In the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon, groups of farmers and their families get by on what they can grow with the land beneath their feet. They're known in Brazil as “landless workers,” a social movement with the goal of increasing land access and ownership for the country’s rural poor. 

These landless workers -- sometimes called land guardians or protectors -- are a symbol for the power imbalances that have destroyed the Amazon.

Atmos Climate Editor Yessenia Funes brings us a story about one landless worker named Fernando dos Santos Araújo.

In 2017, Fernando witnessed the massacre of his fellow landless workers on a small farm in Pará, Brazil. His story illustrates the violent tactics that the government and wealthy landowners use to protect their power.

This episode features Ana Aranha, a documentary filmmaker in Brazil, and Ivi Oliveira from the nonprofit Frontline Defenders. 

Resources:

• The Print Version Of Yessenia’s Story
• Frontline Defenders
• Global Witness 2020 Environmental and Land Defenders Report
• The Frontline, Yessenia’s bi-weekly newsletter 

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser
• Dalvin Aboagye

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.