human rights violations in the amazon c v s of parÁ · krautler, elcia betânia da silva nunes,...

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

IN THE AMAZON:CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

Comissão Pastoral da Terra — CPTJustiça Global

Terra de Direitos

November 2005

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

IN THE AMAZON:CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

JUSTIÇA GLOBALAv. Beira Mar, 406 / 1207

Rio de Janeiro – RJCEP 20021-900

BrazilPhone: (+55 21) 2544 2320

Fax: (+55 21) 2524 8435www.global.org.br

COMISSÃO PASTORALDA TERRA (CPT) –

Secretaria NacionalRua 19, n° 35, 1° andar

CEP 74.030-090Goiânia – GO

BrazilFax: (+55 62) 4008 6405

www.cptnac.com.br

TERRA DE DIREITOSRua José Loureiro, 464 / 26

Curitiba – PRCEP 80010-907

BrazilPhone/Fax:

(+55 41) 3232 4660www.terradedireitos.org.br

DADOS INTERNACIONAIS PARA CATALOGAÇÃO NA PUBLICAÇÃO (CIP)

S273v Sauer, Sérgio.

Violação dos direitos humanos na Amazônia : conflito eviolência na fronteira paraense / autor: Sérgio Sauer ; [tradução:Phillippa Bennett, Julia Figueira-McDonough, Marsha Michel e Kristen Schlemmer].– Goiânia : CPT ; Rio de Janeiro : Justiça Global ; Curitiba : Terra de Direitos, 2005.170p. ; 17,5x25cm.

1. Direitos humanos. 2. Conflitos no campo – Amazônia. 3. Posse da terra - Amazônia I. Comissão Pastoral da terra. II. Justiça Global. III. Terra de Direitos. IV.Título.

CDD- 338.9811

Human Rights Violations in the Amazon: Conflict and Violence in the State of Pará

Coordination: José Batista Gonçalves Afonso, Sandra Carvalho, Darci Frigo, Leandro Gorsdorf and Sérgio Sauer.

Edited and Organized by Sérgio Sauer.

Research team: Antônia Lima dos Santos, Camilla Ribeiro, Darci Frigo, Felipe Prando, Jax Nildo Aragão Pinto,José Batista Gonçalves Afonso, Julia Figueira-McDonough, Leandro Gorsdorf, Luciana Cristina Furquim Pivato,Luciana Silva Garcia, Maria Rita Reis, Nadine Monteiro Borges, Renata Verônica Côrtes de Lira, Sandra Carvalho,Sérgio Sauer, Tarcísio Feitosa da Silva.

Translation team: Phillippa Bennett, Julia Figueira-McDonough, Marsha Michel, Kristen Schlemmer, ElisabethRottach, Carlos Eduardo Gaio and Emily Goldman.

Translation review: Carlos Eduardo Gaio, Emily Goldman and Phillippa Bennett.

Layout by: Sandra Luiz Alves

CONTRIBUTORS AND RESEARCH SOURCES

Associação de Mulheres Campo — Cidade de Porto de Moz

Associação de Pescadores Artesanais de Porto de Moz

Associação Solidária Econômica e Ecológica de Frutas da Amazônia (ASSEFA)

Associações Rurais Comunitárias de Porto de Moz

Colônia de Pescadores de Porto de Moz

Comissão de Direitos Humanos da Câmara dos Deputados

Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos da OEA

Comissão Pastoral da Terra (secretariado nacional e equipes de Altamira, Anapu, Belém, Marabá e

Alto Xingu).

Comitê de Desenvolvimento Sustentável de Porto de Moz

Delegacia Sindical dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Castelo dos Sonhos

Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (FETRAGRI) Regional Sudeste/Pará

Fórum Nacional pela Reforma Agrária e Justiça no Campo

Fundação Viver, Preservar e Produzir (FVPP)

Gabinete da senadora Heloisa Helena

Gabinete do deputado Federal Adão Pretto

Gabinete do deputado Federal João Alfredo

Greenpeace

Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA)

Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA)

Instituto Socioambiental (ISA)

Justiça Global

Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (MDA)

Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA)

Ministério Público Federal do Pará

Museu Emílio Goeldi

Plataforma DhESC Brasil (Projeto Relatores Nacionais — Relatoria do Direito ao Meio Ambiente)

Sindicatos dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Anapu, de Porto de Moz e de Rondon do Pará

Terra de Direitos.

