Message from OpenDemocracy

Last year, fires ravaged the Amazon rainforest at a scale not seen for almost a decade.

The fires are mostly not accidental, but set to clear land for agriculture and cattle grazing. President Jair Bolsonaro has denied that his government is responsible. However, documents uncovered by openDemocracy last year paint a different picture. They revealed that officials planned to block conservation projects and paint indigenous communities and NGOs fighting loggers as enemies of the state.

A year on, the situation has continued to deteriorate, with the number of fires rising by almost a third in July compared with the previous year. On democraciaAbierta, Manuela Andreoni explains why, despite international outrage, the rainforest continues to burn.

The fires, along with increasing deforestation, have had a devastating impact on Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, threatening not only their livelihoods but also their culture.

Land and language are closely intertwined and as Indigenous communities have been displaced, the number of native speakers has declined.

Now there is a risk that many of the languages spoken by the first peoples of the Amazon might become extinct altogether – along with rich oral traditions that span centuries.

For the Kuruaya people, who live along the Xingu River, it may already be too late. Odete Kuruaya is the last fluent speaker of her people's native language. Miguel Pinheiro met with her as her community faces the looming threat of a new mining project.

Despite their relative isolation, these communities have not been untouched by the pandemic. Abandoned by a government that has worked to undermine Indigenous rights, they have taken it upon themselves to protect their vulnerable elderly.

For the peoples of the Amazon, there is more than one fire to put out. As Malian intellectual Amadou Hampaté Bâ once warned: “Every time an elder dies, a library is set alight”.