The Amazon invasion: ‘Most endangered tribe in the world’ is under threat again

In January 2014, the Brazilian government sent the army into this corner of the Amazon, deploying soldiers backed by bulldozers and helicopters to clear out hundreds of families living illegally on a reserve for indigenous people.

The three-month offensive was aimed at saving what has been called the world's most endangered tribe - the Awá - from extinction. It was Brazil's biggest-ever operation of its kind and was hailed by activists internationally.

But now, signs of the settlers' return are rife. Cattle are back grazing on this sprawling reserve. Plots of vegetables have been found growing in isolated areas. Loggers are culling the valuable wood in the forests.

It took more than 200 Brazilian soldiers, police officers and government agents to evict 427 families of farmers and settlers last year and flatten their homes and outbuildings. But today there are just half a dozen employees from the government's indigenous agency to protect the 1,160 sq km reserve in northeastern Maranhao state.

Raimundo Oliveira, 54, is one of them. On a recent morning, he pointed a stick at the thick forest to show where loggers had built a rough road a couple of kilometres away from the Awá tribe's tiny village of Juriti.

“They are squeezed,” he said of the indigenous people. “Loggers one side, settlers the other.”