One in five intentional violent deaths in Brazil last year took place in one of the nine states of the Legal Amazon. The index is the highest in the country, even though the region accounts for only 13.6% of the Brazilian population, according to the 2022 Census. The data are from the 17th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, released this Thursday (20). In 2022, Acre, Amazonas, Amapá, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocantins had a combined 9,302 MVIs (intentional violent deaths).
The number is equivalent to 19.57% of those registered throughout the national territory. This is an index that has been growing: in 2012, violent deaths in the Amazon region represented 15.6% of the national total. In a decade, the increase in this rate was 25.2%, while the population proportion remained stable.
In the same period, other places had the opposite movement. The Southeast, for example, accounted for 30% of Brazil's MVIs (intentional violent deaths) in 2012 and saw this rate drop to 25.1% in ten years. The Midwest, despite housing one of the states of the Legal Amazon, Mato Grosso, had a reduction from 9.3% to 7.7%.
According to Aiala Colares Couto, senior researcher at the Forum and professor at the University of the State of Pará, the numbers are not surprising as they are part of the historical construction of social struggles and conflicts over land in the Amazon, multiplied by the arrival of drug trafficking.
Translated by Cassy Dias