“The British journalist, Dom Phillips, and Bruno Araújo Pereira were first reported missing in the remote Javari Valley, in the far western part of Amazonas state on Sunday. They had reportedly received death threats just days prior.”

Phillips’s wife, Alessandra Sampaio, posted a video on Tuesday pleading for the federal government to step up in their search operations, saying, “We still have a little bit of hope that we’ll find them.”

“Even if they don’t find the love of my life alive, they have to be found, please,” she said.

The area of the Javari Valley is home to 16 isolated groups and thousands of indigenous people in the Javari Valley, and it isn’t easy to reach out to the communities. The area has come under different rules for life, and the area is continuing to become home to increasing numbers of illegal miners, loggers, hunters, and international drug traffickers exploiting the peoples who live in the jungles.

They were supposed to arrive at the borders of the valley and Peru to take a two-hour trip to Atalaia do Norte on Sunday, but they didn’t show up.