The widow of British journalist Dom Phillips has spoken of her desire to raise awareness of the urgent and complex crisis facing the Amazon as she prepared to visit the remote jungle region where he was murdered last year with the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.
Alessandra Sampaio will travel to the Javari valley region on Monday with a delegation of Brazilian ministers, officials and activists as well as the British ambassador Stephanie Al-Qaq.
“There’s a lot of emotion. It will be my first time in the Amazon and I feel a little tense about … the things I’ll see and how I’ll feel,” Sampaio said on Sunday. “I haven’t a clue how I’ll react, if I’ll break down … It’s the first time I’m going to see the forest.”
“Whenever Dom used to come back from his [Amazon] trips he’d say, “Alê, you have to go! Alê, you’d go crazy! Alê, if only you’d seen what I saw!” Sampaio added.
“I’d tell him, “I’ll go, Dom, I’ll go!” Because, like many Brazilians, I haven’t been to any of the Amazon states.”
The visit is part of efforts by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government to show Brazil has turned the page on the era of Amazon devastation that played out under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
During Bolsonaro’s four-year presidency Amazon deforestation soared and illegal miners and poachers took advantage of the government’s dismantling of environmental protections to lay siege to Indigenous territories such as the Javari valley.
Sampaio said she felt upbeat about the pledges Lula’s two-month-old administration has made to defend the Amazon and the Indigenous communities on which Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, was reporting when he was killed last June.
“There’s great hope. I feel an atmosphere of optimism because there’s so much to rebuild,” Sampaio said, pointing to Lula’s decision to place an Indigenous woman in charge of the Indigenous protection agency, Funai, and create a ministry for Indigenous peoples.
Pereira’s widow, the anthropologist Beatriz Matos, who will also travel to the Javari on Monday, recently accepted a job with that new ministry in which she will work to safeguard the lives and lands of isolated and recently contacted Indigenous groups.
Sampaio believed Phillips would share her optimism over the political sea change while being keenly aware that it was only the start of a long and arduous battle.
“Dom was a naturally relentless optimist and I think he’d be happy. Because this is about construction – it’s a process. It won’t be fast … but it is starting,” she said.
Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were gunned down last June while travelling down the Itaquaí river after a reporting trip for a book the British journalist was writing on the Amazon.
The men had been visiting activists from an Indigenous NGO called Univaja whose members patrol the Javari valley indigenous territory to combat illegal fishing and mining gangs.
Sampaio said she hoped to use her visit to thank the Indigenous search teams who spent 10 days scouring the Javari’s rivers and rainforests after the two men went missing. “It was such a beautiful movement and I will be eternally grateful,” she said of their efforts.
Last month police claimed they had identified the mastermind behind the crime, a notorious local figure called Rubens Villar Coelho who has been accused of running an illegal fishing mafia in the Javari region. Three other men are in prison accused of ambushing and killing Phillips and Pereira as they attempted to reach the river town of Atalaia do Norte.
Sampaio said her lawyers doubted the trial would be held before next year despite it being such a high-profile case. But she saw the new government’s decision to invite her to visit the Javari as a powerful gesture that showed it was committed to justice.
“I genuinely believe in Brazilian justice and I hope that … the defendants are given the chance to defend themselves and are judged according to the law and – if they it’s proven that they did this – for them to be convicted.”
Nearly nine-months after Phillips’ murder shocked the world, Sampaio said she was still coming to terms with her loss.
“Rebuilding isn’t easy. Life comes in waves. There are moments when I’m better. There are moments I’m worse … There are times when things seem to make no sense. But what I always say is that even though I lost my life partner, I’m still alive and I have to carry on,” she said.
Sampaio believed one of her new missions was to raise awareness of the complex environmental crisis facing the Amazon and the risk rampant deforestation posed to humanity in terms of the climate crisis and future pandemics.
“I’m not a journalist or an environmentalist. But more and more I see that the Amazon isn’t just the responsibility of Brazil or the Brazilian government – it’s everyone’s responsibility,” Sampaio said, calling on global consumers to better inform themselves about where the meat they ate or the gold jewellery they wore came from.
“Dom had an incredibly strong connection to nature. He used to say he saw God in nature,” Sampaio added, vowing to champion the issues and communities which were close to his heart.
“It’s not just because I was married to Dom, it’s because when you start to come into contact with all the complexities of the Amazon and the people who live there, you naturally end up becoming engaged, because it is captivating,” she said.
“I don’t consider it an obligation to continue his legacy. I see it as a privilege.”
