Response Caravan: Indigenous people launch a symbolic journey through Brazil’s soy corridor to denounce deforestation

The Caravana da Resposta (Response Caravan) set off on November 4, 2025 from the epicenter of Brazil’s agribusiness frontier in Sinop, Mato Grosso. This marked the beginning of a 14-day mobilisation to unite more than 300 Indigenous peoples, Afro-Brazilian quilombolas, riverine communities and small farmers on a land-and-river journey to Belem, Para, where COP30 will be held later this month.  

Traveling along the 'soy corridor', an export route connecting the Cerrado savannas with the Amazon basin, the caravan transports agroecological foods while protesting against the harmful impact of highways, ports, waterways and the proposed Ferrograo railway. According to organisers, these developments are contributing to deforestation, pollution and land disputes in two of the world's most vital biomes.

“We’re leaving from the place where soy is born to show that its impact doesn’t end here,” said Vivi Borari, communicator and activist with the Tapajós Vivo Movement in western Para. “What begins in the Cerrado destroys rivers and ways of life all the way down to the Tapajos, where barges carry this soy to export markets.”  

The Ferrograo railway and the broader Arco Norte logistics system “risk uniting the destruction of two biomes — the Cerrado and the Amazon — under a single economic model that excludes people and contaminates rivers”, noted Borari.  

Indigenous people from the Myky, Kayabi, Kayapo, Huni Kuin, and Panara communities will be among those joining at Sinop. Montirenti Kayabi, a honey producer from the Sobradinho village in the Xingu basin, is carrying 130 litres of Kayabi Indigenous honey for the Solidarity Kitchen at the People’s Summit during COP30.

“Our honey comes from the forest, but millions of bees die every year from pesticides used on soy and corn fields,” he said. “The forest that feeds us is being poisoned. We want to show that another model of production is possible — one that respects life, bees and the territory.”  

In Peixoto de Azevedo, Kayapo leaders associated with the Raoni Institute boarded the caravan to strengthen the link between the Xingu and Tapajos movements. “Soy expansion already threatens our lands, but Ferrograo would open new routes for deforestation, more ports and more poison,” said Ikrore Kayapo. “Governments call it ‘green logistics’, but there’s no sustainable economy when the price is the end of the forest.”  

The caravan recalled older traumas as well. Panara leaders boarding in Guaranta do Norte evoked memories of the 1970s BR-163 highway, which displaced their people. “When they built the road, we lost part of our territory and our people,” said Peranko Panara. “Now they want to build the railway along that same scar. It’s history repeating itself — the same wound opening again. Their progress is not our future.”  

By morning of November 5, the caravan reached Trairao (Para), where farmers from the Trairao Agroecological Network hosted a communal breakfast. “While agribusiness poisons the soil, we show that it’s possible to feed people with real food,” said farmer Francislourdes Silva. “What we’re sending to Belem isn’t just food — it’s resistance itself: Beans, flour and honey grown by hands that are cultivating without destroying.”  

A study by the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies showed that from 2010 to 2022, 68 per cent of public transport investments in the Amazon were allocated to export corridors like BR-163 and the Tapajos–Arco Norte route. This facilitated an increase in soy exports through northern ports from 16 per cent of Brazil's total exports in 2010 to 47 per cent in 2022. “What they call a ‘grain corridor’ is, in truth, a corridor of social injustice,” said Borari.

Next, the caravan will head to the Munduruku territories in Itaituba, where soy ports have triggered pollution and fishing bans. “Our rivers are dying. Our fish feed on poisoned soy, and we can’t eat them anymore,” said Alessandra Korap, Munduruku leader. “But the Tapajos is ours. We won’t let the Ferrograo or the waterways destroy it.”  

The Caravana da Resposta will conclude its journey in Belem on November 12, joining the People’s Summit and People’s COP events running alongside COP30.