Toxic Amazon: VICE Investigates the Da Silva Murders (Trailer)

Watch TOXIC: Amazon on VICE.COM: www.vice.com Thomas Morton and the VICE cameras are back for the newest addition to the award winning environmental online series Toxic. Following their investigative documentaries on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the World’s Most Polluted City: Linfen China, VICE turns the lens onto the complicated and deadly knot of entanglements of politics, culture and history, environmental causes, and logging profits over what is commonly referred to the Amazon. Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, an environmental activist, and his wife, Maria, were killed In the trademark style of contracted executions. The killers shot Ze Claudio, and his wife in the heads as they rode home. The assassins removed an ear from each of them, a trademark and scare tactic used against the poor pro-Amazon public. Why were they murdered? Ze Claudio was an outspoken proponent of the sustainable use of the Amazon and a major opposition figure against the modernist ruralistas. Had Jose and Maria become to problematic to profits? One poignant example of the brutality in the war for the Amazon occurred while the lower house of Brazil’s government was in session debating logging legislation, the day the de Silvas were murdered. A representative took to the floor to announce the tragic deaths of the de Silvas. The response by his colleagues? Upon hearing the news of the murders while debating Amazon legislation , a round of booing erupted from the large section of agribusiness …
Video Rating: 5 / 5