Tommaso Protti

Terra Vermelha

[ EPF 2018 FINALIST ]

The Amazon Rainforest is often referred to as the ‘Lungs of our Planet,’ still imagined as the unspoiled home of isolated, disconnected tribes. A thick, green stain on the map — the world’s largest — laid there by the hand of God, with no sign of man’s.

From up close though, it’s way more than woods, mines and dams: cities have grown out of the jungle, into a green favela. Fields are burning, and the dark, steady stream of the Amazon river a safe conduct for cocaine. The riverbanks are littered with trash, and bodies.

“Terra Vermelha,” which means red earth, is essentially a portrait of the modern day Brazilian Amazon that explores and illustrates the intersecting social and environmental crises of the region, in the states of Pará, Amazonas, Maranhao, Rondonia and Roraima.

MANAUS, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 12, 2017: Junior (a fantasy name chose by the subject) poses with his gun for a portrait in the periphery of Manaus. Junior is a member of the the Familia do Norte drug gang (FDN) and the boss of six drug traffic points in Manaus. He is thirty seven year old and has been living as a criminal for fiftheen years. He was sentenced to prison twice and claimed to have participated in several raids to kill people belonging to rival drug gangs in Manaus. The Amazonian capital of Manaus is currently in the midst of a violent drug war, with the local gang FDN fighting off the encroaching PCC from Sao Paulo – Brazil’s most powerful drug gang – for control of the city’s drug trade and trafficking routes

MACHADINHO, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 19, 2017: A cross belonging to an evangelical church is found outside the city of Machadinho do Oeste in Rondonia.

BELEM, BRAZIL MAY 28, 2015: The dead body of a gang member shot to death by a police officer during a chase after an attempt to assault a bank in Belem. Belem has turned one of the most violent city in Brazil. Between 2002 and 2012, the rate of murders in Belem and the state of Pará is increased respectively by 122,5% and 204%.

BRASIL NOVO, BRAZIL – JULY 26, 2014: A truck blocking the TransAmazonian Highway after an accident. The Transamazonian is a 4000km road across the Amazon rainforest started during the 1970′s under the Brazilian dictatorship. The construction of the TransAmazonian produced severe impacts on the rainforest environment, contributing to introduce drug and arms trafficking into the region.

BOA VISTA, BRAZIL – JULY 17, 2017: A twenty six year old prostitute coming from Venezuela is portrayed while she was waiting for clients in a street of Boa Vista, the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima. She crossed into Brazil to raise money to send back to Venezuela to buy medicines for her daughter. She said that had no choice but to resort to prostitution. Nowadays thousands of Venezuelans have crossed into Brazil, in the main cities of the Amazon region like Boa Vista and Manaus, to fled the humanitarian and political crisis in Venezuela.

MANAUS, BRAZIL – JANUARY 22, 2017: A girl passing out inside an overcrowded bus of people leaving an illegal funk party in the periphery of Manaus. People entered inside the bus to escape from the tear gases of the Brazilian military police arrived on the scene to disperse the crowd and close the party. Over the past few years, funk parties have been gradually banned in Manaus because of suspicion that they funnel funds to organised crime.

SANTA IZABEL DO PARA, BRAZIL – MAY 19, 2015: An overcrowded cell inside the triage facility of the Americano Penitentiary complex in Santa Izabel do Pará where 302 inmates share a space designed for 148 people. Cells designed to host 12 people end up containing more than 25 prisoners. Severe overcrowding is plaguing the Amazon region’s penal system and it raises tensions inside the cells where is relatively easy for drug gangs to take control of the facilities.

BELEM, BRAZIL – NOVEMBER 15, 2017: Residents in the Vila da Barca, a poor neighborhood of stilt houses in Belem.

PANORAMA, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 17, 2017: Katisiká Karipuna portrayed inside her house in the Panorama village. She is one of the four tribespeople who still speaks the Karipuna language. The majority of the tribe was wiped out by diseases following contact with Amazon settlers in the 1970’s, during Brazil’s military governments’ drive to occupy the Amazon. Today the Karipuna population number 40 memebers. The Karipuna Indigenous territory in Brazil’s North-western state of Rondonia sits on the so called “arc of deforestation,” the agricultural frontier advancing into the Amazon forest and one of the front lines of the country’s deadly conflict over land and resources. Since 2015, the land has been increasingly targeted by loggers and land grabbers but the tribesmen so far say their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. In Rondonia, death threats are serious. The state consistently tops the list of land conflict killings, with 15 already in 2017, according to watchdog group Comissão Pastoral da Terra.

ARIQUEMES, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 19, 2017: A girl is seen in the Terra Nossa II, a poor camp of landless peasants who are occupying a public land in the state of Rondonia. Occupations produce conflicts with local ranch owners, who hire private armed guards to intimidate the landless farmers and destroy their crops. The Brazilian Rondonia state, part of the Amazon region, consistently tops the list of land conflict killings, with 15 already in 2017, according to watchdog group Comissão Pastoral da Terra. Across Brazil, the number of land killings stands at 63 from January until September this year, compared to 61 in 2016, with 49 occurring in Amazon states.

In recent years, environmental destruction, rural and urban violence have reached unprecedented heights in the region.

The urban centres have become amongst the most violent in the world, the result of rapid and uncontrolled urban expansion that continue to grow and drug wars from increased cocaine production while Amazon pirates stalk the river robbing and killing as well as migrants brought by the crisis in neighbouring Venezeula and economic migrants to work on mega projects.

The region is the deadliest in the world for land rights, environmental and Indigenous activists who are terrorized by land grabbers and violent extractive gangs in a violent grab for the regions vast natural resources. Poverty stricken illegal wildcat miners and timber cutters.

