The occupation of a port facility owned by multinational company Cargill has overturned a decree that aimed to turn the sacred waters into a privatized waterway for soybean barges
Hélia Kumaruara is holding her granddaughter Teçá Naiá as she walks along a riverbank in Santarém, western Pará. The Muruary Village cacica also carries a river. She is walking for the Tapajós, surrounded by relatives, as indigenous people here refer to one another. The day is already drawing to a close on Sunday, February 8, when Hélia steps into an old Indigenous cemetery, buried under a port belonging to Cargill, the largest private company in Donald Trump’s country. Since January 22, 14 Indigenous peoples in the lower and middle Tapajós River regions have camped in that spot, in front of Cargill Terminal. It is a location that symbolises the invasion of the waters: the US multinational has now built two ports in Pará for soybean exports without consulting the communities.
So they are rising up against a presidential decree that aims to privatize the Tapajós and also against efforts to condemn the river to dredging. By confronting the powerful groups that are taking over the river and turning it into a private waterway, with more and more barges and grains coming and going, the around 600 Indigenous peoples in the occupation have turned Santarém into a frontline of resistance against global agrocapitalism.
Surara! the warrior peoples shout. The Tapajós River is being reclaimed.
The Indigenous people are asking for the revocation of Decree 12.600, enacted in August 2025 by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It includes the waterways on the Tapajós, Madeira, and Tocantins rivers within the National Privatization Program – this means the government would hand off management of traffic and maintenance on these waterways to large companies. So far, no Brazilian waterway has been privatized. The government plans to open up the country’s first concession of a waterway on the Paraguay River, which flows from Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, until it meets the Apa River, on the border with Paraguay.
The peoples in the occupation also called for the cancellation of a bid to dredge the river. The bid was publicly announced in the Official Gazette on December 23, in the same issue that published the special environmental licensing law, which provides a licensing exemption for the type of maintenance dredging the National Department of Transportation Infrastructure wants to do on the Tapajós River. The Indigenous peoples demands include holding a free, prior, and informed consultation of the peoples who will be affected by the interventions, as established in International Labour Organization Convention 169, to which Brazil is a signatory.
The approximately 280-kilometer-long waterway operates on a stretch of the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Santarém. According to the National Department of Transportation Infrastructure, there is no exact date when the waterway was created, since the Tapajós River has historically been used as a river transport route, “chiefly for local communities and, more recently, for companies moving grains through the so-called North Arc,” the department says.
On the Tapajós, the North Arc means opening new private ports and the building of the Ferrogrão, a rail corridor linking Sinop, Mato Grosso, to Miritituba, a district in Itaituba, Pará. Integrated with highway BR-163, these thoroughfares will not only carry the soybeans and corn that dominate the Center-West, they will also encroach on Amazonian lands, with growth in monocrops, land-grabbing, deforestation, and poisonings from agrochemicals. The Tapajós hub of the North Arc would connect to the Madeira hub as well as to the Tocantins hub, which holds other waterways targeted by the decree. .
Like the explosion on the Tocantins River of the rocky outcrop at Pedral do Lourenção, plans to dredge the Tapajós River are part of the New Accelerated Growth Plan, a federal government program to power economic growth. But removing sediments from the Tapajós to deepen the navigable channel poses risks to biodiversity, including endangered species like the Amazonian manatee. Dredging up the river bottom can activate the mercury that has accumulated there after years of contamination from illegal mining. And there is a concern about the impacts on river mobility and what locals see as the enchanted beings that inhabit the waters. This is why the river peoples fight for the Tapajós.
After an Indigenous blockade of overland access to the Cargill Terminal and Port of Santarém, it took 14 days for federal government envoys to reach the city to negotiate. All the while, the dredging bid moved forward. Marcelo Fragoso, a member of the Office of the President’s General Secretary, arrived in the city on February 4, the day the new general licensing law took effect, destroying environmental licensing in the country. He had the following message: “You’ve given us three issues: the decree, consultation, dredging. We’re here, today, to discuss the consultation and dredging with you. If you want another answer about the decree, I need to go back and talk to the ministries.” That day, the movement blocked the avenue accessing the airport in protest to the government’s position. Three flights were cancelled.
