ABOUT 20 men, their arms painted like tortoise shells, are silently hacking away at the forest, opening up a corridor about 4 metres wide. When they have finished, the corridor will stretch for 230 kilometres, encircling the land they call Sawré Muybu. Every so often the men, indigenous Munduruku, erect a sign asserting their ownership of the land in their own language and in Portuguese.
The ancestors of these men used to decapitate their enemies and stick their heads on poles. Although the Munduruku gave up head-hunting long ago, some of the signs feature a painting of a head on a pike. This is their none-too-veiled way of telling the Brazilian government they are determined to defend this tract of Amazon forest that has been theirs for hundreds of years.
The ...
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