The Tapajós River is one of the largest in the world. Flowing through the heart of the Brazilian Amazon and spanning a staggering 190,000 square miles, it is teeming with immense biodiversity and essential to the health of the rainforest.

Since time immemorial, the Tapajós River Basin has been stewarded by Indigenous peoples. But these waterways are also the homelands of several Quilombos, maroon communities founded by Africans who escaped chattel slavery and have lived in reciprocal relationship with the land for centuries.

Yet, their ancestral ways of life are directly threatened by extractivism, industrial agribusiness, and destructive infrastructure and development projects.

Their historical struggles are intimately intertwined, and Indigenous and Quilombola land defenders are now organizing to integrate their struggles and shut down the Ferrogrão mega-railway project, which was initiated by U.S. multinational Cargill and would decimate the river’s intricate ecosystems.