Gilson Tupinambá, the cacique-general of his people, lives in a village at the mouth of the Amorim; it is a spawning ground for fish and one of the points set for dredging on the Tapajós. “Look me in the eye,” the cacique said to Lula’s representative. “I’ve already from noon to evening, I’m over 50. But I’m worried about our children, our grandchildren. We know we’re here in the agribusiness arc, the North Arc. We know the whole death plan you’ve designed for us. This will not happen. It will not happen.”
Night had already fallen on February 4 when the government sent its proposal: a suspension of the electronic bid on dredging; guaranteed consultation of the peoples regarding dredging and the waterway; and the formation of a working group to determine the consultation process. The next day, February 5, the Indigenous occupation met to draw up a counter-proposal: revoke Decree 12.600 or remove the Tapajós River from the decree and guarantee consultation of the peoples of the Madeira and Tocantins Rivers; nullification – not suspension – of the dredging bid; and expansion of the working group to discuss all projects involving the Tapajós River. The federal government’s deadline for a response is midnight on Friday, February 6.
The movement did not receive a direct response. With the deadline passed, a public statement signed by the head of the Office of the President’s General Secretary, Guilherme Boulos, by the head of the Ports and Airports Ministry, Silvio Costa Filho, and by the head of the Indigenous Peoples Ministry, Sônia Guajajara, announced the bid was being suspended, a working group dedicated solely to the consultation process would be established, and a consultation timeline would be made. The peoples of the Tapajós feel the federal government broke with negotiations by making a unilateral decision that tramples their rights. So they remain in front of the Cargill Terminal.
Dredging threatens lives on the Tapajós
The Tapajós starts in Mato Grosso, at the confluence of the Teles Pires and Juruena rivers, and it flows its way down to Santarém, where it surrenders to the Amazon River. There, at the meeting of these waters, is where the Port of Santarém was inaugurated in 1974 (two years before the BR-163 highway), with dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici in attendance. Nearly 30 years later, in 2003, Cargill began to run a grain transport terminal in the city. Vera Paz, a very popular local beach, was destroyed to raise three silos belonging to the multinational. Underneath them is an archeological site where remains have been found of ceremonial and funeral activities, but which now bears the grain’s heft. In 2017, Cargill’s first Itaituba operation was a transshipment station, where grains were brought in by truck before being loaded onto barges heading to the Port of Santarém.
A study by the Terra de Direitos organization shows a doubling of the number of port facilities on the Tapajós River from 2013 and 2023: from 20 to 41 operational ports, ports under construction, and planned ports. The Ports Law, passed in 2013, was what drove the boom in the private ports industry. The volume of soybeans and corn floating downriver is also multiplying, according to data from the National Waterway Transport Agency. In 2021, there were 7.8 million metric tons. In 2025, there were 15.4 million. Last year, Cargill celebrated an operation that hauled nearly 111,000 metric tons of corn all at once from Miritituba to Santarém, using a convoy of 36 barges.
Brazil is the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans, which mostly go to China. Rafaella Sena, a researcher with the ReExisTerra group, part of the Center for Higher Amazonian Learning at the Federal University of Pará, analyzes the privatization of the Tapajós River through the lens of development centered on the export of commodities, both agricultural and mineral. “There is a lot of pressure to have the logistical infrastructure in place to transport this output. North Arc ports have increased in strategic value for agribusiness because they are closer to Asian markets via the Panama Canal, and also closer to ports in Europe.”
The dredging plan was developed to ensure navigable conditions for barges loaded with soy. In 2024 and 2025, without consulting Indigenous peoples or conducting adequate environmental studies, the National Department of Transportation Infrastructure began emergency dredging on the Tapajós River. Excavators were seen dredging the river, but later it stopped. The December bid sets out a three-year sediment removal program and identifies at least seven key locations for dredging. One is Santarenzinho, a place sacred to the Munduruku. Another is Monte Cristo, where there is a nesting ground for Arrau turtles.
Alessandra Korap and the Munduruku warriors brought the cry of the Middle Tapajós River to the Cargill occupation. “The pariwat [white people] see the river as a commodity. We see the river as life,” Alessandra said. Dredging the waterway risks churning up the mercury runoff from the depths of the Tapajós that was left there by illegal mining and poisons the Munduruku. Professor Diani Less, a member of the Institute of Water Science and Technology at the Federal University of Western Pará, explains that “churning the bottom tends to increase water turbidity and can reactivate accumulated sediments. This requires special attention, since the Tapajós Basin has high concentrations of mercury due to both the natural characteristics of the soil and illegal mining activities.”
