This is The Guardian. Hi there. Today we're bringing you something new. Episode one of a brand new series called Missing in the Amazon. reported and presented by our Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips. If you enjoy it, make sure you subscribe to the Missing in the Amazon feed. There you'll find episode two. as well as all of our award winning investigative podcast series. Missing in the Amazon starts right after this.
It's a Sunday morning in June 2022, the Amazon jungle. Forests so dense, it can be hard to know if it's night or day. And teeming with wildlife. most of which you can't see, but you can hear. Macaws, jaguars, howler monkeys, frogs. creatures constantly moving between the trees. On the river bank, at a small ramshackle port, two men were waiting. Orlando and Tataco talk to me in Portuguese.
Their words are being spoken here by actors. It was early, but the sun was already rising high, ferociously hot, glinting off the muddy waters of the Javari River. Orlando and Tataku worked for the local Indigenous Association. They were here to meet their colleague, Bruno Pereira, and a British journalist he was travelling with, Dom Phillips. Bruno was late. And he was never late. Yeah, well, we'd agree to plan. 8 a.m., me and Tatako would be there. 8.30.
and there was no sign of the two men. After half an hour here, you start to wonder what might have happened. No growl of Bruno's outboard motor, no familiar shouts across the water. just the occasional sound of river dolphins breaking the surface of the waterway below the port. They waited anxiously.
Occasionally checking the time on their phones. We waited until 10 o'clock, and they didn't come. I already had a feeling that something padded happened, so we got the boats ready and started the search. Tataku and Orlando jumped into their boat, and as Orlando pulled away from the riverbank, with one hand on the steering wheel, phone clutched in the other, he began sending WhatsApp messages to his team. People aren't always on time in Brazil, but Bruno wasn't your average Brazilian.
and this was not your average place. This region, the Javari Valley, is one of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth. It's a vast, seemingly never-ending expanse of rainforest. pushed right up against Brazil's most distant border with Colombia and Peru, and home to the highest concentration of uncontacted indigenous tribes anywhere. People who have little or absolutely no interaction with the outside world.
Bruno's job was to protect those tribes, and that was a very dangerous job because it put him in conflict with some very dangerous people. Illegal gold miners, loggers, poachers and organised criminal gangs. These regions' endless rivers are used to move drugs into this country and from here to the rest of the world. As coca production in Peru has soared in recent years.
The Javari and the surrounding region has become one of the world's biggest drug smuggling routes. Billions of dollars worth of cocaine moves over the borders into Brazil, along the winding Amazon rivers towards the Atlantic. From there... The cocaine crosses the ocean to Europe. The police told us that in the last four months they have captured more than three tons of cocaine. Sometimes these drugs are stuffed inside the corpses of giant Amazonian river fish. Their bellies slit open.
and stitched back together. Sometimes the drug traffickers build their own submarines that disappear beneath the river and don't surface again until they reach Portugal or Spain. is a battlefield disguised as a wilderness that is what had brought both dom and bruno here and now they disappeared I'm Tom Phillips, The Guardian's Latin America correspondent, and this is Missing in the Amazon, a six-part podcast series. Episode one, The Disappearance.
That's me, recording a frantic voice note to a contact in the Amazon. I'm asking about Dom. We were both based in Brazil and both reported for The Guardian. I think my voice sounds shaky. Dom and I worked on dozens of stories together over the years and shared countless bylines. We have almost identical names, so many people wrongly thought that we were the same person.
or brothers, or that he was my dad. People even used to joke that we should form a Brazilian country music duo, Dom e Tom. Dom had started his career reporting on dance music. But over the years had become an environmental journalist, obsessed with investigating the destruction of the Amazon. Leaving most of the forest standing so the satellite imagery can't spot it, and then burn it. In fact, he was writing a book about it.
and this trip to the Javadi was reserved for that. We'd been in touch a few days before he set off. It was my 40th birthday, and I was down in the dumps. Have a wonderful day, loads of happiness, he texted me. Thanks, man. Forty. I wrote back. In his ever-optimistic way, Dom replied, Forty years young. Forties is a great decade. And then he vanished. As I was having these frantic back and forths over WhatsApp, my guardian colleague John Watts, who actually lives in the Amazon,
was also hearing the news about Dom. I immediately was extremely worried. So I called his wife, Ale, and that was one of the most... difficult calls I think I've ever made. Because I didn't really know what I was telling them except that Dom was missing. They are lost. And we have no idea what happened. And it was a shock, so huge shock. And I said, my goodness, what will I do? I really believed he was alive. Beatriz Matos, Bruno's wife.
and the mother of his two young sons got a call too. Beatriz's words are also being spoken here by an actor. At first, she wasn't too worried, she says. Or at least she tried not to be. Maybe they had a problem with the boat. Maybe they're stranded somewhere on the river shore. Maybe they've been attacked.
and got away somehow and they are hiding somewhere. Things happen in Dejavari. Bruno is strong. Even if somebody shot him, even if he was out there right now losing blood, I still believed he was alive. And he was still alive. Soon, the disappearance of Dom and Bruno was international news. Images of their faces broadcast globally. Dom, in his late 50s, with his bright blue eyes and graying hair. Bruno...
