Brazil Forces Raze Amazon Gold Camp in Nambiquara Territory
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- Brazilian security forces razed Vila Cururu, a sprawling illegal gold-mining camp in the Singapore-sized Sararé territory near Bolivia, during a late-March land and air assault led by Nilton Tubino, Lula's "eviction tsar" — his 10th such operation under the current administration.
- Sararé territory lost 4% of its forests (approximately 17.3 sq miles / 44.8 km²) between January 2024 and August 2025, with the crisis intensifying after miners fled south from the Yanomami territory following successful crackdowns there, according to Tubino.
- Record gold prices driven by global instability — including Donald Trump's erratic foreign policy — are directly fueling the Amazon rush, Tubino said, linking investors' flight to safe havens to the annihilation of forests around him.
- Suspected organized crime has reached Sararé: Rio de Janeiro's Red Command — recently designated a foreign terrorist group by the Trump administration — is reported to control Vila Cururu and other mines; five heavily armed men were killed in a 2024 gunfight with environmental special forces.
- Industrial-scale infrastructure was uncovered: Hyundai excavators gouged out forests, miners drilled 100-meter tunnels, troops found an underground bunker with a generator capable of powering the whole settlement and 300kg of ammonium nitrate explosives.
- Nambiquara leaders warned miners will return if troops withdraw, and said a Flávio Bolsonaro victory in October's election — where Lula holds a narrow lead — would undo the crackdown entirely, recalling how Bolsonaro-era rhetoric emboldened a historic gold rush.
Why it matters: The Sararé operation is Lula's 10th anti-mining crackdown, yet each success merely displaces miners to new territories rather than ending the trade — and the campaign's survival hinges on Lula winning October's election against Flávio Bolsonaro, where his lead is narrow.
