Thousands of goldminers (garimpeiros) have illegally invaded Yanomami Park, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous territories, officially demarcated by the Brazilian government in 1992, and covering 96,650 square kilometres (37,320 square miles) of rainforest in the states of Roraima and Amazonas, near the border with Venezuela.
An incursion of this scale has not occurred for many years, bringing back memories among indigenous elders of the terrible period in the late 1980s, when some 40,000 goldminers moved onto their land and about a fifth of the indigenous population died in just seven years due to violence, malaria, malnutrition, mercury poisoning and other causes.
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