Early 40s. Tall, rugged, but kind-looking, with rectangular glasses and a bushy, salt-and-pepper beard. Fear is growing over the safety of British journalist Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, a protector of Brazilian indigenous communities. After the pair were reported missing Sunday, we were both part of the Amazon jungle known as the Javari Vows. My brother Dom has been living in Brazil with his Brazilian wife.
He loves the country and cares deeply about the Amazon and the people there. We are really worried about him and urge the authorities in Brazil to do all they can. It was my job to report on what was happening. But I also wanted to help with the search for my friend, in any way I could. From Rio, it was going to take several days to get to the Javadi, so I needed to get on a plane as soon as possible.
Back on the river, the search party had grown. Orlando and Tapaku were now accompanied by a dozen indigenous men and a couple of local police officers. As night began to fall, they passed a tiny riverside hamlet called Ladario. right by the spot where Bruno and Dom had been sleeping the night before they disappeared. And as they got closer, they began to hear loud music.
blasting from one of the houses. There was a party going on there. They were partying. They were celebrating. It felt jarring, this scene. Off, somehow, Orlando thought. By now, surely everyone along the river must have known that the men were missing. Were these people glad? That might have seemed crazy, but tensions had been rising for months, specifically between Bruno and a gang of poachers.
who lived in a handful of riverbank communities near Ladario. They made a living from invading the nearby protected indigenous territory and stealing fish and turtles from its rivers and lakes. And Bruno had been trying to stop them. We were getting in the way of their operation. We'd confiscate their equipment and setting on fire, stop them from fishing inside the indigenous land.
which would infuriate them. Some members of the search team wanted to march right up to the house with the music blasting and confront the people there. Maybe, but the policemen said no. That's not a good idea. We don't know how many people are there. They've been drinking. It would be dangerous. Finally, four days after Domabruno disappeared, I arrived on the river. That's a video I recorded on my phone.
as I reached the floating search base on the Itaquai. Orlando, sporting a camouflaged T-shirt, is perched on the bow of a wooden boat, briefing us all. His black jeans and trainers are spattered with mud. a roll-up cigarette smouldering in his hand. He looks weary. I'd been to the region before, but I hadn't really prepared myself for quite how difficult this surge was going to be.
The terrain is daunting. One minute it's baking hot and the next minute these huge black clouds roll in and you'll be soaking wet. And then at night time the temperature plummets. There are alligators, flesh-eating fish, there are snakes. You're trying to navigate the boat through areas of flooded forest, clearing your path with machetes, cutting your way through vines and branches, clambering over trunks that have fallen into the water.
or that maybe someone has deliberately chopped down to block our path. There are spiky trees that if you brush up against them will cut a big chunk out of your arm and you really don't want to get an infected wound in the middle of the Javali jungle. By now, there are three or four boats of men, mostly indigenous guys, Bruno's colleagues, combing different parts of the jungle. Maybe five or six military policemen, a few dozen soldiers, although at first I never saw them.
One helicopter. Almost nothing else from central government. And the search area was huge. The Javerie Valley is the size of Scotland. I just kept thinking. Where the hell is everyone? Bruno wasn't the only one who made enemies over the years. Dom's reporting had rubbed a fair few people up the wrong way too. And that included the far-right president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. It took him days to respond to the disappearance. And when he finally did, he basically said it was their own fault.
It was an ill-advised adventure, he says. So this absence of help on the ground, I don't know, it began to feel deliberate. And Dom and Bruno's family felt that too. I'm asking Beatriz here what she felt when she heard Bolsonaro's words. Disgust, hate, anger, absolute desperation. I felt sick. I wanted to punch him in the face.
I don't know. I never felt that way about anybody in my life before. Have you not got a soul? Have you not got a heart? This is Dom's brother, Gareth, answering the same question about Bolsonaro. What's the matter with you? I just don't understand what kind of person you are. You're just a heartless monster. I made a video asking... for the government to, how can I say this, intensify the search? To accelerate or to intensify the search. Yeah, intensify the search.
She begs the federal government to act and calls Dom the love of her life. Well, we knew we had to make as much of a fuss as possible so that the Brazilian government would feel obliged to put real resources in the search. My Guardian colleague John Watts again. So we started a WhatsApp group with all of Don's journalist friends and started to mobilize.
um as many other people as we could and get the word out on social media and it started to work it we had tweets from Richarlison, the Brazilian footballer, from senior politicians in Brazil, the United States, the UK and several other countries. There were these advertising trucks in Hollywood bearing the images of Dom and Bruno with a message flashing on the screen, threatened, now missing, where are Dom and Bruno?
