Brazil­ian pres­i­dent Jair Bol­sonaro blames inter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) for the for­est fires rav­aging the Ama­zon. He has repeat­ed­ly accused them of start­ing the fires in a con­spir­a­cy to attack his gov­ern­ment, because of NGO fund­ing cuts under his admin­is­tra­tion. ​“There may be crim­i­nal actions on the part of NGOs against the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment, to try and focus atten­tion on me,” he said on August 21. ​“The biggest sus­pects are the NGOs,” he repeat­ed the next day.

Bolsonaro’s push to hand over the Amazon to corporate interests comes amid a whole-sale sell-off of state industries under neoliberal Finance Minister Paulo Guedes.

His state­ments are an out­landish attempt to blame the very groups try­ing to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment — and to divert atten­tion from the real cul­prits behind the fires.

Accord­ing to reports, a group of rough­ly 80 landown­ers, busi­ness peo­ple and land grab­bers coor­di­nat­ed the start to the fires on August 10 to show their sup­port for Pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro and for gov­ern­ment cuts to the Brazil­ian Insti­tute of the Envi­ron­ment and Renew­able Nat­ur­al Resources, IBA­MA, which is charged with mon­i­tor­ing and inspect­ing com­pli­ance to envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. (Bolsonaro’s admin­is­tra­tion slashed IBAMA’s bud­get by 24% in April , knock­ing the total bud­get to less than the cost of the organization’s fixed expenses.)

The group of land grab­bers set the shoul­ders of a major high­way in Para state ablaze, and paid motor­cy­clists to slash and burn their way into an envi­ron­men­tal­ly pro­tect­ed area. From August 9 to 11, 1,457 fires ripped across 15 munic­i­pal­i­ties in Para alone — the largest num­ber of blazes at a sin­gle moment in the state.

But Bol­sonaro blamed the NGOs, and this idea has gained trac­tion among parts of Bolsanaro’s base.

“I don’t real­ly think that these fires make that much of a dif­fer­ence for the cli­mate. I do think it’s a ques­tion of NGOs, and I sup­port pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro,” Eze­quiel da Cos­ta, a street ven­dor in Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis, told In These Times three days after smoke from the fires drift­ed across the coun­try, turn­ing Sao Paulo’s after­noon skies dark.

For many of Bolsonaro’s sup­port­ers, his com­ments fit per­fect­ly into a world­view they already hold. That idea is that there is an inter­na­tion­al con­spir­a­cy to hold Brazil back, by forc­ing con­straints on the coun­try in the form of indige­nous ter­ri­to­ries, human rights, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions and NGOs. The lat­ter, they believe, have been liv­ing large with fund­ing from the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment, while doing the dirty work for for­eign governments.

This idea has been pushed online by a pow­er­ful net­work of right-wing YouTu­bers and social media influ­encers. ​“My sense is that the mon­ey dried up, and so did the good times,” said the promi­nent right-wing YouTu­ber Bár­bara, behind the chan­nel Te atu­al­izei, refer­ring to the impact of Bolsonaro’s cuts to NGO fund­ing. The video, titled ​“ The Truth about the Ama­zon ,” now has more than 330,000 views. ​“In my opin­ion [the NGOs] decid­ed to make things a lit­tle worse: Retal­i­a­tion. What hap­pened was retal­i­a­tion,” said Bárbara.

Bol­sonaro sup­port­ers have tak­en to social media on numer­ous occa­sions in recent weeks in sup­port of the pres­i­dent, trend­ing the hash­tag #Ama­zo­ni­aSe­mONGs (#Ama­zon­With­out­N­GOs).

Bol­sonaro sug­gest­ed in a radio inter­view ear­li­er this year that the Unit­ed Nations was look­ing to par­ti­tion off Brazil’s indige­nous reserves into for­eign countries.

Sim­i­lar false claims have been cham­pi­oned by top mem­bers of Bolsonaro’s gov­ern­ment. Retired Gen­er­al Augus­to Heleno, who was mil­i­tary com­man­der of the Ama­zon, and who now serves as Bolsonaro’s Sec­re­tary of Insti­tu­tion­al Secu­ri­ty, said in June that he nev­er had a doubt that there was a strat­e­gy ​“to pre­serve Brazil’s envi­ron­ment so it could lat­er be exploit­ed by for­eign­ers” with the help of NGOs, ​“know­ing­ly in the ser­vice of for­eign governments.”

“We have to lim­it the action that these NGOs have,” he said.

“Green Mafia”

It’s hard to deci­pher exact­ly where the NGO the­o­ry orig­i­nat­ed. Some of the ear­li­est ref­er­ences come from the book, Green Mafia: Envi­ron­men­tal­ism at the Ser­vice of the World Gov­ern­ment , which was pub­lished in 2001. The book’s premise is that the world’s NGOs are essen­tial­ly shock troops of a new world order, fund­ed by pow­er­ful gov­ern­ments and wealthy foun­da­tions, to stop so-called ​“third-world” coun­tries from devel­op­ing, by block­ing them from using their nat­ur­al resources, like the Amazon.

