Armed government officials with Brazil’s justice, Indigenous, and environment ministries pressed illegal gold miners out of Yanomami Indigenous territory Wednesday, citing widespread river contamination, famine, and disease they have brought to one of the most isolated groups in the world.

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday granted official recognition of nearly 800 square miles of Indigenous lands, most of it in the Amazon, in a move that seeks to safeguard critical rainforest from the unchecked exploitation that marked his predecessor’s administration.

Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has almost 4,000 low-orbit satellites across the skies, connecting people in remote corners of the Amazon. The lightweight, high-speed internet system has also proved a new and valuable tool for Brazil’s illegal miners.

With thousands of Bolsonaro supporters either in jail or under investigation for plotting against democracy in Brazil, the nation’s attention has shifted to the defense of the Amazon rainforest and its Indigenous peoples and the policy shifts under President Lula.

January has proved that Bolsonaro’s defeat last year was far from a game over for the far-right. We also look at the genocidal policies against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, who are dying of treatable diseases and starvation due to illegal mining on their lands.

A wrap-up of this week’s most important and interesting Latino news and views from around the world and the across the internet.

Justin Peterson is a managing partner at DCI, a public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C. 

COVID-19 continues to make inroads into the Brazilian Amazon, and the New York Times reports that health workers may be partly responsible.

The Financial Times reported that the region accounted for half of the world’s deaths from COVID-19, even though it has only 8% of the world’s population.

The current situation of a global pandemic invites reconsideration of similar situations that happened in the past, such as the great plague in Europe in the 14th century, or the successive and devastating influenza and measles epidemics (amongst others) which decimated indigenous populations in the post-Columbian era in Latin America, and especially in the Amazon.

The deal aims to bring up oil prices after a crash brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A teenager from the Yanomami indigenous tribe has been killed by the new coronavirus in Brazil, the Health Ministry said Friday, raising alarm about the spread of the virus into protected lands.

Brazil’s divisive President Jair Bolsonaro has taken another step in his bold plans to develop the Amazon rainforest.

The ACLU filing states that “systematic” separations occurred based on minor criminal history, dubious allegations of unfitness, and “errors identifying bona fide child-parent relationships.”