The killings have focused global attention on a region where deforestation and violence are increasing and where reporters and sertanistas, the name given to professionals like Pereira who explore Brazil’s interior and work with indigenous tribes, are in increasing risk. “Bruno was the new generation” of certanistas, said former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva. “He brought the torch forward… And suddenly you were killed hard this generation.” Pereira was born in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco. His father, Max Pereira, was a sales executive for aluminum and glass companies and his mother, Maria das Graças da Cunha, a business administration graduate who worked for the Brazilian government’s pension office. The second of three sons, Bruno graduated from Colegio Contato in Recife and took entrance exams at the University of Brazil to study journalism. He passed the exams and enrolled at the Federal University of Pernambuco, but dropped out in his third year, deciding that his future lay not in an office, but in vast areas of Brazil far from the crowded coast. From a young age he fell in love with the sea and the forest. Much of his childhood was spent on Boa Viagem beach in Recife and his holidays were spent in the countryside at his grandparents’ house in Pilar, Paraíba state. This close contact with nature had a profound effect and prompted him to design a future in which Brazil’s forests – and the people who live in them – played an integral role. Pereira took the sertanista life and passed the exam in 2010 and started working immediately. He was particularly interested in dealing with remote tribes who had little or no contact with white society. Because many of these tribes are located in the Javari Valley region, that is where Pereira went first. He moved to the small town of Atalaia do Norte in 2010 and remained there until 2015 as Funai’s regional coordinator. He immediately formed a bond with the natives living in and around the city. He connected spiritually with them, learning to chant their traditional spells. He was particularly fascinated by Kanamari ceremonies that involved the consumption of ayahuasca, a psychoactive concoction used to induce a state of altered consciousness. He learned to communicate in five indigenous languages, Kanamari, Marubo, Matses, Matis and Korubo, and the indigenous leaders accepted him as part of their community. One of them, Beto Marubo, became like a brother to Pereira and they were godfathers to each other’s children. Pereira’s two sons were both given indigenous middle names. It was to Atalaia that Pereira returned in 2019 after being forced out of Funai. He was appointed head of the isolated Indigenous department in 2018, a job made more difficult when Bolsonaro took power in January of the following year. Pereira’s task was to create sanctuaries for the most threatened tribes – not to keep them in, but to keep intruders out – but Bolsonaro encouraged loggers, ranchers and prospectors to go deeper into the forest, and the number of invasives of encroachments increased. Pereira pursued them, destroying their equipment and even burning boats used by illegal prospectors. It was after such an operation that the Bolsonaro regime removed him. He was not fired, but moved from the strategic position and decided to act. He took leave in late 2019 and joined forces with indigenous NGOs, notably the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (Univaja) and the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recent Indigenous Peoples (OPI). The alliances allowed him to continue his work by providing them with safe places to live. It also raised money for the teams to buy the modern equipment needed. Atalaia was already a home away from home. Some of his happiest moments were spent sitting on plastic chairs overlooking the Javari River, drinking beer and watching his hometown soccer team Sport Recife on TV. There, too, he met his second wife, Beatriz Matos, an anthropologist studying the Matses tribe for her Ph.D. They shared a house in Atalaia and then from 2016 in Belém and Brasilia. She survives him, along with their sons, Pedro and Luis. a daughter, Maria, from his first marriage, to Kathyuscia Pinheiro da Silva, which ended in divorce. and his parents and siblings. Bruno da Cunha Araújo Pereira, expert on indigenous populations, b. August 15, 1980; died June 5, 2022
