‘Man in the Hole’, lone survivor of Amazon tribe massacre, escapes ranchers’ bullets

He has lived alone in the jungle for decades, the lone survivor of an Amazon tribe massacred by Brazilian ranchers in their quest for land. Now officials fear that the Indian known as the “Man in the Hole” may suffer the same fate after an attack by gunmen determined to finish this final obstacle to coveted territory.

The attack took place last month in Tanarú, an indigenous territory in the Amazonian state of Rondônia but has only just been reported by protection officers who visit the area every few weeks. On their most recent trip to check on the Indian, officials from Funai, the Brazilian indigenous affairs department, discovered that their post had been ransacked. Empty shotgun cartridges were found on the rainforest floor.

The man is thought to have survived the attack, which officials believe was perpetrated by ranchers whose lands surround the Indian’s territory. They have frequently complained that one lone Indian is blocking the expansion of their ranches and in October they were incensed by the renewal of a protection order that prevents farming on indigenous territory. “This is a serious situation. The Indian’s life is being put in danger by the interests of the ranchers,” Altair Algayer, a Funai official, said.

Little is known about the “Man in the Hole”, so-called because of the holes he digs to hide from danger and to trap animals. He has rejected all attempts at contact by Brazilian officials, leaving his story to be pieced together from accounts of the nearest tribe, the Akuntsu, who themselves have been reduced to five members by a series of slaughters.

They say that the man’s tribe was wiped out in repeated massacres in the 1970s and 1980s as ranchers and gunmen moved on to indigenous lands. His small fragment of territory, now encircled by five cattle farms, is the last barrier to ranchers.

“He should be allowed to live out the ends of his days in peace, but the ranchers are clearly not happy with that,” said Fiona Watson, research director of Survival International, a UK-based organisation that monitors uncontacted tribes.

“On a number of occasions the ranchers have complained that it’s one man sitting on 8,000 hectares of land,” she explained, adding: “I don’t think its any coincidence that this restriction order was renewed and this attack came weeks later.”

The man’s image was captured recently by a film-maker working on a documentary about the Akuntsu, whose efforts to make contact failed as the Indian cowered inside his hut, pointing spears through openings in its walls. An earlier attempt by a Brazilian official had ended with an arrow in the visitor’s chest.

“It’s very clear that he doesn’t want any contact,” Ms Watson said, adding that he was clearly traumatised from seeing his people slain. “He is very frightened.”

At least 67 uncontacted tribes live deep in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, with many more believed to have been wiped out by settlers and disease. The Rondônia region has suffered the most, its rich agricultural land attracting farmers and ranchers who flooded the area after the construction of a highway in the 1980s.

“That was like a magnet, everyone poured in, cattle ranchers, land-grabbers, loggers,” Ms Watson said. Many tribes in the area had been reduced to a few isolated members, she said, adding: “If there’s an uncontacted tribe there, nobody really knows exactly where they live or how many there are, so if you go in and kill them there’s no evidence, and that’s exactly what has happened.”

While the Brazilian Government had made progress with protection in recent years, it was often difficult to implement the law, Ms Watson said. Tribes now faced further threats from the annexation of land for biofuel production and a law currently being debated by the Brazilian Congress that would open indigenous territories to large-scale mining.

One less isolated tribe in the Rondônia region has taken matters into its own hands in a distinctly 21st-century style. The Surui are co-operating with Google Earth on a project that monitors encroachment into their territory through satellite imagery. Numbering 5,000 before the opening of the B364 highway, they are now endangered, with 11 tribal chiefs killed by ranchers in the past decade.