On November 15, the day Brazilians celebrate the Proclamation of the Republic, Beira Rio beach, in the urban area of Itaituba, Pará, was full of people. A family gathered around a barbecue, young people listened to music, and children played in the sand. Sitting on beach chairs, four lifeguards watched over bathers enjoying the afternoon cooling off in the waters of the Tapajós, a few meters from a green barge standing in a deep part of the river.
The barge is part of the mega-structure installed in the town to support the transportation of grains, fertilizers, and fuels. It's the dynamic of soy, focused on profit, taking over the region. Other barges pass through, and at night, the white lights of the Cargo Transshipment Stations (ECTs, in Portuguese), where products are transferred from trucks to boats, stand out on the right bank of the river, in the district of Miritituba opposite Itaituba.
An afternoon at Beira Rio, Itaituba: in the background, a barge aimed at supporting grain transportation/ Carolina Bataier/ Brasil de Fato
The crossing from one side to the other is made by ferry, which takes about half an hour. The journey takes half the time in small motorized boats (called "rabetas" in Brazil). There, on the right bank of the Tapajós River, next to the ferry departure point, fisherman Ednaldo Ares dos Santos moored his boat on the morning of November 16. That was the last day to sell their fish before the beginning of the closed season when fishing and selling certain species are prohibited so that fish can reproduce safely.
However, since the arrival of the boats and the ports, this protection measure seems insufficient to preserve the river's fauna. According to residents, a fish popularly known as piau and commonly found in the Tapajós has disappeared. "It's decreasing due to the flow of boats. This fish used to come up from there to here. Now it isn't coming up anymore," says the fisherman.
Santos was born into a family of fishing professionals and started fishing very young. He is proud that, through this activity, he provided for the education of his three children, who are now adults. With the arrival of ports and barges, fishing is becoming increasingly difficult.
Business vs. artisanal fishing
The first station, owned by the Unitapajós joint venture – made up of agribusiness giants Bunge and Amaggi – was installed in 2013, according to the technical report Soy in the Northern Logistics Corridor, published in April 2024 by the Institute for Socio-Economic Studies (INESC, in Portuguese). Then came three others belonging to agribusiness companies: Companhia Norte de Navegação e Portos (Cianport) and Cargill and Hidrovias do Brasil S.A. In addition, there is a floating ETC owned by Transportes Bertolini Ltda Group. From these stations, cargo is distributed to private ports and shipped to other countries.
"From there down, it's full of companies. We can't fish where we used to," says the fisherman, pointing to the area dominated by ports near the urban area of Miritituba, along the river bank.
The companies cut down stretches of forest and limited access to the water to install the stations and ports. According to Lany Cruz, secretary of the Z 56 Fishermen's Colony, which serves around 400 fisherpeople from Itaituba and other towns in the region, the area controlled by the ports on the bank of the Tapajós River is almost a kilometer long.
On the right, a port on the bank of the Tapajós River, in the district of Miritituba / Vitor Shimomura/ Brasil de Fato
"Before these structures, fish used to be by the river, but it doesn't happen anymore," says Cruz. Those who used to fish there, near the district, now need to travel for hours to find fish.
"We used to go there using our small boat. Nowadays, that's not possible," says retired fisherman Lázaro Joaquim da Silva, who lives in Miritituba and, like Santos, has been fishing since childhood. "There are people from here who go fishing in the town of Aveiro," he says. The trip, according to Lázaro, takes about three hours by rabeta.
The combination of deforestation on the riverbank, the transit of large vessels, and the restriction of bank access has resulted in losses for fisherpeople. Before the ports arrived, Santos could secure up to 200 kilos of fish in three days of work. In the same period, he returns home with just 40 kilos of fish.
"When I first came here, there were lots of fish. They lived in that area where gillnets were full of fish. Now, we don't catch fish on the riverbank anymore. The decline has been drastic," explains Cruz.
According to the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil, every day, around 1,800 trucks carrying a total of around 84,000 tons of grain leave Sinop (in the state of Mato Grosso) in the direction of the Tapajós Axis, bound for the port of Santarém (in the state of Pará), where they are unloaded and shipped abroad.
In Miritituba, cargo from Mato Grosso is loaded onto barges that follow the Tapajós waterway until they meet the Amazonas River, which has already met the Madeira River.
"The ports were installed on a fish route. As time passed, these animals changed their routes. The consequence is that they fish less," says Cruz, who reinforces fisherpeople's claims.
With the difficulties, people who made ends meet through fishing and fishing disappeared. "About five years ago, we'd go there and see five, six, seven canoes fishing. Now, you go there, and you don't see anyone," says Santos.
Companies ignored prior consultation, denounces Public Prosecutor's Office
In 2016, the Pará Public Prosecutor's Office filed a public civil action against the Pará State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainability, the Secretariat for Ports of the Presidency of the Republic, the National Water Transport Agency (Antaq, in Portuguese) and the companies Rio Turia Serviços Logísticos, Hidrovias do Brasil and Cianport.
