Bolsonaro’s Words Are the Sparks as Brazil’s Farmers Burn Amazonia
Far from authority, they feel freshly empowered to clear the land with fire
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Down a dusty road an hour outside the Brazilian city of Porto Velho, Irany Paradela used a flimsy rake to clear a charred plot. The fire she and her husband set “became a real beast,” the 48-year-old homesteader said. “We had no way to put it out.”
The size may have been unintended, but it wasn’t entirely unwanted. “Sometimes you need to set a fire,” Paradela said. “Who has the machinery to clear the land?”