Illegal loggers in the Amazon ambushed an indigenous group that was formed to protect the forest and shot dead a young man and wounded another, leaders of the Guajajara tribe in northern Brazil said on Nov. 2.
Paulo Paulino Guajajara, or Lobo (which means ‘wolf’ in Portuguese), was hunting on Friday inside the Arariboia reservation in Maranhao state when he was attacked and shot in the head. Another Guajajara, Laercio, was wounded but escaped, they said.
Brazil’s federal police said they had sent a team to investigate the circumstances of Paulino Guajajara’s death.
The Guajajaras, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous groups with some 20,000 people, set up the Guardians of the Forest in 2012 to patrol a vast reservation. The area is so large that a small and endangered tribe, the Awá Guajá, lives deep in the forest without any contact with the outside world.
Paulino Guajajara, who was in his twenties and leaves behind one son, told Reuters in an interview on the reservation in September that protecting the forest from intruders had become a dangerous task, but his people could not give in to fear.
“We have to preserve this life for our children’s future,” he said.
