The Battle for the Amazon

It’s not often I cry when reading an article, but I was concerned for my MacBook’s circuit board as I scrolled through this one. What struck me most was the bittersweet beauty with which it was written by Tom Phillips, The Guardian’s Latin America Correspondent, as he recounted the final journey of Bruno Pereira, an indigenous expert, and Dom Phillips, a close friend of Tom and fellow journalist, as they were reporting in the Indigenous lands of the Vale do Javari in the Brazilian Amazon. The pair were murdered last month when they came across illegal fisherman plundering the rich natural resources – a practice happening all across the rainforest, from gold mining to logging. Back in 2019, I was reporting perhaps 25 miles away from where they were killed. In an age of six-figure columnists and multimillion pivots to video, it’s tough not to despair about the lack of investment into this kind of journalism.