This archive report was first published on 28 July 2019.
On July 28, 2019, a Waiapi indigenous leader was found dead in a river in the northern Amapa state, sparking a police investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.
According to the Amapa attorney general's office, the leader's body was discovered the day after he was killed, and while none of the Waiapi witnessed the violent killing, a council of village chiefs pointed to signs of non-indigenous involvement.
A search of the area found trails and other signs that the death was caused by non-indigenous people, the council said in a statement on Facebook.
On the same day, a group of armed non-indigenous individuals overran the nearby village of Yvytoto, prompting residents to flee, the council said. Local media described the group as 'garimpeiros,' a term for armed miners active in the Amazon.
After reports of the attacks emerged, members of the federal police and a military police special forces unit were dispatched to the area, arriving in the village some 300 kilometers from the state capital Macapa on Sunday.
The indigenous affairs agency FUNAI said its officers were also on the ground monitoring the police investigation.
'Law enforcement officials have reported that no hypothesis for the murder has been ruled out, nor can they say at this time who carried out the crime,' the AGO said, as it announced the establishment of a crisis management group to oversee the investigation.
President Jair Bolsonaro had called for the 'first world' to help exploit the 'absurd quantity of minerals' in the Amazon rainforest just days before the attacks.
