Brazil's "Middle Lands"

A tree burns on a farm owned by the Mutran Family near Maraba, an area close to Brazil's "middle lands" in the south of Brazil's Amazonian state of Para. In October 2004, the Brazilian Federal government expropriated another nearby Mutran family ranch because of several irregularities, including the use of slave labor and deforestation. The Amazonian problems of deforestation, wood trafficking, habitat destruction, slave labor, land grabbing, and violence are all intertwined as colonization of the region accelerates. Many who come to carve an existence from the forest believe that the Amazon exists to be exploited and point to the USA and Europe as examples. In many ways the federal government promotes this situation with rural projects, highway construction and agrarian reform, while at the same time that it tries to stop it through the environmental agency IBAMA or the Federal Police.(AustralFoto/Douglas Engle)

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