Government neglect, agricultural encroachment and illegal activities affecting the area preceded the creation of the Yanomami reserve in 1992. The first contacts between the Yanomami indigenous peoples and white men intermittently happened between the 1910s and 1940s; in the following two decades, such contacts increased due to religious missions in the region, road construction work and mining projects by the military regime in the area in the 1970s, during which the first reports of epidemics especially of flu, measles and whooping cough emerged linked to the decimation of entire Yanomami communities. Ever since, the region has suffered from being a hotspot for illegal activities, notably illegal mining, leading to mercury poisoning of several tribespeople, including infants.‘A war society doesn’t see’: the Brazilian force driving out mining gangs from Indigenous lands: An elite unit is on a mission to expel the illegal miners who devastated Yanomami territory during Bolsonaro’s presidency, Tom Phillips, The Guardian, 28 Feb 2023
