The third episode of the series opens with beautiful drone shots of the Iguazu National Park in the Brazilian state of Parana. Modern scenes of the world’s visually and acoustically most powerful sounding natural sites known for its massive waterfalls and its surrounding subtropical rainforest with over 2,000 species of vascular plants and typical wildlife of the region: tapirs, giant anteaters, howler monkeys, ocelots, jaguars and Caymans. 

Amid all these sights and sounds, the focus narrows to an outdoorsy Latina -Rafaela Moura- helping the villagers make food over a wood burning stove, accompanied by her adult guide, making their way through chaos across the alleyways to a very different-looking segment of the rainforest where the Munduruku hear chainsaws making loud noises, fires burning, loggers screaming and landowners talking while pointing towards the homes along the river.  

Our main character, Rafaela Moura a Brazilian-born women who lived near the Tocantins River in the amazon as a young girl then moved to America and became a policymaker for climate change. Now, she’s back in Brazil risking her life, partnering with local reporters and nonprofits to get to the bottom of the climate crimes and failed environmental policy debacle that is putting the Amazon Rainforest at risk. Although she works for EPA, this project is not in any way an EPA project. We learn that this is a return to native roots of the main character who is undertaking this exploratory journey completely on her ownoutside of her job.

She passes a group of businessmen searching for resources and foresters dressed in soccer jerseys; she stops to talk to the villagers — and her Portuguese dialect is impeccable.  

We see impactful images of how some of the worst environmental crimes to date that has devastated the rainforest as an interview with the tribal leader Sonia Guajajara – Leadership of APIB – Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil) tells us about the 2021 filing of genocide charges against Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro for the death of 1,162 indigenous people from 163 indigenous communities in the country due to the explicit refusal to demarcate new lands. We see an Aerial vista of Brazil, as our title fills the screen; “Fail To Protect – Brazil”. 

She is overcome with emotion as she revisits a familiar tribal village where, she tells the group around her, her entire family lived out the military regime years in Tucurui building the hydroelectric dam in the 1980s. This village was a “Protected Indigenous village” (the chief, most likely, a renowned tribal leader will be determined during Development) — one of the nearly 300,000 who fled to the city to avoid Bolsonaro’s genocide.  Her story, and those of a handful of others, will transport viewers inside an unbelievable true piece of human history that is part of the rainforest’s long, complicated association with human rights violations and environment crimes all around the world.  

Here, our story plunges into the dark days of the Military’s rise to power, culminating in Manaus, when attacks were encouraged on Indigenous tribes, homes and villages.  These chilling acts were but a part of the larger plan to uproot and eliminate the entire indigenous people and culture from Brazil’s future. Which was accelerated under Brazil’s military dictatorship which oversaw the construction of the Trans Amazonian Highway. Further uprooting and assassinating at least 8,350 Indigenous people during the dictatorship. Which led to many in the Amazon revolting against the military regime’s development efforts on their lands. 

Mythical ‘El Dorado’, a place in the Amazon allegedly overflowing with god and riches,  Rafaela walks up the steps of the Amazon river. Looking out at a beautiful, but ruined site. Rafaela is set on finding out how El Dorado, became a place of experimentation, then a haven for European settlers like Francisco de Orellana one of the first Europeans to ever set foot in the Amazon. Now, Rafaela wants to comprehend how people from vastly different cultures, languages, and religions interacted, positively and negatively with indigenous communities and the environment. 

She begins discovering atrocities after atrocities, several hundred every month, well in excess of normal quotas, and clearly in violation of human rights and Federal rules. Eventually, she gets stripped of her privileges and forcefully removed from her location. She was shamed by her policeman and regulatory superiors as well as some of her peers for her actions (which may be why she waited 35 years of her entire life to go back to the Village).  

That evening, Rafaela digests her findings. She tells us how she feels about these discoveries. Fired up, she calls one of the local partners to speak on the topic. Here, she can show her heart wrenching interviews with the villagers and present her qualitative analysis of the issue at hand. Some of the officials are filled with excuses and propaganda. Rafaela shines the light on how 50 years of environmental protection has failed to protect its indigenous communities and asks for rectification, answers and solutions to amend these preposterous acts bringing to light evidence from the Chico Mendes trial and assassinations.