More than 800 Indigenous peoples are occupying the Cargill port in Santarém, Brazil. After a hearing with government representatives, they blocked the only road to the city’s airport demanding to be heard.
This two-week occupation is an urgent demand for the government to listen to the Indigenous peoples of the Lower Tapajós basin, who are defending the Tapajós River and calling for the immediate revocation of Decree 12,600/2025.
The decree pushes the Tapajós, Madeira, and Tocantins rivers into Brazil’s National Privatization Program – opening the door to turning Amazonian rivers into industrial waterways for transporting soy and other monoculture crops linked to deforestation.
These projects depend on highly polluting dredging and move forward without free, prior, and informed consent violating Indigenous peoples’ right to say no to the destruction of their ancestral lands (ILO Convention 169).
The campaign “Save the Rivers, Save the Tapajós” has emerged to defend the river that is essential for Indigenous livelihoods, food, transportation, and cultural and spiritual life.
We call on President Lula to act now and revoke Decree 12,600/2025.
