Dom Phillips loved the Amazon and loved the Amazon fish. His favorite was the Tucunaré, a spotted South American peacock bass whose indigenous name means “friend of the trees.”
It was in a hotel room named Tucunaré that the British journalist spent his last night before entering the jungle with Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira on the afternoon of Thursday, June 2.
But before leaving the hotel in the river town of Atalaia do Norte, Phillips had one last interview to do.
After discovering that his hosts ran an ecotourism business for fishing enthusiasts, the veteran correspondent picked up his dictaphone, lifted a white plastic chair, and began mentioning them with questions about the Amazon. their sustainable work.
Dom Phillips takes notes on a previous trip to a remote part of Brazil. Photography: João Laet / AFP / Getty Images
“He sat down right there with a tape recorder like this,” said Rubeney de Castro Alves, one of the owners of Javari Expeditions, bursting into tears as he recalled his brief encounter with Phillips and the selfie full of smiles they had taken before. he left.
While paying his 100 reais (£ 17) bill, the British journalist told Castro Alves that he would return from the rainforest in three days. “RETURN – SUNDAY,” the hotelier wrote on his ticket next to Phillips’s wavy lettering. “BACK – SUNDAY”. He underlined the second word to emphasize.
Minutes later, the journalist had left, heading a few hundred meters down the road to the ruined river port where he and Pereira would begin their last journey.
As his motorboat headed for the murky brown waters under a cloudy sky, a friend standing by the dock used his cell phone to take two grainy photographs of the couple, perhaps the last existing images of the couple. men, who then had less. more than three days of life.
The last known image of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira on their journey to the Amazon before their disappearance. Photography: No credit
From Atalaia do Norte, the men headed south along the meandering Itaquai River. They stopped at a village on the riverbank to pick up shovels that Pereira had commissioned from the natives whose cause he had defended.
Before leaving his hotel, Phillips told his owners that they were going down a different river, the Javari, apparently a security measure taken as a result of the threats Pereira had received due to his activism in a border region without law full of environmental crimes and drug trafficking. .
Phillips told Castro Alves that they would visit the Curuçá Indigenous Protection Base, which guards one of the entry points into the territory of the Javari Valley, an Austrian-sized rainforest that is home to more than 20 indigenous communities. most contactless.
Disappearance location map of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira
“Maybe it was a strategy to get people out of their scent. I think it must be,” said Castro Alves, a close friend of Pereira’s.
In fact, Pereira and Phillips were traveling along the Itaquai to Lake Jaburu, where indigenous activists have set up a riverside watchtower to monitor illegal fishing bands looting fish stocks in the territory. of Javari.
With his ship’s 40-horsepower outboard engine, it would have taken him about two hours to arrive. The men spent their first night sleeping in hammocks as the jungle around them exploded into a charming symphony of birds and insects singing.
Early the next day, Phillips, who was writing a book called How to Save the Amazon, began his interviews with members of the 13-member surveillance team tasked with keeping environmental offenders out of indigenous territory that hosts the largest concentration of uncontacted villages. on earth.
“I was with him on Thursday, Friday and Saturday,” said one of these indigenous guards, Tumi Matis.
Tumi Matis, an indigenous environmental guard who was interviewed by Dom Phillips on his last trip. Photography: Ana Palacios
“Dom asked me what was going on in the Javari Valley. Why are you patrolling it?” said Matis, who comes from a village called Bukuwak, which means Paradise in the Pano language spoken by its people.
“In the cities, people cut down trees. Not here. Here we are protecting the forests, ”Matis told the journalist proudly.
Andrew Fishman, an American journalist who often talked to Phillips about the book while paddling on Copacabana Beach in Rio, said his friend had made a series of trips to the Amazon since the project was conceived. three years ago, gathering hundreds of hours of interviews.
After a 17-day punishment expedition with Pereira to the depths of the Javari Valley for the Guardian in 2018, Phillips was eager to return. “I wanted to go back and see how things had changed in the few years since I had been there,” Fishman said.
Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were filmed on the Amazon expedition in 2018: video
“He seemed very excited about the book and a little nervous about its ambitious scope, as would any sensible person.”
“I wanted to make it an ordinary book to alert everyone to the problems of deforestation and the destruction of the Amazon,” said journalist Sian Phillips’ sister. “I wanted to find people to talk to on the Amazon who could tell their story. I wanted to tell their story.”
Those who met Phillips on the final reporting trip of a 15-year career in Brazil say he seemed in his element as he toured the remote jungle region looking for ideas to help explain the complexities of the battle for save the amazon.
The Itaquai River meanders through the indigenous territory of the Javari Valley. Photography: Edmar Barros / AP
“He seemed cheerful, he said he loved his job,” said Orlando Possuelo, another prominent member of the new generation of Brazilian indigenists and the son of legendary indigenous advocate and explorer Sydney Possuelo.
Possuelo offered a word of warning to Phillips during his two-hour meeting in Atalaia do Norte at the headquarters of Univaja, the indigenous rights group where Pereira worked after being dropped from Brazil’s indigenous protection agency. during the rule of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. .
In February, one of the men now detained for the murders of Pereira and Phillips, a fisherman named Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, allegedly shot Pereira and another comrade in the Itaquai.
“I told him, ‘Take care of the area you’re going to. Did you know they shot Bruno? Possuelo remembered saying that.
“Really?” Phillips replied, before returning to his hotel to pack his bags.
Pereira’s friends say he refused to be intimidated by threats and the increasingly violent atmosphere that has gripped Brazil since the 2018 election of a president who has overseen what activists they call a historic assault on indigenous rights and the environment.
“These fishermen are not capable of killing me,” Pereira recently told a friend, according to Rubens Valente, a Brazilian journalist who has written extensively about the Amazon.
“He thought they were empty threats,” Valente said.
They weren’t. At around 6 a.m. on Sunday, June 5, after completing their report, Phillips and Pereira began descending the Itaquai back to Atalaia do Norte on their way to a cold beer and shower. hot.
They stopped briefly in a riverside village, São Rafael, to talk to a local fisherman, but left after being told that he was not at home. Minutes after recovering the river, they died, ambushed and dragged to a nearby piece of jungle where they were buried on the ground.
The search operation, led by indigenous peoples, belatedly included resources deployed by the Brazilian army. Photography: João Laet / AFP / Getty Images
His belongings were hidden in a nearby piece of flooded forest where indigenous search teams found items such as Phillips’ backpack and pants that belonged to Pereira.
On Wednesday, after a 10-day search, their bodies were finally found.
“I feel angry and disgusted,” said Valente, who is in Atalaia do Norte to report the murder of his friend. “The truth is that this was an announced death … it is an irreparable loss.”
Orlando Possessor. Photography: João Laet / AFP / Getty Images
As he sat outside the hotel room that Pereira had occupied before traveling to the rainforest, named after the Javanese Mayuruna people, Valente fell silent and shook his head in disbelief.
Night had fallen when Phillips and Pereira resumed their river journey, almost from the very point where it had been so brutally interrupted.
At around 6.40pm on Wednesday, they descended the Itaquai towards Atalaia do Norte in a three-ship committee led by a white ambulance and escorted by army troops.
Minutes later Orlando Possuelo emerged from the jungle, where a downed Amarildo da Costa Oliveira had led police to the burial site.
“I destroyed my life. I destroyed my family’s life,” the alleged killer murmured.
Possuelo headed downstream to the indigenous research base he has been coordinating since the Pereira and Phillips hunt began almost two weeks ago.
“It seems the mission has been accomplished,” said Possuelo, surrounded by indigenous volunteers from the villages of Marubo, Kanamari and Matis, who played such a key role in bringing the men home.
“We always say when we do our job that we will never leave anyone behind, and we stayed here and fought for our partner,” Possuelo said.
As the group dismantled its riverside camp and prepared to leave, Possuelo said his focus would now be shifted to another equally crucial mission: to ensure justice for the families of the two murdered men.
Further down the river, the boat carrying …