Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World's Last Frontier

by Heriberto Araujo

Overview

“Gripping. … Araujo’s accretion of detail has a powerful effect, demonstrating how deeply the culture of violence has seeped into the social fabric of Amazonia — and how hard it will be to eradicate.” — New York Times Book Review

"A raw account of the critical struggle between law and lawlessness on the world’s last great frontier." — Christian Science Monitor

In the tradition of Killers of the Flower Moon, a haunting murder mystery revealing the human story behind one of the most devastating crimes of our time: the ruthless destruction of the Amazon rain forest—and anyone who stands in the way

Deep in the heart of the Amazon, the city of Rondon do Pará, Brazil, lived for decades in the shadow of land barons, or fazendeiros, who maintained control of the region through unscrupulous land grabs and egregious human rights violations. They razed and burned the jungle, expelled small-scale farmers and Indigenous tribes from their lands, and treated their farmhands as slaves—all with impunity. The only true opposition came from Rondon’s small but robust farmworkers’ union, led by the charismatic Dezinho, who fought to put power back into the hands of the people who called the Amazon home. But when Dezinho was assassinated in cold blood, it seemed the farmworkers’ struggle had come to a violent and fruitless end.

What no one anticipated was that this event would bring forth an unlikely hero: Dezinho’s widow. Against great odds, and at extreme personal risk, Maria Joel, now a single mother of four young children, used her ingenuity and unwavering support from union members to bring her husband’s killer to account in court. Her campaign gained unexpected momentum, helping to bring international attention to the dire situation in Rondon, from Brazil’s president Lula to international celebrities and civil rights groups.

Maria Joel’s fight for justice had far-reaching implications: it unearthed a chilling world of corruption and lawlessness rooted in Brazil’s quest to turn the largest rain forest on earth into an economic frontier. As more details came out, it began to look increasingly likely that Dezinho’s killer, a reluctant and inexperienced gunman, was just one piece of a larger criminal consortium, with ties leading all the way up to one of the region’s most powerful and notorious fazendeiros of all.

Featuring groundbreaking revelations and exclusive interviews, this gripping work of narrative nonfiction is the culmination of journalist Heriberto Araujo’s years-long investigation in the heart of the Amazon. Set against the backdrop of appalling deforestation rates and resultant superfires, Masters of the Lost Land vividly reveals the human story behind the loss of—and fierce crusade to protect—one of our greatest resources in the fight against climate change and one of the last wild places on earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063024267
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	354,184
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Heriberto Araújo is an investigative journalist, author, and speaker. He has reported from Paris, Beijing, and most recently Rio de Janeiro, covering international politics and the environment. His work on the Amazon rain forest has been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The South China Morning Post and has earned a Pulitzer Center grant. His two previous books, on China's global rise, have been translated into twelve languages.

Table of Contents

Map viii

Preface xi

Part I It's All About Land

1 The Escape 3

2 The Criminal Syndicate 21

3 Terror on the Nut Road 39

4 The Chainsaw Murder 59

Part II Rise and Fall

5 The Boomtown 79

6 Early Challenges 88

7 Crickets and Cattle 95

8 No Longer Meek 106

9 Hunting Souza 120

10 Nowhere to Hide 132

11 Nothing Shining in Eldorado 140

12 Death and Salvation 148

Part III After He's Gone

13 An Unusual Case 161

14 The Evidence Man 169

15 A Cause Larger Than Death 184

16 The Law of the Gun 192

17 Land or We Burn the Jungle 202

18 Amazonian Justice 210

19 Sink or Swim 225

Part IV The Downfall

20 The Widow Must Fall 235

21 "Load the Trucks" 245

22 She Is Out 258

23 The Trial 268

24 A Certain Sense of Justice 282

Epilogue 297

Acknowledgments 311

A Note on Sources 315

Notes 319

Index 387

Editorial Reviews

11/14/2022

In this sprawling account, journalist Araujo (coauthor, China’s Silent Army) interweaves a labor activist’s murder in Rondon do Pará, Brazil, with a history of violent land disputes in the Amazon rainforest. Once the home of an Indigenous tribe, Rondon do Pará became a logging boomtown in the 1970s and ’80s. In 1984, José Dias de Costa—known as Dezinho—and his wife, Maria Joel, moved to Rondon to become homesteaders; air pollution soon caused two of their children to fall sick, and Dezinho’s firsthand experience of the logging industry’s heinous working conditions led him to join a rural workers’ union. Elected union president in 1993, he launched campaigns to eradicate debt bondage, fight land grabs, and investigate murders allegedly committed by local landowners. Following Dezinho’s assassination in 2000, Maria Joel (who eventually succeeded her husband as union president) pushed to hold timber baron Décio José Barroso Nunes responsible for the crime. (He has been convicted twice but “continues to fight in courts to dodge jail time.”) Araujo stuffs the account with intriguing details about Brazilian politics, environmental activism, and other killings in the region, but doesn’t always interweave the disparate threads. Still, this is a harrowing and deeply researched report from the front lines of the battle for the Amazon. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"A raw account of the critical struggle between law and lawlessness on the world’s last great frontier." — Christian Science Monitor

