The Angelim II Quilombola community, a matriarchal group of descendants of enslaved Africans, has lost much of its traditional land to industrial eucalyptus plantations owned by Suzano Pulp and Paper. The land, part of the native Mata Atlantica forest, has been illegally cleared for eucalyptus plantations. Recently, Suzano received approval to plant genetically engineered eucalyptus resistant to glyphosate, threatening a huge increase in the use of this toxic herbicide. This poses a new threat to the Quilombola and nearby communities, further endangering their health and the environment.

The Angelim II Quilombola community faces severe impacts from eucalyptus plantations, including contamination from agrotoxins and the loss of fresh water. The community’s resistance to further plantation expansion is met with surveillance, as Suzano uses drones to monitor and intimidate them. Women in the community have shared their experiences of constant surveillance, adding to the pressure they face in protecting their land and way of life. The expansion of eucalyptus plantations threatens both their health and access to vital resources, further compounding their struggles.

A feller buncher is used to rapidly harvest trees in the green desert. Feller bunchers are designed to increase productivity by allowing operators to quickly cut and accumulate timber. They can potentially fall and bunch up to 200 trees per hour, and can replace the work of ten to fifteen men.

After timber is cut, machines follow to plant eucalyptus clones. Celio Leocádio, President of the Volta Miúda Quilombola association, shows a clone to an international delegation. He explains that when industrial eucalyptus plantations arrived in Espírito Santo and Bahía, they destroyed native plant cover and depleted the soil's nutrients. Traditional agroforestry practices, like crop rotation and allowing the land to rest, were replaced by the relentless expansion of eucalyptus. Four months after the visit, on October 18, 2023, the Brazilian government officially approved the Volta Miúda Quilombola Territory map, securing some protection for the community’s land.

Suzano, the world’s largest pulp manufacturer and a major paper producer in Latin America, promotes itself as a leader in sustainability, claiming to create eco-friendly products inspired by trees. However, its actions tell a different story: deforestation, land grabbing, waterway pollution, repression, environmental racism, and failure to consult with traditional communities. Suzano has also built roads through intact forests and extracted water from local springs. Now, they seek to develop genetically engineered trees resistant to herbicides and insect infestations. No independent studies have been conducted to assess the risks these genetically modified trees pose to the environment and local communities, but similar traits engineered into crop species have had severe ecological and health impacts.

The fight against eucalyptus plantations is central to the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Espírito Santo and Bahía. The MST is one of the largest social movements in South America, with an estimated two million members. Romildo Biancardi, a farmer at the Indio Galdino MST encampment, grows crops on land once occupied by eucalyptus. He says, “See what the struggle of landless peasants is… We’re the real MST movement. We’re part of this. Whether we win or lose, that’s who we are. We might lose, but we’re still MST.” The movement remains committed to reclaiming land and resisting the expansion of destructive monocultures, regardless of the challenges they face.

With an eye towards the future, the MST has founded agroecology schools which teach rural residents how to grow crops and food using sustainable and organic methods. The MST seeks to reverse Brazil’s profound inequality of land distribution by occupying land for communal farms. The MST has included eucalyptus plantations as meeting the definition of “unproductive land” and have occupied and repurposed them for communal farms, many of which eventually become legal settlements. “And sharing,” a MST spokesperson stated, “with society at large that we are able to in areas where there is eucalyptus. We can produce healthy food that’s good for us to survive on and also to provide food to the society at large that we are part of as well.”

On the table are crops from Indio Galdino: oranges, bananas, watermelons, manioc, and coffee, all grown on land once occupied by eucalyptus plantations. The MST's success is evident, with an estimated 460,000 families now living in its encampments. It is also South America's largest exporter of organic rice.

Indigenous peoples across Brazil held large demonstrations in Brasília and nationwide in June 2023 to oppose PL 490, a law that would erase land titles held by Indigenous communities. The bill, passed by the Ministry of Deputies, could open Indigenous territories to extractive industries, ranching, logging, and eucalyptus plantations. It would reset land claims to October 1988, when the current constitution was adopted, erasing titles gained since then. This threatens both Indigenous rights and the environment, as eucalyptus plantations continue to destroy Brazil’s Cerrado and Mata Atlantica forests, as well as encroaching on the Amazon. They further undermine food security and clean water for nearby communities.

The Ofayé people live on a 45-hectare patch of native forest, surrounded by vast eucalyptus and sugarcane plantations. José De Souza, an instructor at the Indigenous Ofayé school in Mato Grosso do Sul, says that forced relocations and pressures from agribusiness nearly wiped out the Ofayé, once numbering tens of thousands, now fewer than 100. "They destroyed our forests and our water," Souza said. The school is helping revive the Ofayé culture and language, often teaching outdoors, and is successfully resuscitating a language once nearly lost to destruction and displacement.

Ofayé woman artist sewing Despite the historic loss of culture and land, the women of the Ofayé continue their artistic tradition of creating painted cloth. Some of this is sold to tourists for souvenirs.

Over the past decade, much of the native Cerrado forest in Mato Grosso do Sul has been converted to eucalyptus plantations by Suzano to supply their expanding pulp mills. The Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse savanna, is critical for clean water supply and carbon sequestration, storing vast amounts of carbon in the soil. Despite its importance, it receives less attention than the Amazon. Tax incentives and infrastructure investment in the Tres Lagoas region by local and federal governments seek to attract investments by the pulp and paper industry to the state.

The multinational Suzano corporation is building the world’s largest pulp and paper mill in Mato Grosso do Sul. The enormous facility is being built by 10,000 workers, most of whom are stacked in nearby man camps. The Cerrado Project, as Suzano has deemed it, threatens grave environmental damage to natural habitat and biodiversity, water and air emissions, as well as a devastatingly precipitous population influx. The Chilean pulp company Arauco is planning an even larger mill in Mato Grosso do Sol after the scheduled completion of Suzano’s massive mill.

Beto, an organizer from the Brazilan NGO FASE exits the delegation’s bus by window after the bus and its door were wedged against a muddy embankment. The delegation was on its way to speak with the Pataxó people in Bahía who are experiencing violent repression due to efforts to reclaim their ancestral lands and remove eucalyptus plantations. Rain and mud prevented the meeting.

Members of the international delegation finally get the bus freed from the mud, but it was too late to travel to meet with the Pataxó community about their struggle to take back their land from Suzano’s eucalyptus plantations. Just over six months later, on 21 January 2024, 200 landowners and members of a police militia reportedly launched an armed attack on the Pataxó people, killing a Pataxó leader. This a part of a pattern of violent attacks against Pataxó and other Indigenous Peoples in Brazil trying to reclaim their ancestral lands. It is part of a global epidemic of land defenders being murdered.