This is the remote Javari Valley region of the Amazon, an area the size of Portugal and home to
the largest concentration of uncontacted indigenous communities in the world.
It's where journalist Dom Phillips and the indigenous activist Bruno Pereira were murdered earlier this month.
The area has become even more unsafe in the years since Brazil elected the far-right president,
Jair Bolsonaro.
He's rolled back environmental protection in the region.
Organised crime is rampant.
Drugs trafficking, illegal fishing, mining and logging now go by almost unchecked
leading to a wave of violence, a war on nature as some people call it now.
It cost both men their lives.
We're here in the small riverside town of Atalaia do Norte
to retrace part of the journey that Dom and Bruno took before they were killed.
This small home is also a makeshift checkpoint that Bruno Pereira helped set up to try and
monitor illegal fishing in the area.
Large river fish and turtles are heavily protected here
and a single illegal shipment can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But it becomes pretty clear this base is critically under resourced.
Juan de Silva is a 76-year-old housekeeper and some of the time he's here by himself
with little to prevent illegal fishermen entering a stream next to the house.
it's a shortcut into indigenous territory where fishing is illegal.
There is a government base further upstream used by an agency called Funai, tasked with protecting
indigenous land but they've suffered major cutbacks under Bolsonaro and are now so badly
resourced – just two agents here.
that even they have come under gunfire several times in the past year.
Further downstream, we come to a fishing village called São Rafael.
Dom and Bruo made their last stop here, hoping to meet with village president Churrasco
but they missed each other.
Churrasco knows all three men accused in the murder, two are his distant nephews.
He told us how involved they were in illegal fishing.
They even threatened him and forced access to the community's fishing lake.
Churrasco was initially treated as a suspect in the murder but says he was not involved.
Dom and Bruno's murder is not the only recent killing to have shaken the community here.
Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was shot dead in the nearby city of Tabatinga in 2019.
He was an agent with Funai, tasked with seizing illegally caught fish
and stopping organised criminals operating on indigenous land.
But even though arrests have been made in the investigation into Dom and Bruno's murder,
there are still questions over whether the police are willing
to examine if the killings were ordered by more powerful organised criminals.
Indigenous rights collective Univaja have been documenting threats and violence against
indigenous communities here for years.
Maxciel's murder was followed by Dom and Bruno's killing.
Delcimar says that they were all tragically predictable.
Law enforcement sources told us the Javari Valley has become Brazil's second busiest
trafficking route with drugs, fish and other industries all operated by powerful crime gangs.
Protests have been going on here for weeks.
It's a combination of mourning, anger and fear for what happens next.
Many people here worry that with
two of this region's fiercest protectors murdered, the violence and impunity will only get worse.