LIST OF ACRONYMS

ATPF Autorizações para Transporte de Produtos Florestais

CATP Contrato Alienação de Terra Pública

CCIR Certificados de Cadastro do Imóvel Rural

CPI Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito

CPT Comissão Pastoral da Terra

DHESCA Direitos humanos econômicos, sociais, culturais e ambientais

DRT Delegacia Regional do Trabalho

FETAGRI Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura

FINAM Fundo de Investimento da Amazônia

FUNAI Fundação Nacional do Índio

IBAMA Instituto Brasileiro de Meio Ambiente e Recursos Naturais Renováveis

INCRA Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária

ISA Instituto Socioambiental

ITERPA Instituto de Terras do Pará

MDA Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário

MMA Ministério do Meio Ambiente

MPF Ministério Público Federal

MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais

OEA Organização dos Estados Americanos

ONU Organização das Nações Unidas

PAD Projeto de Assentamento Dirigido

PAE Projeto de Assentamento Agroextrativista

PAS Plano Amazônia Sustentável

PAR Projeto de Assentamento Rápido

PA Projetos de Assentamento

PDS Projeto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável

PIC Projeto de Integração e Colonização

PIN Plano de Integração Nacional

PROVITA Programa de Proteção a Vítimas e Testemunhas Ameaçadas

PMF Plano de Manejo Florestal

RESEX Reserva Extrativista Florestal

SNCR Sistema Nacional de Cadastro Rural

SPVEA Superintendência do Plano de Valorização Econômica da Amazônia

STR Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais

SUDAM Superintendência do Desenvolvimento da Amazônia

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank all of those who provided information for this report and acceptedour request for interviews and information, especially our partner organiza-tions in the state of Pará.

Special thanks go to Adamir Castro Lima, Adriana Ramos, Antônia Melo,Antônio Expedito Ribeiro, Carlos Guedes do Amaral Jr, Cláudio WilsonBarbosa, Dielly Pompeu da Silva, Dineusa Pompeu da Silva, Dom ErwinKrautler, Elcia Betânia da Silva Nunes, Felício Pontes Jr, Francisca CastroFróes, Idalino Nunes de Assis, Sister Jane Dwyer, Joelson Pompeu da Silva,João Laet, José Batista da Silva, Letrízia Fróes Duarte, Luis de Brito, MariaCreusa Gama Ribeiro, Maria Eva dos Santos, Maria de Fátima Romoaldoda Silva Nunes, Maria Joel da Costa, Marcos Rogério de Souza, NiltonTubino, Odair Matos Lima, Father Adernei Guemaque, Father AndoniLedesma, Father Danilo Lago, Father José Amaro Lopes de Souza, FatherRobson Wander Lopes, Raimunda Regina Ferreira Barros, Roselene do So-corro Conceição da Silva and Vivaldo Ferreira Barbosa.

This publication is part of the cooperation project “Commerce-Development-Human Rights”, implemented by the Center for Research and Documentation Chile–Latin America (Forschungs – und Dokumentationszentrum Chile – Lateinamerika –FDCL) and by the Heinrich Böell Foundation, with support from the European Union.The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of theEuropean Union.

Justiça Global, Terra de Direitos and Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) also thankthe Heinrich Böll Foundation, Ford Foundation and Caritas for their support to thispublication.

