Brazil: the “agricultural mafia” assaulting the Rondônia forest

Encouraged by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the local authorities who wish to see the development of intensive agro-industrial exploitation, a veritable “agricultural mafia” is seizing the Amazon. In Rondônia state, organized groups are setting up settlements of small peasants, sometimes the size of a city, within national forest parks supposedly protected by law or on land stolen from indigenous peoples. Fanny Lothaire and Lena Lopes have traced the trail of this agricultural mafia, from the small peasant who is promised a piece of land and a future, to the politicians who pull the strings of these invasions.