“A gripping true crime mystery that transports readers into the heart of the Amazon to witness the human toll of its destruction and the incredible will of its people to fight for the future of this unique place – and the planet. Masterfully reported and engagingly written, this is a must-read.”  — Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of Myth

"A powerful reminder of the challenges of protecting what Araujo rightly calls a strategic climate region blackened by 'the dual flames of fire and lawlessness.'" — Financial Times

"With a journalist’s insight and a scholar’s scrutiny, Heriberto Araujo tells the timeless story of dominance, displacement, murder and social injustice that drive large-scale environmental destruction. Masters of the Lost Land documents an Amazonian version of one culture suppressing another through violence, force, and corruption. On the surface, Araujo’s case study offers more understanding of the past than hope for the future, yet its central heroine provides the kind of inspiration needed to break the cycle of frontier corruption and destruction." — Roman Dial, bestselling author of The Adventurer's Son

“A tour de force. Araujo's masterful reporting from the frontlines in the war for the world's most important tropical biome should be required reading for policy makers, and for anyone who cares about the fight for social and environmental justice for Amazonia's forest peoples.” — Dr. Jeremy M. Campbell, author of Conjuring Property: Speculation and Environmental Futures in the Brazilian Amazon

“Gripping. … Araujo’s accretion of detail has a powerful effect, demonstrating how deeply the culture of violence has seeped into the social fabric of Amazonia — and how hard it will be to eradicate.” — New York Times Book Review

"Intriguing. ... A harrowing and deeply researched report from the front lines of the battle for the Amazon." — Publishers Weekly

"Excellent. ... An arresting examination of the history of extreme deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon." — Kirkus Reviews

“[A] compelling and forensically researched piece of investigative reporting. … [With] more twists and turns than a Hollywood spy thriller. … [A] devastating dissection of impunity in practice – and the efforts of a brave few to fight back.” — The Spectator (UK)

"Masters of the Lost Land is journalism at its absolute best, made even more impressive when one considers the obstacles, obfuscation and threats so often encountered there when trying to ferret out the truth. I’ve often suspected that the modern history of the Amazon parallels the 19^th- century cattle wars and gold rushes of the American West: it has, but in overdrive. This is an essential book, and my only criticism is selfish – that it wasn’t around earlier (to make my own writing easier)." — Joe Jackson, author of The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire

"Readers interested in climate change and ecology will discover these abstractions illuminated through the everyday and the individual.” — Booklist

"Heriberto Araujo, drawing on his years of research, has written an essential journalistic account of the murder, mayhem and mind-boggling corruption surrounding the assault on the Amazon. It is a compelling account of an ongoing natural catastrophe." — Dr. Gary Sick, Columbia University, Board Member of Human Rights Watch (emeritus)

"Heriberto Araujo does a significant service to Amazonia by providing a look into the social hell that accompanies the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. ... No one can read this account without coming to the conclusion that we must prevent such events from continuing. Perhaps this book will help achieve this end, and for this we owe thanks to Heriberto Araujo and to all those who risked their lives to tell their experiences to him." — Philip M. Fearnside, research professor at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil

From the Publisher

"Highly readable.... An important summary of some of the worst Chinese behaviour around the world." 

The Economist on China's Silent Army

"A powerful piece of investigative journalism."

The Guardian on China's Silent Army

"A fascinating book about a topic of great importance."

Wall Street Journal on China's Silent Army

The amount of reporting that went into China’s Silent Army is truly impressive.

Financial Times on China's Silent Army

[A] pioneering investigation….The book cuts to the political core by defining China’s behaviour abroad as a mirror of its system at home.

Sunday Times (London) on China's Silent Army

"A fascinating book about a topic of great importance."

2022-11-12
A potent narrative that lays out “the factors that have made the largest rainforest on Earth the world’s most dangerous place for environmental and land activists.”

When colonization began in earnest in the Amazon in the 1960s, it unleashed decades of environmental devastation and violent crime, both of which are particularly evident in Rondon do Pará, a settlement in the Pará state in northern Brazil. In 1966, the then-military government launched Operation Amazonia, which encouraged citizens to develop and settle the jungle, colonizing the Kayapó tribal land to create agricultural plots. In the following decades, this region of Brazil would become known for extreme deforestation—one statistic noted that “each year between 1978 to 1988 the Amazon lost an area of forest bigger than the state of Connecticut”—as well as rampant violence and the destruction of Indigenous ways of life. The fazendeiros, Brazilian cattle farmers and planters, who often gained possession of their land through nefarious means, controlled populations of impoverished laborers through capital and viciousness. As Araujo reports, by the early 2000s, “almost everyone was armed…and strong men ruled the roost through extreme violence.” Refreshingly, the author resists restricting the text to bleak negativity. In fact, he focuses equally on positive aspects, using activist Maria Joel’s courageous life story as a thread running throughout the book. Even as activists were disappeared, the protest movement grew, and across the decades, justice was served. Araujo delivers on his promise to showcase the diverse factors that made Rondon do Pará such a dangerous place, though in covering such a wide time frame and large range of issues, the narrative sometimes rushes from one large idea to the next. Nonetheless, the author provides an excellent overview of the multitude of challenges in the region, and the work is characterized by meticulous research and investigative rigor.

An arresting examination of the history of extreme deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon.

Kirkus Reviews