structures of criminal-political governance.

This form of violence has serious implications for democratic regimes: as the assassination of individual activists both weakens the targeted organizations and communities and has broader chilling effects, it significantly limits civic space and undermines local democratic processes. Notably, as our analysis suggests, these political implications are not unintended by-products of purely profit oriented criminal activities. The assassinations must be considered as instances of repressive violence aimed at sustaining local orders shaped by criminalpolitical networks.

Addressing this violence demands multifaceted policy responses that simultaneously address the manifest conflicts and the underlying causes of the assassinations. First, measures aimed at improving environmental protection need to prioritize preventing large-scale deforestation and tackling the expansion of illegal mining, another illicit practice increasingly associated with violence in many parts of the Amazon region. Second, state institutions as well as foreign investors, corporations and development agencies should recognize, respect and help guarantee the collective land rights and the self-governance of local communities. Third, and related, local civic spaces need more effective protection. Both governments and international cooperation can do more to support grassroots activists and their communities by providing rapid response in cases of threats. Fourth, efforts of political reform at the local level should aim at dismantling criminalpolitical networks. Fifth, criminal justice reform is needed to strengthen the independence and capacity of law  enforcement agencies and thereby address the problem of impunity. Finally, the root causes of this violence need to be addressed. This requires national and international efforts at reducing the incentives of territorial dispossession by transforming a global model of economic development that depends on large-scale resource extraction and depletion.

Without such integrated efforts, violence against social activists in the Brazilian Amazon region (and elsewhere) can be expected to intensify. Amid climate change and the continued expansion of resource extraction in the Global South, pressures on forested land and other natural ressources will continue to grow. Understanding and disrupting the territorial logic of anti-activist violence, therefore, is more urgent than ever.

Disclaimer: This Blog was first published as a TraCe Policy Brief and is based on the article “Violence against civil society actors in democracies: Territorizalization of criminal economies and the assassination of social activists in Brazil”.

Acknowledgment from the authors: ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com) was used at an early drafting stage of this TraCe Policy Brief to help summarize the underlying study and provide structuring assistance. The final text is our own.