Published at: 30/09/2026 09:00 PM

GENOCIDE IN THE JUNGLE THE HAXIMU MASSACRE

17 YANOMAMI KILLED IN THE VENEZUELAN AMAZON

(The Yanomamö Saga, Dr. Nelly Nelly Arvelo-Jiménez and 2001, September 24, 1993)

• In September 1993, 33 years ago, the Hixamú Massacre scandal broke out in Venezuela. This was perpetrated against 17 Yanomami children and women at the hands of illegal miners (prospectors) in Venezuelan territory on the border with Brazil.
• “The prospectors surrounded the Yanomami camp, it was around 12 noon, and being unprepared they opened fire on them, the victims being mostly women and children, the men were absent to attend a ceremony in a nearby community. When the prospectors stopped shooting, they entered the camp with a machete to mutilate the bodies of those killed and kill the injured survivors... they kicked an elderly and blind woman to death, wrapped a baby in a rag and massacred him with a machete” (description of the horrendous events made by anthropologist Bruce Albert).
• This genocide was planned in a “prospecting” by businessmen Joao Neto and Chico Ceará, and had as its precedent six massacres on the Brazil-Venezuela border:
  • 1982: five Yanomami killed by poaching miners in the Catrimani region.
  • 1987: four other Yanomami massacred by prospectors in the Paapiú region.
  • 1988: several women were injured and raped by stealth miners in the Uzucuzeiro Mountains.
  • 1989:15 Yanomami were killed by prospectors on the Brazil-Venezuela border.
  • 1990: Herds of prospectors massacred a group of Yanomamis in the Auaris River region (Brazil) and four in the Ocamo River area (Venezuela).
  • During all these years, dozens of Yanomami Indians were reported injured by shotguns fired by prospectors around the more than 100 clandestine airstrips for small planes that trafficked gold and diamonds.
• The media genocide: on April 28, 1998, to crown all these massacres, the justification for them came up in the words of the then federal deputy to the Brazilian Congress, Jair Bolsonaro, who, referring to the Yanomamis massacre, said: “The Brazilian cavalry was very incompetent. Competent, yes, was the North American cavalry, who decimated their Indians in the past and today they don't have that problem in their country.”
• However, to be objective and to know the facts in depth, we must recognize the actors that prevailed in that environment as an affected party and counterpart to the competing interests: “prospecting” businessmen of illegal mining, plus armed prospectors and mining scientists against the Yanomami.
• Then a strange symbiosis occurred, and a de facto society formed by a trilogy of pseudoscientists and professionals in poaching mining, composed of Brewer Carías and the discredited anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon, appeared, in collusion with the then close friend of the president of the republic, Cecilia Matos. The three of them interfered for four years in the lives and territories of the Yanomami ethnic group.
• This society, protected since 1989 by the Foundation for the Aid of the Peasant and Indigenous Family (FUNDAFACI) and led by Matos, put the survival of this ancient people at high risk.
• This revelation came from the Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA), which, in a letter addressed to the Ethics Committee of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), explained that the studies carried out by Chagnon and Brewer exaggerated data about ways of life, rituals, customs and methods to settle disputes and defend the natural habitat of the Yanomami people.
• Such exaggerations serve as a pretext for Brazilian illegal mining entrepreneurs to undertake a hunt against this people in order to eradicate them from their territories and exploit gold-diamond wealth, in the context of the remote binational border.
• It was thanks to these complaints that it was legally demonstrated that the massacres committed against Yanomami were genocidal and crimes against humanity.
• It was also determined that the extreme defenders of the Chagnon and Brewer studies, funded by businessmen and Miraflores, demonized the Yanomami ethnic group and anyone who dared to defend them.
• Equally demonizing those who would oppose the ethnocidal action of the evangelical missionaries of the Mission of the New Tribes and anyone who refers to the type of poaching mining carried out for decades by Charles Brewer Carías in the Ventuari River and in the Venezuelan Amazon.
• Arguments also used by Brazilian illegal gold mining businessmen to carry out the successive massacres of the Yanomami ethnic group, in order to expropriate them of their resources and carry out intensive illegal exploitation in their territories.
• With regard to the ethnocide known as “The Haximú Massacre”, at the hands of prospectors, in August 1993, it should be noted that the entire Venezuelan scientific community protested the presence of Brewer Carías in the investigative commission appointed by the interim president, Ramón J Velásquez.
• Because for a commission to have a minimum of objectivity, it could not consist of someone who practiced informal mining.
• It should also be noted that Chagnon and Brewer were later expelled from the Venezuelan Amazon by National Guard authorities.
• The purpose of the prospectors was to eliminate the only obstacle they had to clandestinely enter the national Amazon and to steal natural resources at will.
• Regarding the activities of Chagnon and Brewer Carías, on September 14, 1993, the captain of the Venezuelan Air Force (FAV), Luis Manuel Jatar, stated for the newspaper El Mundo: “At that time I was a pilot of the 'Super Puma' (AV) helicopters, I made several flights to different parts of the Amazon near the border with Brazil*. The group was commanded by* Charles Brewer Carías, Cecilia Matos and a group of gringos... when we arrived at those towns, 'never before contacted by the man of civilization', I was surprised that most of these 'indigenous' people spoke Portuguese, and the large number of exotic birds, such as paují, macaws, etc... Generally, a large number of these animals were carried on each flight. But the most curious thing was some hermetically sealed metal boxes, which could not be checked... Those boxes left the country duly sealed for the United States.”

Mazo News Team