ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The journalist Dom Phillips was deep in a part of the Amazon rainforest known as the Javari Valley, halfway through writing his book about the Amazon, when he and his colleague, Bruno Pereira, were shot and killed, allegedly by men involved in an illegal fishing operation. Dom's widow, Alessandra Sampaio, told me she knew almost immediately that his unfinished book had to be completed.
ALESSANDRA SAMPAIO: After the funeral, it was so intense. And I think that my way to keep going, to keep alive, actually, it was finish this book.
SHAPIRO: That effort took three years. It involved a team of co-writers and editors, and now the book is out, called "How To Save The Amazon: A Journalist's Fatal Quest For Answers."
SAMPAIO: Dom was this person - before be a journalist, he was this person, very committed with people. He had the connection with people. He really liked to have a relationship with people.
SHAPIRO: The presence of indigenous people seems very important to Dom's project, to the finished book, to answering the question, how to save the Amazon? Can you tell me about that relationship he built and the relationship that you continue with Indigenous Amazonian people?
SAMPAIO: Yes. Indigenous around Brazil, not just in Amazon, especially in the Javari Valley - they say to me because I went to Javari Valley for three times, and at the first time I was there, one guy hugged me and said to me, now, you are part of our family - because Dom was part of our family because he died trying to protect us. So now we will take care of you, and you will take care of us. So I have this commitment with them. And they also say that Dom and Bruno became spirits of forest. So now, they continue protecting rainforest and its inhabitants.
SHAPIRO: Halfway through the book, there is a photograph of these two large crosses in the rainforest. And below the image, it says, Dom reached this far in drafting the book by the time of his murder on June 5, 2022. From this point on, his friends have worked with his plans and notes to complete the missing chapters.
SAMPAIO: This - for me, it was so hard to see and to read. In that time that I finished to read the Dom chapter, I realized that Dom was dead. Of course, did I know this, but it's another way to feel this again because I remember a lot, our conversations. And when this finish, it's something like - it stopped this - (crying) these memories. You know what I mean?
SHAPIRO: Yeah, you had something to pour your emotion and effort into to preserve his memory, and that project...
SAMPAIO: Yes.
SHAPIRO: ...Is now done.
SAMPAIO: Yes, there is his legacy, and this case tortured so many people.
SHAPIRO: One of the journalists who helped finish the book is Jonathan Watts. He remembers, after his friend was killed, asking, what can we do?
JONATHAN WATTS: And so the spirit of this was very much, this will be done. It was an act of defiance. So the instruction I gave to every contributor was, go to the places Dom went, talk to the people Dom talked to, look for the solutions that Dom was looking for. But in the end, have a dialogue with Dom. Have - try to get Dom involved. Use your memories of Dom. And I think because there was a - sort of a shared style and a shared approach, that instead of being very different voices for each chapter, it sort of comes together in a - kind of a polyphonic whole where all the different voices actually come together in unison.
SHAPIRO: It's clear from reading the book that the task would have been easier if his handwriting were a bit more legible.
WATTS: (Laughter) Yes. Just about every contributor pointed out how much of a challenge it was to decipher his scrawl.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about how this translated specifically to your chapter. You write the last chapter in the book, where you try to actually answer the question that the book's title - "How To Save The Amazon" - poses. You ask, what was his conclusion?
WATTS: Yes. So I was left, like many of the chapter contributors, with a riddle. I knew that Dom had written some references to how he wanted the book to end. So he said, for example, listen to Indigenous people. That was one very prominent phrase. And another phrase was close on the scene in Medicilandia, with the students and the professor. And wow, I knew the first - you know, listen to indigenous people. OK, that was very clear, and that's something I could follow. The second part was a real mindbender because Medicilandia is...
SHAPIRO: Who are the students? Who's the professor?
WATTS: Who's the students? Exactly. What's going on? Where do I begin? I knew that Medicilandia was a town, and fortunately, the neighboring town to where I live - I also live in the Amazon Rainforest. But I spent more than a year trying to solve this conundrum.
And eventually, an old friend of Dom's called Daniel Camargos, a Brazilian journalist - he suggested, look, why don't you talk to the driver Dom was using at the time? And he passed on the contact, and sure enough, that unlocked everything. And the driver, a guy called Elio (ph), he said, yeah, sure, I can take you to all those places. And that professor and those students - I know them. And my heart leapt at that point. It was just like, yes, yes, yes. Here we go.
And sure enough, we went to the same places, talked to the people. And at the very end, I looked at the visitor's book of the last person I spoke to, and one of the last people that Dom would have spoken to on this particular trip. And there it was, that scrawl. And so I ended the book, hopefully, at least close to the spirit in which Dom intended.
SHAPIRO: The book itself has a message, but the act of completing the book sends a different message. What message do you think that sends?
WATTS: It's two things. It's defiance, and it's solidarity. It's defiance because it's sending out a message that killing a journalist won't silence them, that others will rally around and finish their work and, if possible, even amplify their work. And then the solidarity was just a coming together of this huge number of friends and family. And it was a way for us to kind of help each other and divide the work that we have to do but also divide some of the suffering that we felt with the really extraordinarily horrible and brutal death of our friend and the guide he was with who he admired enormously and who was very important to helping to save the Amazon, Bruno Pereira.
SHAPIRO: Jonathan Watts is one of the co-authors of the Dom Phillips book "How To Save The Amazon: A Journalist's Fatal Quest For Answers." Thank you so much for the conversation.
WATTS: Thank you, Ari. I really appreciate your interest.
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