“This book was elab­o­rat­ed to show that the inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, sup­port­ed by a vast net­work of NGOs, has noth­ing to do with pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment,” reads the sum­ma­ry on the back cov­er. ​“On the con­trary, it serves a clever strat­e­gy of the Anglo-Amer­i­can oli­garchy to obstruct the forces of socio-eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment on a glob­al scale.”

The book was writ­ten by Loren­zo Car­ras­co, a Mex­i­can immi­grant to Brazil, and pub­lished in 2001 by the Wash­ing­ton-based Exec­u­tive Intel­li­gence Review, which was found­ed by the con­tro­ver­sial U.S. con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist and cli­mate denier Lyn­don H. LaRouche Jr .

While Green Mafia might seem incon­se­quen­tial — reserved to the chat groups of con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists — it may have left its mark on Brazil­ian far-right and con­ser­v­a­tive the­o­ries of envi­ron­men­tal­ism at the time.

The book appeared at a con­ve­nient moment for those look­ing to stem the tide of grow­ing glob­al envi­ron­men­tal­ism, less than a decade after the land­mark 1992 Rio sum­mit, and just a year before Luiz Ina­cio Lula da Silva’s first pres­i­den­tial vic­to­ry, which car­ried the Work­ers Par­ty to pow­er in Brazil. At the time, Ama­zon defor­esta­tion was spi­ral­ing out of con­trol. The world was call­ing for its protection.

Green Mafia sold 17,000 copies. Car­ras­co was invit­ed to tes­ti­fy before a Con­gres­sion­al inquiry on the activ­i­ties of NGOs in the Amazon.

The retired colonel and mil­i­tary his­to­ri­an Manoel Sori­ano Neto called Green Mafia an ​“excel­lent work.” He wrote in a review post­ed on the right-wing web­site Em Dire­i­ta Brasil, ​“This book should be wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed so that a grow­ing num­ber of opin­ion mak­ers are aware of the latent threat to nation­al interests.”

Bolsonaro’s now far-right philo­soph­i­cal guru Ola­vo de Car­val­ho pub­lished a note defend­ing it , after the World Wildlife Fund moved to have it sanc­tioned for base­less claims against the group.

There are, of course, legit­i­mate cri­tiques of NGOs. Indus­tries have found­ed NGOs to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion on their behalf. Con­ser­va­tion has also been known to some­times come into con­flict with the rights of indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties on their territories.

But in Brazil, gen­er­al­ly, the sit­u­a­tion has been quite different.

“The NGOs have been a very impor­tant sup­port for com­mu­ni­ties where state poli­cies don’t reach. And they have con­tributed enor­mous­ly to enhance gov­er­nance,” says Uni­camp ecol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Bernar­do M. Flo­res. ​“That is why Bol­sonaro is try­ing to under­mine the NGOs and main­tain this dis­tort­ed view of the NGOs among his sup­port­ers. He basi­cal­ly wants to weak­en every­thing hav­ing to do with indige­nous rights and indige­nous lands, so that he can increase his access to those areas.”

Brazil’s biggest threat

In oth­er words, Brazil’s biggest threat is not from NGOs or oth­er coun­tries, but Bol­sonaro him­self, who is the one most look­ing to hand over the Ama­zon to for­eign, cor­po­rate or pri­vate interests.

In March, Brazil’s Min­is­ter of Mines and Ener­gy Ben­to Albu­querque trav­eled to Toron­to, where he told rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the world’s fore­most min­ing con­fer­ence that Brazil was look­ing to open up new lands to pri­vate min­ing com­pa­nies. Albu­querque told those present that the way for­ward was to open indige­nous lands to busi­ness­es that could ​“bring ben­e­fits to these com­mu­ni­ties and to the country.”

Bolsonaro’s gov­ern­ment is now work­ing on a bill that would reg­u­late the explo­ration and extrac­tion of water and min­er­al deposits on indige­nous lands by pri­vate com­pa­nies. It hopes to have it brought to a vote next month.

The destruc­tion and defor­esta­tion is already being fueled by a host of inter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate con­glom­er­ates. Glob­al cat­tle com­pa­nies, such as Brazil’s JBS, multi­na­tion­al min­ing cor­po­ra­tions, and soy agribusi­ness giants ADM, Bunge, and Cargill, are all play­ing a role. Many have backed Bol­sonaro and his promise to devel­op the region. All are hun­gry for the com­modi­ties being reaped from the soil of the once pris­tine jungle.

Black­Rock, the world’s largest asset man­ag­er, and a key financier of the agribusi­ness jug­ger­nauts most impli­cat­ed in defor­est­ing the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, applaud­ed Bolsonaro’s 2018 victory.

In April, Bol­sonaro pro­posed to U.S. pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump that the two coun­tries joint­ly exploit the Ama­zon .

Yet, despite all of this — or per­haps because of it — Bol­sonaro defends his poli­cies by say­ing that he is pro­tect­ing the region against colo­nial­ism and for­eign powers.