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 13

CHAPTER ILAND OWNERSHIP AND AGRARIAN DYNAMICS IN THE STATE OF PARÁ ..................................... 23

1. ILLEGAL APPROPRIATION OF LAND AND TERRITORIAL MANAGEMENT .................................................................... 252. CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN RURAL AREAS ....................................................................................................... 333. THE PRACTICE OF SLAVE LABOR ....................................................................................................................... 404. IMPUNITY IN THE COUNTRYSIDE: ONE OF THE CAUSES OF VIOLENCE ................................................................... 45CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................... 52

CHAPTER IIGOVERNMENTAL POLICIES FOR THE AMAZON AND THE STATE OF PARÁ ................................... 55

1. ECONOMIC AND ECOLOGICAL MACRO-ZONING (MACRO-ZONEAMENTO ECOLÓGICO E ECONÔMICO) ................. 562. THE PARÁ RURAL PROGRAM .......................................................................................................................... 583. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS FOR THE AMAZON AND PARÁ ....................................................................... 604. THE BR-163 PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................................... 615. POLICIES FOR CONFRONTING GRILAGEM ........................................................................................................ 64CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................... 70

CHAPTER IIIIllegal Confiscation of Land and Violation of Human Rights:The Case of Rondon do Pará ............................................................................................ 73

1. A HISTORY OF TERRITORIAL OCCUPATION ...................................................................................................... 752. ILLEGAL LAND OCCUPATION AND THE ............................................................................................................. 76CONCENTRATION OF LAND IN RONDON DO PARÁ ............................................................................................... 763. THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IN RONDON DO PARÁ ............................................................................................ 814. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS ......................................................................................................................... 84CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................... 86

CHAPTER IVANAPU: PUBLIC FUNDS, THE FALSIFICATION OF LAND PROPERTY

DOCUMENTS AND ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF DEVELOPMENT ..................................................... 891. A HISTORY OF LAND OCCUPATION ................................................................................................................. 902. PUBLIC FUNDS AND AGRARIAN CONFLICT ....................................................................................................... 923. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS (PDS) ................................................................................................ 944. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS: AN EMBLEMATIC CASE OF A MURDER FORETOLD ................................................ 975. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, IMPUNITY AND FEDERALIZATION ...................................................................... 1026. CRIMINALIZING WORKERS AND ACTIVISTS .................................................................................................... 104

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................. 108

Table of contents

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE AMAZON: CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

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CHAPTER VTERRA DO MEIO: THE FINAL FRONTIER OF FEAR ................................................................ 111

1. LOCATION AND CONTEXT ............................................................................................................................. 1112. ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION AND VIOLENCE IN TERRA DO MEIO .............................................................. 1143. STATE PRESENCE IN THE REGION .................................................................................................................. 118CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................. 120

CHAPTER VISITUATION OF COMPLETE ABANDONMENT: THE CASE OF CASTELO DOS SONHOS .................. 123

1. HISTORY OF THE REGION’S OCCUPATION ...................................................................................................... 1242. ILLEGAL LAND APPROPRIATION AND CONCENTRATION IN CASTELO DOS SONHOS ............................................. 1253. CASTELO DOS SONHOS: ABSENCE, OMISSION, AND COLLUSION OF PUBLIC AUTHORITIES WITH LOCAL ELITES ... 1284. POLICIES TO COMBAT DEFORESTATION ......................................................................................................... 1305. THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND: THE BARTOLOMEU MORAIS DA SILVA ENCAMPMENT .............................................. 1326. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS: THE CONTEXT OF PLANNED AND ANNOUNCED VIOLENCE ................................. 134

7. AN EXEMPLARY CASE OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION: THE DEATH OF BRASÍLIA .............................................. 138

CHAPTER VIITHE STRUGGLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION: THE CASE OF PORTO DE MOZ ............ 141

1. THE LAND OWNERSHIP ISSUE ...................................................................................................................... 1432. LOGGING EXPLOITATION IN THE REGION ...................................................................................................... 1493. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT ...................................................................... 1514. THE CREATION OF THE “VERDE PARA SEMPRE” EXTRACTIVE RESERVE ............................................................. 154

5. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS: FIGHTS AND THREATS ...................................................................................... 156

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................. 157

CHAPTER VIIIRECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE STATE OF PARÁ ...................................................................... 159

1. RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMBAT VIOLENCE AND IMPUNITY .......................................................................... 1592. RECOMMENDATIONS ON SLAVE LABOR .......................................................................................................... 1603. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS .................................................. 1614. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AGRARIAN REFORM ............................................................................................... 162

4.1 RECOMMENDATIONS TO RONDON DO PARÁ, CASTELO DOS SONHOS AND ANAPU ............................................................. 162

5. RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMBAT GRILAGEM ................................................................................................ 1635.1 SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS TO ANAPU ....................................................................................................................... 164

5.2 SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS TO RONDON DO PARÁ ...................................................................................................... 165

6. RECOMMENDATIONS TO TACKLE THE PROBLEM OF DEFORESTATION ............................................................... 1656.1 RECOMMENDATIONS TO PORTO DE MOZ, CASTELO DOS SONHOS AND ANAPU ................................................................. 166

6.2 RECOMMENDATIONS TO TERRA DO MEIO ..................................................................................................................... 166

7. RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMBAT CORRUPTION IN PUBLIC BODIES ................................................................. 167

ANNEXES ...................................................................................................................... 169ANNEX I — LEADERS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

MURDERED IN THE STATE OF PARÁ ................................................................................................................... 171ANNEX II — PEOPLE THREATENED WITH DEATH IN THE STATE OF PARÁ ............................................................ 173ANNEX III — EMPLOYERS FINED FOR MAKING USE OF SLAVE LABOR

IN THE STATE OF PARÁ (PORTARIA 540, 15 DE OCTOBER 2004) ................................................................................................................ 179

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“We never know the hour of the attack. I can’t even go to church. They have finished with ourlife while we still live. But I am going to continue until the end and I want that this historynot be a history of death, but a history of life, of the life of the rural workers.”Maria Joel da Costa, president of the Rural Workers Union of Rondon do Pará

“I’ve lived in this area for 22 yearsz I work with all these people.... We came occupying theland hand in hand, fighting . . . We looked for these PDSs already in 1994, because all thesepeople are migrants and left places where they don’t have the means to survive anymore, likein the Northeast, because the forest is gone. So, our plan of many years is to create a sustainablearea, where there is a future, where the forest is not gone. . . . This project, that INCRA hasendorsed and supports gave us all the reason to create this project, by which the people aregoing to survive in a dignified manner.”Sister Dorothy Stang

This research was motivated in large part by the stories of the lives of human rightsdefenders such as union leader Maria Joel da Costa and missionary Dorothy Stang.

These two women are examples of the fight carried out by legal landowners, riverinecommunities, the landless, rural workers, extractive reserve workers, and indigenouscommunities, all working in defense of human rights and the preservation of theAmazon.1

President of the Rural Workers’ Union of Rondon do Pará, Maria Joel da Costa(widow of union leader José Dutra da Costa, known as “Dezinho,” assassinated in2000), is an uncompromising activist for social justice and agrarian reform. Sister DorothyStang was a missionary who fought for rural workers’ rights, environmental justice, andthe preservation of the Amazon. Sister Dorothy was assassinated and Maria Joel is oneof the many people who continue to receive death threats. The resistance and work ofthese women, and that of many other courageous individuals, is a hallmark of the fightfor land in the state of Pará.

Introduction

1 The English-language version of this report was made after the original launch of the Portuguese-language version;thus, we have included herein a few updates in Chapters 3 and 4, in order to accurately reflect last-minute develop-ments and present the facts as fully and precisely as possible.


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The records of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the social justice arm of theBrazilian Catholic Church, illustrate a gloomy reality of more than 700 peasants, ruralworkers, and human rights defenders assassinated in the last 30 years in the state ofPará. The majority of the deaths were registered in the southern and southeastern regionsof Pará. Many of these deaths were clearly selective, as the victims were people whoperformed important functions as labor and religious leaders and human rights defenders.The objective of the assassinations is clear: to weaken the organizations and silence thefight of the rural workers.

