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The Tapajós de Fato editorial team has spent part of this year setting the agenda and seeking funding to cover the 2026 elections.Threats and episodes of violence led the Santarém website, in western Pará, to abandon the project before the first report.
Created in 2020 during the pandemic's denial wave, Tapajós de Fato is an independent media outlet, a member ofCitizen Network InfoAmazoniaWhich has become a reference in journalism done in the Amazon, denouncing social and environmental violations. But,In this year's campaign, the editorial team will not be addressing regional issues, proposing solutions, or investigating candidates' ties to mining, agriculture, and large-scale projects.
"When it's better not to speak, for a matter of survival, in fact, it's society that loses," says project coordinator João Paulo Serra, 27.
The decision not to cover this year's elections was taken after a series of threats that showed there was no security to work.In the 2022 presidential election, a decapitated cat's head appeared in a vacant lot where the team parked their reporting van. Next to it, a note bore the name of Marcos Wesley Pedroso, the founder of Tapajós de Fato, and warned that he would be the next victim. Days before, the vehicle's four tires had been slashed.
In another incident, a communicator was attacked with a knife and managed to dodge several blows. The aggressor was not identified, and Tapajós de Fato was unable to determine if the target was to kill her, intimidate the newsroom, or if the episode had no connection to journalistic work.
Violence did not prevent coverage of that election.In 2022, Tapajós de Fato interviewed progressive candidates active in the western region of Pará and debated regional issues such as mining, deforestation, climate change, and the rights of indigenous peoples.
It also covered a meeting where social movements demanded commitments to agroecology and family farming. After the vote, it analyzed who Pará had elected and the relationship of the new representatives with Amazonian agendas. The team also went to the streets to cover Bolsonaro's acts in front of a military unit.
However, in 2024, insecurity led the site to suspend coverage of municipal elections. "We decided to step back again in 2026," laments Marcos.
"I am afraid of random people on the street, at the supermarket," he says. "There was a time when I would sleep and, if I heard a dog barking in the middle of the night, I would wake up with a racing heart," he details. Marcos left Santarém due to threats and after a diagnosis of depression.
The cases were reported to the Civil Police and the Public Ministry, but so far there is no conclusive information, and therefore no identified perpetrators or evidence linking the acts. Nevertheless,journalists on the team decided to leave their homes and moved into hotels during the most tense periods.Marcos has changed his address six times in the last three years. And João Paulo had to stay away from his mother for a year.
Tapajós de Fato: a popular origin and the formation of young communicators.
The idea of founding Tapajós de Fato emerged at a meeting of rural communicators in 2019, when Marcos was working in the communication of the Santarém Rural Union. In July 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he and another journalist created the social media accounts of the outlet. Later, they launched the website.
It was at home that Marcos learned to demand rights and to organize to defend them, an experience that would later guide the journalism of Tapajós de Fato. His grandparents led the Rural Workers' Union of Belterra, a city 50 kilometers from Santarém.
Marcos lived with his grandparents in Aramanaí, a community in Belterra on the banks of the Tapajós River. Since the 2000s, the paving of the BR-230 has brought changes to the region.BR-163And the opening of the Cargill terminal in Santarém transformed the western region of Pará into a grain export corridor and an agricultural frontier in the Amazon. Crops advanced into the Planalto Santareno, reaching the neighborhoods of the community. There he heard that papaya had failed to thrive and that honey and andiroba production had decreased due to agrochemicals.
The Santa Planalto region includes Santarém, Belterra, and Mojuí dos Campos, encompassing family farmers, quilombola communities, and indigenous peoples. Between 2014 and 2023, the area dedicated to soybean and corn farming in these three municipalitiesIt jumped from 66,000 to 217,000 hectares.According to the IBGE, communities have become islands among crops.
Gay and Candomblé priest, Marcos, has considered a career in the Catholic priesthood and even attended seminary. Later, he studied advertising and entered the communications field through commercial media: he worked in the marketing department of TV Tapajós, a Globo affiliate in Santarém, and wrote for G1.
But his desire was to practice journalism focused on the communities in the region, with the freedom to investigate who concentrates money and power. By creating Tapajós de Fato, he chose a model that did not depend on the financing of companies that, sooner or later, could appear in his reports.
During the pandemic, the website reported on denialism and issues in the Lower Amazon, such as oxygen shortages. Later, it expanded its agenda to include land conflicts, mining, soybeans, climate, and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Among the notable coverage is that which addressed the impacts on the PAE (Agroextractive Settlement Project) Lago Grande, when the site produced reports, podcasts, and the campaignDon't Give Up Your LandBetween the Amazon and Arapiun rivers, the area is a public land for collective use. Its plots cannot be sold individually, but they face land tenure pressures and illegal logging and mining extractions.
The researchers Maria Cleidejane Esperidião and Thayane Guimarães, coordinator of networks at InfoAmazonia, accompanied the editorial team for a week in June 2024.studyFrom the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ, as abbreviated in English), which investigated innovative journalism strategies in Brazil to combat misinformation.
The research highlighted the method of “deep listening,” where reporters from Tapajós de Fato spent days immersed in the daily lives of traditional communities in the region. In gatherings of 5 to 15 people, the reporters listened to stories of higher temperatures, earlier drying of açaí berries, and trees producing less oil. The accounts were turned into brochures. Without internet, audio files on USB drives were taken by boat to be played on loudspeakers.
Another initiative of the website is the training of young communicators. The ICFJ noted that Tapajós de Fato helped the Tapajós and Arapiuns Indigenous Council to structure a communication department and a quilombola movement to create its own core.
