A History of Amazon Deforestation

November 14, 2019

The problem with Brazil doing any settler-colonizer style agriculture is they have just the smallest bit of suitable land. They have just the smallest bit of natural prairie at the south side of the country. It’s only in the State of Rio Grande do Sol. That same prairie bioregion extends down into Uruguay and Buenos Aires, but it’s absolutely tiny in Brazil (Overbeck et al., 2008). So what’s Brazil to do? The grileiros (from grilos, locusts) come to plague the land. They tear down existing biospheres. They steal land and kill Indigenous people. (Butler, 2011), (Arsenault & Mendes, 2017), (Zaitchik, 2019)