KARIPUNA TERRITORY, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 17, 2017: Aripã Karipuna is seen during a patrol inside the Karipuna reserve. The Karipuna Indigenous territory in Brazil’s North-western state of Rondonia sits on the so called “arc of deforestation,” the agricultural frontier advancing into the Amazon forest and one of the front lines of the country’s deadly conflict over land and resources. Since 2015, the land has been increasingly targeted by loggers and land grabbers but the tribesmen so far say their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. In Rondonia, death threats are serious. The state consistently tops the list of land conflict killings, with 15 already in 2017, according to watchdog group Comissão Pastoral da Terra.

BOA VISTA, BRAZIL – JULY 15, 2017: A Warao child inside a temporary shelter in the outskirt of Boa Vista, the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima. The shelter is providing protection to 306 warao people and 86 Venezuelan migrants at the moment. Widespread hunger and an unstable economy and government across Venezuela have driven these people out in search for a better life in Brazil.

MANAUS, BRAZIL – JANUARY 24, 2017: Carla, an eighteen year old prostitute portrayed inside a brothel in Manaus.

BELEM, BRAZIL – MAY 23, 2015: Relatives of inmates detained inside the Cremacao police imprisonment facility in Belem, the capital of Pará state. The people above react after hearing the gun shots of a special operations police squad, who fired their weapons while suppressing a revolt inside the prison. The rebellion started due to the conditions of overcrowding inside the cells: 212 inmates shared a space designed for 92 people.

MANAUS, BRAZIL – SEPTEMBER 01, 2015: Two drug dealers sniffing cocaine in the periphery of Manuas. Raul (on the left) was shot to death on April 2016 by a rival drug gang. The Amazonian capital of Manaus is currently in the midst of a violent drug war, with local gangs fighting for the control of the city’s drug trade and violent gangsters killing each other over territory and drug debts as low as $2.

PARAUAPEBAS, BRAZIL – JULY 20, 2016: Joao Alves da Conceicao (47) is one of the 119 families living in the Frei Henri des Roziers Camp, established by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Aug. 8, 2010. The landless peasants are occupying a 400-hectare estate known as Fazendinha, located off federal highway BR-155 roughly 100 kilometres from the city of Marabá, southern Para. They say that the purported owners of the estate, formerly a cattle ranch, created it by invading and illegally deforesting public land, and that at the time of the occupation, it had been left idle and unproductive. This is the justification for almost all of the land occupations by social movements demanding agrarian reform in Brazil. The occupation of Fazendinha has led to bitter conflicts with local ranch owners, who have joined forces and hired private armed guards to intimidate the landless farmers and destroy their crops, shooting everyday against the houses. This has led half of the families to leave the camp. Joao says: “This is a lawless state. When the land is power a slide of beef for export has more value than a human life”.

MANAUS, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 13, 2017: Two girls at the crime scene of an homicide in Manaus. The Brazilian Amazonian capital Manaus is currently experiencing massive homicide rates, five times higher than Sao Paulo’s and up 168% in ten years, with local drug gang Familia Do Norte fighting a bloody turf war with the encroaching Primeiro Comando da Capital from Sao Paulo. Manaus is Brazil’s closest big city to nearby drug production territories in Colombia and Peru which makes it a major transit point for Brazil (world’s second largest cocaine consumer) and Europe, while in recent years, the city has also become a major consumption destination as the gangs flood the streets with Oxi, a cheap and destructive crack cocaine derivative.

MANAUS, BRAZIL – OCTOBER 13, 2017: A dead body found along the banks of the river São Raimundo in Manaus. Several bullet’s holes were discovered on the body. Police officers claimed that the man was killed. The Brazilian Amazonian capital Manaus is currently experiencing massive homicide rates, five times higher than Sao Paulo’s and up 168% in ten years, with local drug gang Familia Do Norte fighting a bloody turf war with the encroaching Primeiro Comando da Capital from Sao Paulo. Manaus is Brazil’s closest big city to nearby drug production territories in Colombia and Peru which makes it a major transit point for Brazil (world’s second largest cocaine consumer) and Europe, while in recent years, the city has also become a major consumption destination as the gangs flood the streets with Oxi, a cheap and destructive crack cocaine derivative.

MARABA, BRAZIL – JULY 17, 2016: A boy taking a bath at night in the Tocantins river, a tributary of the Amazon River in the state of Pará.

Deforestation, unregulated development, pollution, crime. All of these scenarios are driven by the same forces; poverty, weak institutions, corruption and savage self-interest. More than in other places, in the Amazon region it becomes clear that land is worth more than human life. And on the path towards the destruction of the planet, the first and closest step for mankind is still its own annihilation.

Short Bio

Tommaso Protti is an Italian photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. He started his photographic career in 2011 after graduating in Political Science and International Relations. Since then, he has devoted himself on creating his own long-term projects. His works were exhibited internationally in The Royal Albert Hall (London), Greenwich Heritage Centre (Woolwich, UK), Benaki Museum (Athens), MACRO Museum of Contemporary Arts (Rome), 10b Photography Gallery (Rome), Fotoleggendo (Rome), Les Recontres d’Arles (France), Prix Bayeux-Calvados des Correspondants de Guerre festival (France), Belfast Photo (Ireland), C40 Mayors Summit (Mexico City), UN COP22 (Marrakesh, Marocco), PARTE Contemporary Art Fair (São Paulo, Brazil). Tommaso’s work was published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, National Geographic, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Independent, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, etc.

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The Emerging Photographer Fund is supported by generous donors to the Magnum Foundation