“History will remember us as a resistance and as heroes, and the oil giants will be remembered as destroyers and polluters,” water defender Alexandre Anderson said, capturing the enduring conflict over Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay.
For decades, Guanabara Bay has served as the cultural bedrock, identity, and livelihood for local artisanal fishers. However, industrial waste, untreated sewage, and heavy operations from the oil and gas sector have transformed the body of water into an ecological sacrifice zone. According to Amnesty International, fishers in the region must navigate contaminated water, shrinking fishing areas, and rapidly declining fish populations while industrial polluters escape financial accountability for the environmental damage they generate.
Industrial Encroachment and the 2000 Pipeline Disaster
Artisanal fishing in the bay represents an entire way of life rather than a simple means of survival. Local fishers note that environmental degradation escalated sharply following the introduction of the region’s first oil refinery, which utilized nearby rivers for the illegal discharge of industrial sewage.
As fish stocks plummeted near the shore, fishers were forced to travel farther into open water using motorized wooden boats built by hand. This marginalization was met with a total lack of public communication or community consultation. At dawn on January 18, 2000, a major pipeline rupture triggered a massive oil leak that heavily contaminated the bay, displacing traditional fishers from their cultural and religious territories.
AHOMAR and Decades of Resistance
Faced with mounting devastation, local fishers organized in 2003 to establish the Associação Homens e Mulheres do Mar (Association of Men and Women of the Sea, or AHOMAR). By 2009, active community monitoring allowed the association to successfully remove two illegal oil installations that were occupying local waters and worsening regional contamination.
This activism came at a severe human cost. On May 22, 2009, AHOMAR treasurer Paulo César dos Santos Souza was beaten and shot in the head in front of his family. The following year, founding member Márcio Amaro was shot dead inside his home, and two additional artisanal fishers monitoring the bay were killed in 2012. Both initial murder cases remain unresolved, and leadership figures like Anderson continue to face sustained threats and assassination attempts.
Despite ongoing intimidation tied to local gas pipeline construction and industrial expansion, AHOMAR maintains its advocacy supported by international organizations like Amnesty International.
