While continuing the assault on the Amazon led by incumbent President Bolsonaro, who beheaded the environmental agency and paralyzed the indigenous agency Funai. And so, feeling protected and unpunished, farmers and cattle ranchers started to burn in the forest to expand pastures and plantations, they even called a "fire day". The result is the destruction of 1,700.8 square kilometers (657 square miles) of forest in August alone, three times that of the previous government. As promised by the president the first are unpunished: none of the 2,539 lawsuits for the fires ended with a conviction.
Now the deforestation business is expanding in the indigenous lands, which the president himself considers a hindrance. On Sunday another defender of indigenous rights, Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, was shot dead in front of his family in Tabatinga. Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was an official of the indigenous Funai agency (Fundação Nacional do Índio) and had repeatedly denounced the criminals that cut down indigenous forests to extract timber and gold.
Only in 2018, according to Global Witness, 164 activists fighting for were killed for protecting the environment and indigenous rights.