This poses a risk to aquatic more-than-humans’ way of life, with potential threats to their food supply, shelter, and reproduction. It poses a risk to the ways of life of the humans living along the riversides, with clashes over the river’s use and impacts on traditional navigation from the increasingly heavier traffic of large vessels. And it poses a risk to the Tapajós, an ancient ancestor of the peoples from these parts of the Amazon, which could be stripped of its natural rhythms. Cacique Gilson Tupinambá says the river has a voice; it also speaks for itself. “The big example was when it dried up. The river replies.”
Documents from the call for bids emphasize the need to dredge the riverbed, citing the severe drought events of recent years. In 2024, the National Water and Sanitation Agency declared a water shortage in the Tapajós Basin. What the National Department of Transportation Infrastructure fails to mention is that this severe drought was the result of the destruction caused by dredging and deepening the waterway. Agrocapitalism clears forests to make pastures and farmland. It brings ports, shipping lanes, railroads. More infrastructure drives more production. More production leads to an expansion of infrastructure. As if this were not enough, the cycle powers the land market, incentivizing speculation and causing public land theft to spread throughout the territories, and infests the area with pesticides.
“When you add the impacts from these large, basin-wide projects to global climate change, the result is a more vulnerable, unstable hydrological system that is subject to extremes. What is taking place on the Tapajós represents the cumulative impacts of changes in land use, forest loss, agribusiness expansion, and the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects, all interacting with more and more extreme weather conditions,” Professor Less says.
After all, how many battles fit within the return of one river?
Enzo Arapiun, eight years in the fight
While the elders decide the course of the uprising and the young people keep an eye on the barricades, the youngest relatives make the encampment their school: they play in the tent, run on the concrete, learn and teach about the river and the struggle. Enzo Arapiun is one of them, the boy who one year ago confronted Pará’s governor, Helder Barbalho (Brazilian Democratic Movement) and witnessed the victory of the Tapajós peoples after they had spent a month occupying the state’s Department of Education in Belém. That battle was being fought to repeal a state law that took away teachers’ rights and threatened Indigenous education through forced virtual classes. Now they want to see the decree privatizing the river repealed. The memory of the Department of Education occupation is an important tool to help keep them from succumbing to fatigue.
Enzo again spent his birthday at an occupation. He was at the Department of Education, defending the right to study in the villages, when he turned seven. He turned eight before the Cargill port, calling for the great river of his land to be returned. It pains Auricelia Arapiun, a stern-voiced leader from the Lower Tapajós River, that she was unable to celebrate the way her son deserves. One of the cruelties of the neverending threats is that, by demanding constant resistance, they override the little things that really matter. “It’s so much violence for him, it’s bad for me, as a mother. But, on the other hand, this will stay with him for the rest of his life. He will remember he was in the fight.”
Cargill has been trying to remove the peoples since day two of the uprising. The multinational based in Minnesota, in the United States, petitioned Pará’s courts to immediately clear the area. The company told the court the grain harvest is about to start and blockage of its terminal could cause financial losses—Cargill’s revenue is close to R$800 billion. The court denied the request.
SUMAÚMA asked Cargill by email for a statement on the Indigenous occupation, dredging, and the waterway’s privatization. As of this report, there has not been a response.
SUMAÚMA reached out to the Office of the President’s General Secretary about whether the government would continue to negotiate with the peoples of the Tapajós River. No response was provided as of the date of this story. Movement leaders were in Brasilia on Tuesday, February 11. They met with the environment and climate change minister, Marina Silva, and lodged a request with Congress for a public hearing on waterways with the Amazon and Indigenous and Traditional Peoples Commission.
The blockade in front of Cargill left Indigenous people at risk. Last week, a directive issued by the State Commission for Public Safety in Pará State Ports, Terminals, and Waterways raised the security level at the Port of Santarém, authorizing the Military Police to work alongside the Federal Police. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office recommended the state’s port safety commission revoke the directive and that the Pará Department of Public Safety not use police force to repress the occupation.
