Brazilian police arrested 29 illegal land speculators accused of killing and displacing an indigenous community along the Aripuana River in the northwestern states of Mato Grosso and Amazonas. According to the BBC, the detainees included businessmen, loggers, and land-squatters. The indigenous community, known as the Rio Pardo tribe, has never established contact with people outside of it and almost nothing is known about it." This is an isolated Indian community with no contact to the outside world, so we may never have definitive proof, but there are strong indications that these criminals were seeking to exterminate them and take their land," Mario Lucio Avelar, Mato Grosso public prosecutor, said in an interview with The Boston Globe. The territory is not officially a reservation, but local rights groups have called on the Brazilian government to protect the group.
