Inside the “world capital of açaí”: engine of the Amazon and target of the mafias

He açaí is the fashionable food and its world capital is Igarapé-Miri, a precarious city of the brazilian amazon who until recently lived in fear of the organized crimeattracted by the million-dollar business that revolves around this aphrodisiac fruit.

About 150 kilometers from Belém, where the Amazon Summit will be held this week, this town in the state of Pará is the faithful portrait of the urban centers of the Amazon jungle: fertile land, a vulnerable and unequal population, and poorer infrastructures. how deficient

“Welcome to Igarapé-Miri, the world capital of açaí”, reads a sign at the entrance to the municipality, whose origins date back to the 18th century and which takes its name from the homonymous river that bathes it, which in the Tupi language means ‘little path of canoes’.

Today it is the world’s largest producer of this essential berry for the inhabitants of Pará -they eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner- and that the rest of the world discovered two decades ago for its almost supernatural properties.

Here there are some 4,000 small and medium producers, who, according to the latest official data, harvest around 400,000 tons of açaí per year. In 2021, they generated 1.6 billion reais (US$330 million or US$300 million).

Eleven processing plants have also been installed that have made it possible, for example, to start selling açaí ice cream to Saudi Arabia.

Marco Noda, 42, is one of those thousands of farmers. The neighbors know him as El Japonés. His father, the son of Japanese immigrants, was one of the pioneers in seeing in açaí a “chance” lucrative.

“At that time (the 90s) there were no plantations, it was collected in the jungle”but “he decided to bet on açaí and started with 18 hectares”recounts.

Poverty and Inequality

A large amount of money circulates in Igarapé-Miri, but the social reality is different. Half of its 63,000 inhabitants are poor, according to official estimates.

Neglected, the city has an air of abandonment were it not for the açaí shops, identified by a red sign. There is one on every corner.

Neighbors also commented that insecurity has also been a serious problem and accused the mayor himself, Roberto Pina, of exercising power as a cacique.

The day organized crime arrived

The high rates of poverty coupled with the thriving açaí industry led organized crime to set its sights on Igarapé-Miri as part of its expansion throughout the Amazon, a strategic route for drug trafficking.

Antônio Francisco Pinheiro, 70 years old and an agronomist by profession, shares in a consortium 100 hectares of açaí palm trees that he mixes with cocoa, orange and cupuaçu crops. One day he received a message asking for a large sum of money under threat of kidnapping.

The telephone code was from Rio de Janeiro and the sender was CV, the acronym for Comando Vermelho, one of the most powerful factions in Brazil, born in Rio and which dominates drug trafficking in Pará.

A cell settled in Igarapé-Miri and began extorting açaí businessmen. They came to set up checkpoints at some entrances, according to some residents. There were also clashes with other gangs for control of the area, with brutal murders among them.

“We lived upheavals, with assaults, kidnappings and violence, until the regional government took measures and alleviated the situation”, pointed out Pinheiro, who commented that some colleagues “they had to pay 100,000 reais” (US$20,500) to be released.

Last June, the Brazilian authorities arrested three women and five men -two of whom were already in custody for other crimes- for extorting a dozen merchants and businessmen in the açaí branch, who today breathe easier.

Now they hope that Igarapé-Miri will definitively turn its back on crime with the Peace Factories project, an integrated program of the Government of Pará that plans to improve living conditions in the most precarious cities with new sports and cultural facilities, and technical training courses. .

“Projects are needed that take youth out of marginality”demands Pinheiro.

Source: EFE