Brasília, June 8 (AFP/APP): Veteran British freelance journalist Dom Phillips and respected Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira share a passion for the farthest reaches of the Amazon rainforest, where they disappeared three days ago.
The pair were last seen early Sunday traveling by boat in Brazil’s Javari Valley, a far-flung jungle region near the border with Peru, where Phillips has been researching a book.
The region has seen a surge of criminal activity in recent years, including illegal logging, gold mining, poaching and drug trafficking — incursions Phillips has reported on and Pereira has vigorously fought.
They had already traveled there together in 2018 for a feature story Phillips wrote in British newspaper The Guardian on an uncontacted tribe — one of an estimated 19 in the region.
“Wearing just shorts and flip-flops as he squats in the mud by a fire, Bruno Pereira, an official at Brazil’s government indigenous agency, cracks open the boiled skull of a monkey with a spoon and eats its brains for breakfast as he discusses policy,” it began.
That memorable introduction neatly sums up both men, courageous adventurers who love the rainforest and its peoples, each defending the Amazon in his own way.
– ‘Sharp, caring journalist’ –
Phillips, 57, started out as a music journalist in Britain, editing the magazine Mixmag and writing a book on the rise of DJ culture.
Lured by DJ friends, he set off for Brazil 15 years ago, falling in love with the country and his now wife, Alessandra Sampaio — a native of the northeastern city of Salvador, where the couple lives.
Reinventing himself as a foreign correspondent, Phillips has covered Brazil for media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times and Guardian, where he is a regular contributor.
“Dom is known as one of the sharpest and most caring foreign journalists in South America,” a group of friends and colleagues said in a statement, urging the Brazilian authorities to redouble their search efforts.
“But there was a lot more to him than pages and paragraphs. His friends knew him as a smiling guy who would get up before dawn to do stand-up paddle. We knew him as a caring volunteer worker who gave English classes in a Rio favela.”
Phillips has traveled in and written about the Amazon for dozens of stories, winning a fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation last year to fund his project to write a book on sustainable development in the rainforest.
The project took him back to the region he loved.
“Lovely Amazon,” he posted on Instagram last week, along with a video of a small boat winding down a meandering river.
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