“Violence and death threats against the guardians have been happening for years,” Sarah Shenker, a researcher with Survival International who knew Paulo Paulino, said

“There is a lot of impunity. The authorities are unwilling to protect the indigenous lands,” Shenker charged.

“Their racist words and genocidal, anti-indigenous proposals give a kind of green light.”

Greenpeace said the two men were “the most recent victims of a state that refuses to comply with what the constitution determines.”

Paulino Guajajara, who was in his twenties and leaves behind one son, told Reuters in an interview here on the reservation in September that protecting the forest from intruders had become a dangerous task, but his people could not give in to fear.