“It’s a strat­e­gy. You cre­ate a com­mon ene­my. And you say the ene­my is com­ing from out­side,” Jose Palatiel Rodrigues Pires, an ecol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the San­ta Cata­ri­na Fed­er­al Uni­ver­si­ty, told In These Times. ​“You say they are the ene­my, at the same time you hand them the coun­try, while you are destroy­ing the forest.”

This rhetoric fits per­fect­ly with­in Brazil’s long-held the­o­ry of the ​“Inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the Ama­zon.” This idea holds that the world’s devel­oped nations will stop at noth­ing to access or steal the Ama­zon and its riches.The myth is root­ed in history.

Con­quis­ta­dors and Euro­pean and Amer­i­can adven­tur­ers long had their eyes set on the vast jun­gle and the rich­es of the myth­ic El Dora­do that may lay with­in. In 1876, British busi­ness­man adven­tur­er Hen­ry Wick­ham­be­came the world’s first biopi­rate when he made off with 70,000 seeds of the Hevea brasilien­sis, or rub­ber tree. The plants would be sent to British plan­ta­tions in Malaysia and Dutch plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia, which with­in a few decades would out­pace Brazil­ian rub­ber pro­duc­tion, destroy­ing Brazil’s trade, and dec­i­mat­ing the region and economy.

There’s also Hen­ry Ford’s 1920s and ​’30s mis­ad­ven­tures in the Ama­zon, where he acquired a ter­ri­to­ry the size of Con­necti­cut, on which he estab­lished a mid-West­ern mod­eled city, Fordlân­dia , and attempt­ed to devel­op a plan­ta­tion to pro­duce rub­ber for his cars.

Count­less oth­er plans were devel­oped by pow­er­ful inter­ests over the years, to reap the ben­e­fits of the Amazon’s bounty.

Reviv­ing an old myth

Brazil’s mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship (1964−1985) pounced on the idea of the for­eign threat and used it to push devel­op­ment in the Ama­zon, as a mat­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty. This devel­op­ment would cost the lives of 8,300 indige­nous peo­ples in the region.

“In the 1970s, the mil­i­tary decid­ed to build a TransAma­zon high­way to occu­py the Ama­zon, and they car­ried out a series of projects. And they always said that if they didn’t occu­py the Ama­zon it would be invad­ed by for­eign­ers,” says Palatiel. ​“So, Bol­sonaro has revived an old myth.”

The con­cept has also been bol­stered over the years by dis­tort­ed infor­ma­tion, although it’s dif­fi­cult to deci­pher whether the doc­u­ments were faked by nation­al­ists, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, or just pranksters.

One such case sup­pos­ed­ly details U.S. plans to sev­er Brazil in half, and annex the Ama­zon region into a sep­a­rate coun­try. The map is labeled ​“Most-Secret,” and was osten­si­bly drawn up by U.S. cap­tain Math­ew Fawry, and signed on April 1, 1817.

Anoth­er case fea­tures the page of a sup­posed U.S. Geog­ra­phy text­book. On a map, the area around the Ama­zon is marked out and labeled ​“For­mer Inter­na­tion­al Reserve of Ama­zon For­est.” It’s clear­ly a fake , with mis­spellings and exag­ger­at­ed text, but it was shared widely.

“Since the ​‘80s the most impor­tant rain for­est of the world was passed to the respon­si­bil­i­ty (sic) of the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed Nations. It is named as FIN­RAF (For­mer Inter­na­tion­al Reserve of Ama­zon For­est), and its foun­da­tion was due to the fact that the Ama­zon is locat­ed in South Amer­i­ca, one of the poor­est regions on earth (sic) and sur­round­ed by irre­spon­si­ble, cru­el, and author­i­tary (sic) coun­tries,” reads the text.

Bolsonaro’s push to hand over the Ama­zon to cor­po­rate inter­ests comes amid a whole-sale sell-off of state indus­tries under neolib­er­al Finance Min­is­ter Paulo Guedes. The Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment has announced the pri­va­ti­za­tion of at least 17 state firms, includ­ing the country’s postal ser­vice Cor­reios. It has already begun sell­ing off air­ports, ports and high­ways, and sub­sidiaries of the state-run Petro­bras, one of the largest oil com­pa­nies in the world. Guedes hopes to pri­va­tize it com­plete­ly by 2022.

Mean­while, Bolsonaro’s nation­al­ist rhetoric of defend­ing the coun­try against the for­eign ene­my will continue.

“This myth was very strong dur­ing the dic­ta­tor­ship and it’s return­ing because of the gov­ern­ment dis­course, because it’s a way of dom­i­nat­ing the peo­ple,” ecol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Selvi­no Neck­el told In These Times. ​“It’s a smoke­screen, though. The dic­ta­tor­ship used it to main­tain pow­er and today the gov­ern­ment, which is descend­ed from the dic­ta­tor­ship, is using it again. And it has worked with a sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion that doesn’t have much access to information.”