Where are Dom and Bruno? That's what Orlando was asking everyone. He and the search team stopped at every village along the river shore. Someone must have seen something. But in a place like the Javari... where a lot of money is being made from drug trafficking and poaching. Most people don't like to talk. But finally, Orlando says, there was an exception. A story that really disturbed me. A fisherman had seen Doma Bruno's boat coming down the river at first light on Sunday morning.
Towards the pole where Orlando and Tatako had been waiting. Exactly as planned. But this guy told Orlando. Dom and Bruno were not alone on the room. So this guy says, I saw Dom and Bruno passing by, and right behind them, he said that there was these two men going after them. Men he says he didn't recognize in a black speedboat. They were being followed.
You feel very alone and exposed out there on these vast, sparsely populated rivers. You can go for hours without seeing another soul. Occasionally we'd pass another boat and there'd be a strange mood. Sinister, almost. Did the people on board know anything about what had happened, I wondered? Was that the boat that had been seen following Bruno and Dom? What are they doing there?
And what do they think we are doing there? For the police, though, the speedboat was just one lead. One person's account. Maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn't. And on the search, too, people were divided. Some people were convinced we were looking for the bodies of our friends. Some thought they'd never be found. Maybe Dom and Bruno had seen something they shouldn't have on the river.
and had been taken across the border into Peru by drug traffickers who wanted to silence them. Others, including myself, still had hoped we'd find them. I imagined that in a few days, Don might roll up on the riverbank, stinking of sweat. and with a big beard, but alive and desperate for a cold beer. I spent a lot of time on the search with a man called Benin Machis from the Machis people. He'd worked with Bruno. Bruno was his mentor.
Benin said that Bruno had spent his life defending the indigenous people of Javari and that now it was the turn of the indigenous to defend Bruno. So whatever had happened to him and to Dom... Whether they were alive or dead, they were never going to give up looking for them. And so on we looked.
Sometimes, as we searched patches of flooded forest, you'd hear something moving around amongst the trees. And motors would be cut to try and hear anything that might be out there. Oh, my God. What was that? Everyone was so on edge. so paranoid. Distant noises in the forest sounded like gunshots. Another day, Benin spotted a group of black grubus, vultures.
clattering through the branches just ahead of us. And we thought that might be an indication that maybe there was a dead human below. Our boat edged closer. Felt sick. But it wasn't our friends. It was just a dead alligator that was lying there and was being picked up by the vultures as it putrefied in the jungle heat.
By now, everyone was exhausted. Often, I wasn't even sure what day of the week it was. We ate, searched and tried to grab a few hours' sleep in hammocks or on the floors of the wooden boats. Someone playing the piano in the middle of the rainforest. Some of us started feeling ill and losing our voices. Four o'clock.
On Saturday, six days after Dom and Bruno had disappeared, I learned something that maybe I shouldn't have been told. Something that was being closely guarded so as not to compromise the police investigation. I was on a boat with two policemen, wearing flak jackets and carrying the kind of assault rifles cops use to hunt drug traffickers back home in Rio. And one of them said something under his breath as we passed a stretch of riverbank. We think this is the place. The untrained eye.
would have no idea at all that anything had happened there. To me, it just looked like a stretch of partially submerged riverbank, reeds and these spindly trees protruding from the water. But to one of the indigenous men on the search... Something was amiss. There are these scratches on the trees, these very specific marks. Marks they decided were quite fresh.
and could not have been made by an animal. They looked like they'd been made by something mechanized, like the propeller of a boat, the propeller of Bruno's boat.
Well, the boat must have come crashing into the riverbank at speed, and the propeller was still on, so it sliced into the branches. They searched the area, and even though the propeller marks... suggested it had once been there there was now no sign of bruno's boat someone must have moved it why would they do that and just off the riverbank in the thick mud they found something else Footprints. Looking back, I can see that my optimism was naive.
Wishful thinking. But now, it was clear, even to me. Dom and Bruno weren't lost. They'd been ambushed. Three years have now passed since the disappearance of Dom and Bruno, and we now know much more about what happened during those days and the days that followed. And yet still, so many unanswered questions remain. This podcast is going to try and answer some of them.
It's the story of what happened to Dom and Bruno, told for the first time by the people closest to them. And it's the story of what Dom and Bruno cared so much about, the indigenous people of the Amazon, the invasion against them. and their resistance, and the battle for the future of the world's biggest rainforest, something which matters to every single one of us. He had this incident that was very scary for him and really changed the way that he...
thought about things. One of the guys at the bar right outside of his house said, hey, you're that guy that Bolsonaro told off, right? And he'd be in the middle of the Amazon doing a reporting trip, picking a place that... doesn't really have even consistent internet access. And then people go, I know you. You're that journalist. You're that journalist that Bolsonaro destroyed. Yeah, you're the one that was talking about taking the Amazon from us. This is The Guardian.
Join me, Gok Wan, at breakfast. With me, Harriet Scott. We're on Magic Radio with Nicky Chapman, Gabby Roslin and me, Mel Gedroyd. And what a team we are. We're all on Magic Radio, playing the best variety from the 80s to now. It's glow time on Magic Radio.