Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World's Last Frontier

Deep in the heart of the Amazon, the city of Rondon do Pará, Brazil, lived for decades in the shadow of land barons, or fazendeiros, who maintained control of the region through unscrupulous land grabs & egregious human rights violations. They razed & burned the jungle, expelled small-scale farmers & Indigenous tribes from their lands, & treated their farmhands as slaves—all with impunity. 

The only true opposition came from Rondon’s small but robust farmworkers’ union, led by the charismatic Dezinho, who fought to put power back into the hands of the people who called the Amazon home. But when Dezinho was assassinated in cold blood, it seemed the farmworkers’ struggle had come to a violent & fruitless end. What no one anticipated was that this event would bring forth an unlikely hero: Dezinho’s widow. 

Against great odds, & at extreme personal risk, Maria Joel, now a single mother of 4 young children, used her ingenuity & unwavering support from union members to bring her husband’s killer to account in court. Her campaign gained unexpected momentum, helping to bring international attention to the dire situation in Rondon, from Brazil’s president Lula to international celebrities & civil rights groups. 

Maria Joel’s fight for justice had far-reaching implications: it unearthed a chilling world of corruption & lawlessness rooted in Brazil’s quest to turn the largest rain forest on earth into an economic frontier. As more details came out, it began to look increasingly likely that Dezinho’s killer, a reluctant & inexperienced gunman, was just 1 piece of a larger criminal consortium, w/ ties leading all the way up to 1 of the region’s most powerful & notorious fazendeiros of all.