Intimidation is constant for many Indigenous people living across the Amazon. Land that is rich in natural resources is where illicit industries thrive, threatening the land and livelihoods of hundreds of Indigenous Amazonian communities. Approximately 1.5 million Indigenous people live in the Amazon, spread across nine countries in South America. Many of these individuals are vulnerable to degradation of their environment, displacement of their community, and threat to their way of life. Illicit activities in these regions are putting these communities at risk. This includes cocaine production, human trafficking, illegal gold mining and logging, as well as the trade of legally protected animals. The presence of organized crime groups is seen in 67 per cent of Amazonian municipalities across Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela. Risk is especially high for those who speak out against these industries, including Herlin Odicio Estrella. “Leaving my family and community has been the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” says Odicio Estrella. He was forced to go into hiding in 2021 for four months due to speaking out against illegal natural resource exploitation on his territory and lack of action from the government. Odicio Estrella is Kakataibo from the Central Peruvian Amazon. He fights for the rights of Indigenous people in his region as the vice president of the Regional Organization of the Ucayali (ORAU). ORAU represents 20 Indigenous groups in the Amazonian regions of Ucayali and Loreto in Peru. “Today, I can’t go back to my community,” he says. Odicio Estrella risks his safety by sharing his story and the risks facing community members across his region with APTN News. “Six of the leaders who were murdered were my colleagues—people who worked with me, who were active, and who even came all the way to the Congress of the Republic to address these issues,” says Odicio Estrella. “But they were murdered.” Latin America remains one of the most dangerous regions globally for environmental defenders. He says more than 35 Indigenous leaders have been murdered since 2014. 82 per cent of all documented murdered or disappeared land defenders were in South America. “One of the most emblematic at the world level, at the international level, has been the case of Caso Zabeto, the murder of the four Indigenous leaders, who were cruelly murdered in 2014.” Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos, Leoncio Quintisima, and Francisco Pinedo were four Asháninka land defenders from the Peruvian Amazon murdered by illegal loggers in Alto Tamaya-Saweto, a town in the Ucayali region. The four men were protecting their land and community members from illicit resource extraction. Odicio Estrella says Indigenous people are not against the development of their country, but they need to be involved in decision making. “The governments are criminalizing us. They must give us the strength to help combat these criminal activities, but the governments are accomplices,” says Odicio Estrella. “This is the violence that is within the nation.” The Targeting of Indigenous Land Gold mining is an industry on the rise in the global south. “Over the last years with this extremely high gold prices due to international instability, war, and economic crisis has [been] fueling the expansion or the explosion, one could say, of gold mining all throughout the Amazon,” says Raphael Hoetmar. “We see a lot of places where five years ago, there were no illicit economies present.” Hoetmar advocates for Indigenous communities and the land through his role as the Director for the Western Amazon Program of Amazon Watch. “In 67% of Amazonian municipalities in the different countries, there is a presence of organized crime organizations that are part of transnational networks of crime.” He says illicit industries are thriving in Indigenous communities within the Amazon because there are minimal park guards in each region that do not have the capacity to confront armed groups. Illegal gold mining has cleared 140,000 hectares of the Peruvian Amazon. Peru stands as one of the top Latin American countries for illicit gold exports, with 44% of South America’s illegal gold exports coming from Peru, according to Peruvian Institute of Economics. “Of course, the gold is only illegal when it’s being won in the rivers,” says Hoetmar. “But then it goes to refineries and it goes to the international gold market to places like Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Arabian countries, China.” Canada has made efforts to protect the Amazon. Since November 2025, Canada has committed $17.3 million in conservation efforts to the Brazilian Amazon. Just one year before, Canada was the top importer of Brazilian gold. Approximately 48 per cent of all of Brazil’s gold exports were sent to Canada in 2024, according to a Greenpeace investigation. Some of these gold imports are illegally mined, as loop holes in Brazil’s mining system allows for illegally mined gold to enter formal markets disguised as legal production. One of the methods to do so is by “ghost mining”, where permits are used at a legal mining site, but the gold is instead extracted from Indigenous land or environmentally protected areas. Cocaine production is another booming industry affecting Indigenous Amazonians. “In Peru, there’s the area where the Kakataibo, the Shipibo, the Ashkanika people live, where there has been huge expansion of coca production,” says Hoetmar. He says this issue requires the global north to assess their role in this situation. “In the end, it is cocaine that flows to the global north,” says Hoetmar. “It is gold that is being used for the interest of the global north.” A Militarized Response South American federal governments are responding to illicit industries by militarization. A response which doesn’t help Indigenous Amazonians. Hoetmar describes the militarization as armed forces taking over certain territories in the name of the fight against organized crime. “State responses that prioritize repression and militarization, instead of understanding that the only way of containing organized crime, the only way of bringing security to a critical ecosystem like the Amazon, is by working together with Indigenous peoples,” says Hoetmar. He says these groups are popping up in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil. “This, of course, creates a situation where human rights are not necessarily guaranteed, where definitely indigenous rights will not be respected,” says Hoetmar. Odicio Estrella says this puts Indigenous communities in between two issues. “[Indigenous people] are basically being confronted both by the illicit organizations on one side and these informal federal-backed organizations on the other side, who are primarily there to regulate and protect the forestry and the mining industry and the interests there,” says Odicio Estrella. An International Cry for Help Indigenous leaders and organizations from across the Amazon and Latin America sent a letter to the United Nations in May asking for help. Signatories want action that is not rooted in militarization to prevent illicit markets harming their land and livelihoods. The letter was addressed to UN member-states and agencies such as the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Odicio Estrella is one of the leaders that signed this letter. In 2007, Peru was one of the 143 countries that voted in favour of adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the UN’s General Assembly. “What the United Nations must do is make the states comply,” says Odicio Estrella. “But the Peruvian government is not fulfilling its function, its duty.” For Odicio Estrella, this is one of his final avenues to seek change. “We have already exhausted everything at the national level, the public ministry, the judicial power, everything is a mafia that is now in Peru,” says Odicio Estrella. “The country is very much taken by corruption, it is against the Indigenous peoples, so we can no longer trust our government.” Read more: Canada’s natural resource exploration in South America opposed by local Indigenous groups Continue Reading
Indigenous lives and land under threat due to illicit industriesin the Amazon