The threats occur in the region with the fewest media outlets in the country. There are 1,264 journalistic vehicles in the North (9.2% of the country).According to data from the (a short form for the institution/organization, keeping the acronym), ...News AtlasAs of 2025, out of 450 municipalities, 193 had no communication means, and 144 had one or two. Santarém is not considered a news desert, but Marcos states that traditional press does not cover the territory with diverse viewpoints.
Headlines about land issues sparked a series of threats.
Intimidation against Tapajós Fact increased in 2021, during reporting on the illegal sale of land from the Lago Grande settlement project. After that, death threats came via phone and message.At the time, the Syndicate of Journalists of Pará, the Order of Brazilian Lawyers, and social organizations issued aSupport note.
The old newsroom was in a house without air conditioning, so they had to keep the window open during work hours. One afternoon, a man stopped outside and mimicked a cell phone conversation. For five minutes, he shouted that anyone speaking ill of the miners needed to be killed. João also noticed unfamiliar cars in front of the headquarters. "It was very strange to always have a car parked there in front."
The tension reached its peak in 2022. First, a communicator who arrived from the interior had their cell phone stolen. That night, after the team played volleyball, a journalist was returning home with their girlfriend and a friend when all three were robbed by men in a car. The local police located the suspects and recovered the belongings of the two companions, but not those of the communicator.
The following day, an attempted knife attack took place 30 meters from the headquarters. A threat incident report was filed, but the case did not progress. That night, as the team left the newsroom around 8 p.m., they realized they were being followed by a car. Approximately five members spent the following weeks in hotels, as they did not feel safe at home.
After the elections, while Tapajós de Fato covered the Bolsonaro camps in front of the barracks, João received a call that he interpreted as intimidation. That morning, the website had published the image of an elderly man dressed in an Army uniform and presented him as a fake soldier.
Hours later, a woman called and demanded that the publication be deleted, arguing that her father was unwell. Before explaining the reason for the call, she recited the full name of the journalist and warned: "I got your contact from a trusted person."
John offered the newspaper's email for a correction or right to respond, but according to him, the woman ignored the proposal. "It gave me the feeling that these people knew a lot more about my life than I could have imagined," he said.
Partners helped install cameras and an electric fence at the newsroom and rent a pickup truck, so reporters could move around more securely and without relying on third-party transportation. As the car couldn't enter the village where Marcos lived, it was parked on a nearby lot. That's where the damaged tires and the cat's head with the note appeared.
Marcos moved in 2023 and started his master's degree. In the new city, he says he has already received messages about his clothes and his location on campus.
Before traveling to COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Marcos posted a photo wearing a t-shirt with slogans from trade unionist Margarida Maria Alves: "I don't run from struggle" and "It's better to die in struggle than to die of hunger." An Acre number called him: "The publication you made on Instagram might be a prophecy for your life," the voice on the other end of the line said.
The incident occurred shortly after the website was honored at theChico Mendes Resistance Prizein Acre. Created by the Chico Mendes Committee, the award recognizes activists, organizations, and movements that defend forest peoples, environmental justice, and human rights. It is named after the rubber tapper and trade unionist assassinated in 1988 in Xapuri, Acre, after confronting farmers and fighting against forest destruction.
Marcos sought out theLand of RightsA popular legal advice organization in Santarém. The entity provides legal support and psychological assistance from the first threats. Lawyers and advisors have become friends. "This helped us a lot," he says.
In 2025, dog's paws severed appeared in front of his house. He doesn't know if it was related to the other incidents.
The most recent case occurred in June this year, when Marcos found his car destroyed in front of his house and thought it was an accident. Four days later, he recovered the camera footage and saw that at dawn, two cyclists circled the block. Before the collision, one of them pointed his phone to film the house and the vehicle. At 4:28 a.m., a car drove the wrong way, hit a parked car, and fled. Marcos suspects the crash was a lure to get him out of the house and set up an ambush.
The hypothesis, according to him, is that the "accident" was motivated by denouncements from the site against the misuse of agrochemicals. In recent years, Tapajós de Fato has published several episodes of contamination involving students and teachers.Various incidents of intoxication in the western region of Pará.Numerous cases of contamination involving students and teachers.The figures increased by 545% in five years.In May, the website and 19 other organizationsThey delivered to Deputy Maria do Carmo (PT)A proposal to limit sprayings near communities, schools, and rivers.
Attacks made John Paul skip visiting his own mother.
João Paulo joined the website in 2021, while studying Literature at the Federal University of Western Pará. There, he learned to report on climate, agriculture, and most notably, the Ferrogrão.
The text provided is incomplete, so here is the translation based on what was given: "The article:"933-kilometer railwayThe project is planned to connect Sinop, in Mato Grosso, to Miritituba, a port district of Itaituba, in Pará. It will integrate the North Arc, with the soybean and corn corridor along BR-163 and the Tapajós River being one of the main outflow routes. From Miritituba, the grains are shipped by barge to terminals like the Cargill terminal in Santarém, at the confluence with the Amazon River.
In a video, João asked residents what they knew about the railway. According to him, right-wing profiles tampered with the video using artificial intelligence and distorted the interviews. His personal account was also exposed. "They said, 'This is his profile, go there'. It was the crowd coming towards me," he recalls.
João closed his profile and stopped visiting his mother out of fear of revealing to his pursuers where she lived. "The main damage is the way we live with our families," laments João Paulo.
Articles stopped being published; reporters reduced their appearances and closed their personal profiles. Marcos became the "lightning rod" for the attacks. The team, with over 20 people in 2022, now has seven. The lack of funding also explains the reduction.
Without Tapajós de Fato in the election coverage, João Paulo knows who will fill the space. "When we stop talking about a topic, someone else will talk about it in their way," he assesses. For him, a newsroom unable to cover the elections for security reasons reveals "a huge failure of the state at all levels and in all instances."