REMOTE TRIBES - Expert tells why he had to kill an indigenous man in the Amazon

words: Altino Machado
from Rio Branco, Brazil, to Terra Magazine


The indigenous expert José Carlos Meirelles has worked for nearly 40 years for FUNAI (National Indigenous Foundation). With a long career behind him, as soon as the new area for the isolated indigenous community is demarcated, he intends to retire. He is leaving the task of protecting the indigenous groups to his son and daughter who already work at the inspection post in Envira River and is going to devote his time to writing his memoirs.

Despite having nearly died from an arrow wound, the most important defender of isolated indigenous communities on the Brazil-Peru border went through a harrowing experience at the end of the 1980s. Circumstances led him to kill an unknown indigenous person before he took over the coordination of the protection of isolated groups in the state of Acre.

Meirelles and his team were walking along one of the Iaco River beaches when they were attacked. While escaping, his father-in-law, a seventy-year-old man, was left behind. An indigenous person approached and was about to shoot his father-in-law in the back with an arrow, when the indigenous expert pointed his rifle at him and shot him. The saying "die if need be but never kill" in the words of Marechal Cândido Mariano Rondon was not valid on this occasion.

The expert reported the case to the Directors of Funai and suffered emotionally for many years, however he managed to overcome this through his work which has even won him prizes from the Acre and Brazilian Governments.

Read the interview given by José Reis Meirelles Junior to Terra Magazine website:


How did you overcome that defining episode?

It was an unavoidable accident when I hadn't even started working with isolated indigenous groups. It's not something you get over easily as it was a serious accident. In a situation like that you don't think rationally and all that remains is the survival instinct. But I don't deny nor will I ever deny that I did this. What happened is public knowledge as I filed a report on the incident.


What was it like that day?


It was crazy. Can you imagine what it's like being caught unawares and surrounded by a horde of indigenous people? I was with my ex-wife's father, an elderly man. We couldn't run away and leave him alone. How could I go home and tell my wife "I left your father there and he was killed by a group of Indigenous people"? That was how we managed to escape. After that event the indigenous people kept their distance. They were Maskos, nomadic people that don't normally spend more than one week in the same place. They wander along the banks of the Purus, the Envira and the Juruá.


I remember that in the report you made a comparison between the events and the words of Marshall Rodon, "die if need be, but never kill".

In literature this works very well, but I'm not sure it really works in reality. At least it didn't work for me as I actually chose to live. And I survived but I was really aware that had I been any other person faced with the same situation, I could have killed a horde of indigenous people. What happened had to take place. So much so that had it not happened I wouldn't be here being interviewed by you. Similar things definitely happen in the forest, but people are afraid of telling their stories. When you work for the Front this can't happen and today it doesn't happen because we know what we're getting involved in. Isolated groups have surrounded out camps in the past and even shot me with an arrow, but I didn't react. They've shot my workers and none of them have ever reacted. Only those who agree not to react in the event of an attack work for the Ethno- Environmental Protection Front.

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