On the night of Thursday, February 5, a Santarém city councilmember, Malaquias Mottin (Liberal Party), drove his convertible towards the Indigenous people and their roadblock on the stretch of the BR-163 highway that leads to the Cargill terminal. In a statement, the politician claimed he was attacked. “Get out, Malaquias,” one of the posters read at Sunday’s demonstration along the city’s waterfront. On Monday, the February 9, the Indigenous peoples went to the City Council to deliver an impeachment request against the councilmember for threatening the lives of their kin defending the river. The following day, the Legislative Assembly accepted the request and formed a commission to investigate the incident.
The reclaiming of the Tapajós also has its supporters. Cacique Raoni Mêtyktire, whose territory is under siege by agribusiness, posted a video asking the movement to continue resisting. Traditional communities, Ribeirinho communities, extractive producers, and fishing communities on the Tocantins River expressed solidarity with the Indigenous peoples in their fight to repeal Decree 12.600. Territories along the Madeira River have ensured that the frontlines in the fight against privatizing the waterway in Santarém represent them.
This mobilization against privatizing the waters was already underway during COP30—days after Lula visited the Tapajós with a delegation of ministers. That November, in Belém, Indigenous peoples from the Lower Tapajós region bypassed UN security and entered the Blue Zone without being invited. A few days later, it was the Munduruku people of the Middle Tapajós region’s turn to block the entrance to the Climate Conference. The shouts of the peoples carried the voice of the river to the world.
At the close of the People’s Summit, a popular mobilization held in parallel to COP that brought together more than a thousand organizations and social movements, newly appointed government minister Guilherme Boulos stated: “We have a commitment. The federal government will conduct a free, prior, and informed consultation with all the region’s peoples before implementing any project on the Tapajós River.” That commitment was not fulfilled. The year had not even come to an end before the government announced that, in addition to the waterway being privatized, dredging would also take place.
Enzo and Auricelia were at COP in Belém. There, the little Arapiun warrior asked his mother if she happened to have money, a lot of money. If she did, she might be able to buy the Tapajós – since Lula wanted to sell it – and then she could let the river run free. He understood how the game is played. Before he stood up against the collusion between State and capital at the uprising occupying the entrance to the Cargill port, Auricelia saw the return of the Tapajós sprout in Enzo’s dreams.
After 33 days of occupation, reclamation was achieved. On February 23, the federal government decided to repeal Decree 12.600/2025. Auricelia Arapiun and an Indigenous caravan went to Brasilia to seize victory.
In Santarém, 1,200 of their kin were already camped out. The Munduruku from the Upper Tapajós and the Kayapó and the Panará from the Upper Xingu had arrived. After word of the repeal was carried on the winds of the Tapajós River, spears were raised, maracas were shaken, and songs of celebration were sung. A deeply moved Alessandra Korap cried.
More than 3,000 kilometers away, the same old newspapers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with their concern for agribusiness assets, threw a tantrum. They said the return was nothing more than river-mob rule and blackmail. And they called the government cowardly for capitulating.
Three days after the victory, fatigued from the struggle, Hélia Kumaruara joined the ancestors. “What happened to her wasn’t an individual health problem. It was a political problem. It’s an Indigenous body paying the price for exclusion from the State and the pressure capital exerts on the territory,” wrote Auricelia. The cacica who carried the Tapajós during the uprising still lives on in the river. Her granddaughter Teçá Naiá will continue the fight for her grandmother and for the River.
Editorial note: this article was updated on March 3 to include information about the repeal of Decree 12.600/2025.
Guilherme Guerreiro Neto is a Brazilian journalist and researcher. He holds a PhD in Socio-environmental Development from the Center for Advanced Amazon Studies at the Federal University of Pará, Brazil, and a master’s degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. He has reported for InfoAmazonia on the Amazon projects ‘Amazônia Sufocada’ (2020) and ‘Engolindo Fumaça’ (2021), the latter winning the King of Spain International Journalism Award. His research focuses on the Amazon and coloniality, the narratives of Amazonian peoples, and communication and resistance.
This English translation of Guilherme Guerreiro Neto‘s article, by Sarah J. Johnson and Maria Jacqueline Evans, first appeared in Sumaúma and is republished here with permission.
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