Nearly 2,000 indigenous people occupied a Cargill terminal for 34 days and forced Brazil's federal government to revoke a decree that would have handed control of the Amazon's greatest rivers to private corporations. The victory marks a rare triumph of grassroots mobilization over extractive capitalism in Latin America's largest democracy.
On February 24, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government formally revoked Decree 12,600/2025, which had placed the Tapajós, Madeira, and Tocantins rivers under the National Privatization Program. The decree, signed in August 2025, would have granted private companies authority over dredging operations and vessel traffic control in waterways that sustain millions of indigenous, quilombo, and riverine communities.
"Here at Cargill we forced the government to revoke Decree 12,600. This is Tapajós resistance," Alessandra Korap, a Munduruku leader, declared after the announcement. Her words captured the significance of a protest that began January 21 when indigenous peoples from across the Tapajós region occupied the agricultural giant's terminal in Santarém, Pará.
The occupation escalated February 21 when protesters moved into the terminal's interior despite a court order demanding evacuation within 48 hours. That defiance brought results. Two days later, ministers Guilherme Boulos and Sônia Guajajara met with 35 indigenous leaders from 14 Tapajós peoples in Brasília and announced the decree's cancellation. According to CIMI, the Indigenous Missionary Council, the government acknowledged that "the decision resulted from indigenous mobilization and internal government discussions."
The victory reverberates beyond Brazil. From Mexico to Argentina, indigenous movements have increasingly turned to direct action as governments across Latin America embrace extractive industries while paying lip service to environmental protection. The Tapajós occupation demonstrates that when mobilization is sustained, organized, and impossible to ignore, even a left-wing government committed to agribusiness exports will retreat.
The question now is whether this model can be replicated. Twenty countries, 650 million people. Somos nuestra propia historia, and the indigenous peoples of the Amazon just wrote a chapter about who really controls the rivers that sustain life in the world's greatest rainforest.