The document points out flaws in preparing the Environmental Impact Study and Report. In addition, it denounces the lack of prior, free, and informed consultation with the communities impacted by the activities.
In addition to the fisherpeople and riverbank dwellers who suffer from limited access to the river and a reduction in the amount of fish, the projects negatively impact the Munduruku Indigenous villages of Praia do Índio, Praia do Mangue, and Sawré-Muybu. The lawsuit points out that, in addition to damaging the flora and fauna, the developments could increase population and urban limits, threatening the villages close to the city. In addition, these communities may be affected by the noise of the boats.
"The documents [the study and the report on environmental impacts] already prepared did not consider the existence of Indigenous villages and traditional communities affected by the Cargo Transshipment Stations project. To date, neither the company nor public bodies have announced any intention to carry out prior consultation," the document states.
Prior, free, and informed consultation is a mechanism for protecting traditional communities. It was established by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), signed in 1989 and ratified by Brazil in 2002. This means that these populations have the right to monitor and take part in decisions about projects that impact their territories.
Fisherwoman Maria Zuleide, Ednaldo's wife, remembers a meeting when Cargill arrived on the territory. "But since we didn't understand much about the projects, we just listened," she says.
In another passage, the lawsuit indicates the failure of public bodies to carry out this process stage. "It so happens that Antaq and the state of Pará approved this project, and some of the companies involved began the licensing process without consulting the Indigenous and traditional populations about the impacts on their lives," the Public Prosecutor's Office document states. The case is currently before the courts. Meanwhile, the ECTs continue to operate.
In Santarém, Cargill's port turned the beach into an abandoned area
Vessels departing from Miritituba are bound for the ports of Santana, in Amapá, and the Pará cities of Barcarena and Santarém. In 2003, Cargill installed a large structure on Vera Paz beach in an area provided by Santarém's city hall. Before the company arrived, this was a leisure spot for residents and a sacred territory for Indigenous peoples and riverside dwellers. According to studies produced by the organization Terra de Direitos, the port has been operating for 20 years without environmental licensing.
The mega grain disposal facility is on the left side of the waterfront. A concrete walkway connects the kiosks and a basketball court. Today, everything is abandoned. Weeds grow through the cracks in the court's wall, the kiosks are closed, and garbage accumulates in the surrounding undergrowth. "That area used to be a beach. After Cargill, it turned into that," says popular communicator Allan Hios.
On Facebook, the profile Nostalgia Santarém publishes photos of the beach with trees and kiosks on clear sand. In the comments section, people lament the change. "You can't believe it used to be Vera Paz," wrote one Facebook user in a photo of three people playing in the greenish water. "What I see today is an accumulation of weeds in the area. Even with the construction, sand is still underneath, but they don't clean the area, so it looks abandoned," another user commented.
On a Facebook page that revisits Santarém's recent past, people always comment about missing the beach where Cargill installed its port /Printscreen/Nostalgia Santarém Facebook page
Maria Ivete Bastos dos Santos, president of the Santarém Rural Farmers' Union, lives in the rural community of Dourado on the river's opposite bank. When the beach still existed, she used to moor her canoe there to visit the city of Santarém. "Cargill's port has devastated our lives," Bastos laments. She says that the movement of the barges has taken away the tranquility of those who travel along the river. "The impact is violent."
She remembers when the beach was a meeting point for residents and a hotspot for small producers in the region. "Stallholders installed next to Vera Paz beach, who had to leave their stalls, were never compensated—workers who used to sell their products on the beach—ice pop, chestnuts," she says.
In addition to Cargill, three other agribusiness companies are planning to install ports in the city, according to a study by Terra de Direitos. One of the projects is by Empresa Brasileira de Portos de Santarém (Embraps, in Portuguese), whose environmental impact report was published in October 2015. The construction of other ports is intended to serve the activities of the Cevital Group from Algeria, which operates in the agri-food sector and is favored by plantations in Brazil's central-western region and the Ceagro company.
At the free market, Maria Ivete Bastos dos Santos shows the fruit harvested in the community where she lives, on the banks of the Tapajós River / Carolina Bataier/Brasil de Fato
On the afternoon of November 17, Bastos was selling products at the Lower Amazon Family Production Fair (Fepam, in Portuguese), in a square in Santarém, alongside other family farmers. He proudly showed off the fruit harvested in his community: bananas, papaya, lemons and sapodillas. To get there, he used a canoe, moored at another location, far from Vera Paz Beach. “ We believed that everything belonged to us by right. We believed it because there had never been any conflict to take our land. Our land was demarcated by a tree. It's a cuieira tree, a rubber tree, an orange tree... Up to there, that’s mine. From there on, that’s my neighbor's. That was the demarcation of respect,” she concludes.
*This article was produced in partnership with the INESC (Institute for Socio-Economic Studies).
Edited by: Rodrigo Chagas
