Covered in red tattoos that mimic jaguar spots, an Indigenous person in the remote village of Nova Esperança in the Brazilian Amazon connects to TikTok and chuckles at a video titled “If I Were Rich.”

The Matsés community has made a leap into modernity with Starlink internet, a connection through the satellite constellation owned by American billionaire Elon Musk.

With the support of the local government, the signal recently reached the Javari Valley, where the most isolated indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest reside.

The residents of Nova Esperança gathered to witness the installation of the antenna and the solar panel that powers it. The process took less than 30 minutes, and workers used a ladder to place the equipment on the roof of the school.

More than 500 kilometers and three days by canoe from any urban area, the 200 inhabitants of this village will now have free access to the internet, a privilege in this remote region of northwest Brazil, located at the triple border with Peru and Colombia.

“Now we have dreams for the future: to train civil engineers, geologists, architects, lawyers, nurses, and more,” says Cesar Mayuruna, the only indigenous councilor of Atalaia do Norte, the closest municipality.

The connection, which already has around 50,000 users across Brazil, worries those who want to preserve ancestral traditions. It could also be used by criminals to exploit indigenous lands without permission.

The Matsés are one of the seven contacted peoples in the Javari Valley, the second-largest indigenous reservation in Brazil, where at least 19 indigenous groups still live in voluntary isolation.

As a nomadic and warrior people, they entered into communication with modernity in the 1970s. They still wear bone and ivory facial ornaments, hunt, and fish despite adopting Western clothing. The eldest members of the community have facial tattoos.

The residents who have phones—mostly young people who visit the city of Atalaia—can now connect to the internet for the first time.

Thanks to the internet, the Matsés in the area will be able to communicate without having to travel for days and nights in canoes.

For Bene Mayuruna, President of the General Organization of the Matsés People (OGM), it means being able to be in Atalaia do Norte, where he carries out his political responsibilities, without losing contact with his family in the village.

“Nova Esperança is very far away, access is difficult, communication is also difficult,” he notes.

In addition to education and official procedures, the internet should also facilitate the work of SESAI, the indigenous health agency that serves almost all of the Javari communities.

In case of emergency, such as snake bites, Starlink will provide a more reliable link than the village’s only radio station.

“Sometimes the radio doesn’t work, there is no battery or solar panel. So this is a big step forward,” celebrates Fabio Rodrigues, a nurse from SESAI.

However, some Matsés concerned about their traditions remain skeptical. As soon as the antenna was installed, the elders called a meeting to discuss the rules of use.

They decided on a complete ban on the service at night, with exceptions for teachers, healthcare workers, and community leaders. They also reserved the right to turn off the signal during hunting, fishing, and tribal ceremonies.

“The internet makes the youth lose interest in traditional activities, and then they won’t help when their mothers work in the crops. They don’t come because of their phones, as they watch videos, and that is very worrisome,” expresses Bene Mayuruna.

On the other hand, the community hopes that being online will bring security to the dangerous Javari River, where illegal fishermen, drug traffickers, and pirates regularly attack the indigenous people.

But criminals are also not oblivious to Musk’s technology: between February and July, the Brazilian environmental police (Ibama) seized 11 Starlink kits from illegal miners in the land of the Yanomami indigenous people, about 1,400 kilometers northeast of Javari.

The connection also faces maintenance issues, with generators and solar panels as the only sources of energy.

The Atalaia do Norte city council has committed to equipping all 62 villages in the Javari region, totaling almost 6,000 people, by the end of the year. With less than two years left until the next local elections, the internet also enters the local political game.

Meanwhile, some Matsés wonder what Musk’s interests are in the Amazon. Because if there’s one thing they’ve understood about Western society, says an elder from the village, it’s that “with the whites, nothing is free.”

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