Crisis in the Javarí
The Terra Indígena Vale do Javari, roughly the size of Portugal, is the second-largest Indigenous reserve in the world. According to the latest census, it is home to just over six thousand people, plus an undetermined number belonging to various groups who remain in voluntary isolation. This photographic work was carried out in three stages: the first in 2010, portraying the work of Marubo shaman Jose Nascimento; the second in 2011, when, amid an epidemic of hepatitis and malaria ravaging the villages, I was invited to participate in a festival in the remote village of Maronal, in the Curuça River; and the third in 2023, in a project funded by the Pulitzer Center and published in El País, which revealed a phenomenon with critical repercussions: a massive migration to nearby cities so that young people can receive higher education. To do this, families leave behind the abundance of their villages and crowd into humble houses in the city of Atalaia, facing hunger and misery.
