1992, again in response to world opinion, and despite heavy pressure from within Brazil, President Coller signed the Yanomami National Park into being, officially demarcating Yanomami territory. He signed the bill on the eve of the Earth Summit, in implicit recognition that world pressure motivated him to sign.
Again, the measure did little to protect the Indians.
In 1993, the world was shocked by the massacre of 16 Yanomami in the village of Haximu. Miners brutally shot, beat, or hacked, men, women and children to death. Brazilian police ruled that because it was an attempt to destroy an entire community, it was an act of genocide.
The Brazilian community was less shocked. People deny that the massacre ever took place. Newspapers argued that there was no genocide. No bodies had been found, except for the skeleton of one female Indian. Attorneys for the miners quickly supported this reasoning, ignoring the fact that Yanomami ritually cremate their dead and grind their bones to powder.
Editorials attempted to divert attention by focusing on the "fierce people" image the Yanomami had been tagged with, and tried to make the Indians out as the real aggressors and perpetrators. They also argued that there has been incidents of violence by the Yanomami against whites that have not been officially punished and decried the injustice of punishing the whites.
Every study on violence against the Yanomami and the diseases infecting them sets the blame squarely on the government's shoulders. The main cause of violence and invasions into Yanomami territory is impunity and lack of political will to protect indigenous people.. Abuses are rarely investigated or prosecuted when they occur.
As little protection as demarcation offered the Yanomami, even that was threatened on January 8, 1996 when President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed Decree #1775 into law. Backed by special interest groups and local politicians, the decree allows commercial interest to challenge demarcation and Indigenous land titles. Human rights activist dubbed it the "Genocide Decree" and an attempted to circumvent the 1988 constitution and open Indigenous territories to development and exploitation.
Loggers and miners immediately took the degree as a government sanction and moved their operations into restricted lands.
Illegal mining further escalated when the government suspended its helicopter surveillance operation of the Yanomami Park area on March 6, 1996, Thousands of prospectors reinvaded Yanomami territory.
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