into a forest clearing to confront a squad of
combat-armed environmental police who, for
their own safety, had helicoptered in. Luz is
an anthropologist, a tall, powerfully built man
of 43. He is a right-wing activist and, fi gura-
tively speaking, a hired gun. On that February
afternoon in 2020, he wore tinted prescription
sunglasses, a bushy beard and a radical haircut
close-cropped on the sides. He did not have
access to a helicopter. To get to the clearing,
he traveled for eight hours by a ferry crossing
and down muddy tracks from Altamira, a small
city in the state of Pará on the far side of the wide
brown Xingu river.
The clearing contained a corral, a shed and
a makeshift shack. It was an illegal homestead
carved by settlers out of a 550-square-mile
Indigenous reserve that is meant to be invio-
late. The environmental police intended to expel
the settlers by burning their structures, as they
had burned more than 200 similar constructs
over the previous few weeks. The reserve is
called Ituna-Itatá after two small rivers there.
It was established in 2011 for the protection of an
isolated Indigenous group that has never been
contacted by outsiders or fully confi rmed to
exist. Despite the reserve’s special status, it has
become among the most invaded Indigenous
territories in all of Brazil since the election of
the pro-development, anti-regulatory president,
Jair Bolsonaro, in 2018 — a poster board for the
Amazon’s eventual demise.
The creation of Indigenous reserves is meant
to serve a dual purpose: slowing deforestation
through broad restrictions on extractive activ-
ities (logging, ranching, farming, mining) while
simultaneously protecting Indigenous cultures.
The arrangement’s advantages may seem obvi-
ous from a distance, but they are ignored by
large numbers of Amazonian pioneers whose
main concerns do not include cultural diversity
or the preservation of nature. These are Bolsona-
ro’s people. Those who live in the forests endure
hardscrabble lives as wildcat miners, loggers and
subsistence farmers. Ample documentary evi-
dence exists that many in Ituna-Itatá also work
as agents of speculative land-grabbing schemes
and related forms of criminal enterprise.
In Ituna-Itatá, Luz was hired by a local associ-
ation of settlers to challenge the claim that the
territory was inhabited by an isolated tribe — and
by extension, the legitimacy of the reserve andthe legality of the policing taking place there. Luz
was raised in the Amazon by evangelical Brazilian
missionaries, affi liates of a Florida-based group
called the New Tribes Mission, whose beliefs he
abandoned as a young man when he set off on
a vaguely Marxist college career. That career
stopped short of a Ph.D. when Luz decided to
throw it all over and set himself up as a consultant
for the diametrically opposed camp promoting
commercial interests in the region and arguing
against the idea of exceptional Indigenous rights.
Recently he had acquired a measure of fame by
lending his energies to some of the most visible
forces shaping the Amazon today — not as we
might wish them to be, but as they have evolved.
Renowned anthropologists at Brazilian univer-
sities and government offi cials accused him of
harboring hidden agendas toward Indigenous
peoples, a charge that Luz disputes. Some critics
feared him, though more because of the compa-
ny he keeps than of any evidence that he might
resort to violence.
The police he confronted in the clearing
were not of the sort to be pushed around. They
belonged to a federal agency called IBAMA (Insti-
tuto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente), which was
formed in 1989 not to protect Indigenous groups
but to enforce environmental laws, particularly
those meant to counter deforestation in the Ama-
zon. The agency is famously despised by Bolsona-
ro, who as a junior legislator, after being ticketed
for fi shing in a marine reserve, proposed a bill
prohibiting fi eld agents from carrying weapons
— a tantrum, even as a suggestion, that in the
context of a hostile environment some agents
regarded as posing immediate lethal threats to
them. Such is the hostility toward IBAMA in the
Amazon, agents told me, that the enforcement
teams rotate through Altamira for only a few
weeks at a time. While there, they are tracked
by networks of informants and spies so dense
that even when carrying out raids by helicopter,
they rarely achieve surprise.
On the afternoon in question, Luz knew just
where to fi nd them. He got off the motorbike and
strode toward an agent standing guard. The agent
brought him up short at rifl e point. Luz raised
his hands. The commander, a tightly wound man
with a compressed smile, came up to confront
him. Close behind the commander came anoth-
er agent, masked, cradling a weapon, while a
fourth agent, unmasked, stood to the side. Luzwas visibly angry. He raised his smartphone to
record the encounter. The video began with him
booming, ‘‘... the rights of my clients!’’ A small
group of settlers who arrived with him watched
from nearby. They did not appear on camera.
The commander said, ‘‘Sir, do you work for the
Environment Ministry?’’
Luz answered: ‘‘I am the anthropologist
Edward Luz! I am here to enforce the ministeri-
al order of Minister Ricardo Salles, whom I met
last Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020, at 14:26 in the fourth
chamber of the Federal Public Ministry, where it
was agreed that no property of a population in a
situation of fragility will be destroyed.’’
At the time, Salles was Brazil’s minister of the
environment — a youthful-looking man in pale
glasses who is seen to represent the far right
of the rural upper classes and who, at a cabi-
net meeting several months later , was recorded
recommending taking advantage of the media’s
focus on the pandemic to ‘‘streamline’’ the Ama-
zon’s protections. Nominally, IBAMA worked
under his direction. Luz continued to rant. Along
with two ultraright politicians, he had indeed met
with Salles. Extrapolating from the meeting, he
said to the commander: ‘‘Was I clear? If any prop-
erty here is destroyed, you are responsible and
will answer criminally!’’
The commander said: ‘‘So I am being clear
with you. If you do not withdraw from this terri-
tory now, you will be arrested for invading Indig-
enous lands.’’
Luz said, ‘‘Look, we have a problem with inter-
pretation here.’’
The commander said: ‘‘No, no, there’s no prob-
lem. What is your name?’’
‘‘I am the anthropologist Edward Luz!’’
‘‘So. You, sir, are inside Indigenous land.’’
‘‘Right!’’
‘‘I’m ordering you to leave.’’
‘‘Under whose authorization?’’
‘‘If you don’t leave now, you will be arrested.’’
‘‘No! Please, what is your document? Please
show me the arrest warrant!’’
‘‘You are in fl agrante delicto, sir.’’
Luz said: ‘‘You are a public servant of IBAMA!
You do not have that authority! I’m sorry.’’
‘‘OK, then, you are under arrest.’’
The agents closed on him hard. The video
went shaky. As he fell, Luz could be heard say-
ing: ‘‘I apologize! No, no! I apologize!’’ And also,
‘‘Keep fi lming!’’36 3.20.22On a sweltering afternoon in the wilds of the Brazilian Amazo
n,
Edward Luz rode on the back of a motorbi
ke