This deeply entrenched situation involving conflicts and violence in Pará is directlyrelated to the concentration of land ownership. This includes the illegal appropriationof public land, known as “grilagem.”2 Pará has more than 30 million hectares of illegallyappropriated land. Grilagem has formed the context for various forms of human rightsviolations. These violations range from the degradation of the natural resource base andloss of biodiversity through the criminal extraction of forest resources, to the violentexpulsion and arrests of legal landowners, extractive reserve workers, riverine and indi-genous communities, and other traditional populations that have occupied the land fordecades. The violations are exacerbated by the practice of modern-day slavery andculminate in appalling numbers of assassinations of rural workers and their leaders.

Faced with this reality, in February of this year the Rural Workers’ Union of Rondondo Pará, the CPT, Terra de Direitos (Land Rights, or TDD, a human rights NGO basedin Curitiba, Paraná), and Justiça Global (Global Justice, a human rights NGO based inRio de Janeiro) requested a public hearing with then Special Secretary for HumanRights Nilmário Miranda and representatives of the Ministry of Agrarian Developmentso that they could hear the history of threats, violence, and assassinations and take thenecessary actions that many organizations have requested for a long time. At that time,Special Secretary Miranda resolved to hold a public hearing in Rondon, to which repre-sentatives of the federal, state, and municipal governments would be invited, in additionto members of the State Court and Public Prosecutor’s office.

Unfortunately, Maria Joel da Costa, a symbol of the resistance and struggles of therural workers, could not speak at the public hearing. Fearing for their lives, she andother leaders had to make themselves heard through people from outside the state whowere capable of denouncing the leaders and illegal acts of the “agricultural bandits”without risking their lives after federal authorities left the region.

The representatives of the federal government traveled from Rondon do Pará toBelém, the capital city of Pará, to launch the Human Rights Defenders’ ProtectionProgram on 3 February 2005. In the public hearing in Belém, Sister Dorothy Stang

2 The origin of the term grilagem comes from the word grilo, or cricket. The practice of forging documents andproperty titles included leaving (fake) documents in a drawer full of crickets. After a few days these documents wouldhave the appearance of a legitimate, old property certificate. This rudimentary, but efficient practice spread quickly inthe Pará región. Those who illegally appropriate land came to be called grileiros.

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made serious accusations of threats and intimidations that she and other rural workersof Anapu had been suffering from grileiros, loggers, and large estate owners. Their armedmilitias, acting with the collusion of the judiciary, were impeding the workers fromliving permanently on the Sustainable Development Projects (PDS).3 The federal andstate authorities failed to take effective measures regarding the serious accusations thatSister Dorothy and others made in the public hearing in Belém. A few days later, on 12February 2005, Sister Dorothy was assassinated by gunshot at PDS Esperança (asettlement she had helped found).

On that tragic day of Sister Dorothy’s murder, Minister of the Environment MarinaSilva was in Pará, in the city of Porto de Moz, to inaugurate the “Verde para Sempre”Extractive Reserve (RESEX). The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) affirmed thatthe assassination of Sister Dorothy was a “message” to Minister Silva and to the Braziliangovernment. The objective of this violent action by the landowners was to intimidatethe government and its employees from implementing environmental and agrarian po-licies and programs in the Amazon.

Unfortunately, the presence of federal authorities has never represented a guaranteefor the respect for the human rights of the poorest populations nor for the preservationof the environment. Historically, Brazilian State action in the Amazon has been markedby a profound dichotomy. On one hand, it has served ostensibly to establish aconcentrated model of land and income as well as predatory development (i.e. throughthe creation and establishment of colonization projects, financing large infrastructureprojects, and offering subsidies to large estate owners and grileiros). On the other hand,it has not guaranteed the rights of poor traditional populations. Moreover, this populationwas integrated in an extremely ill-conceived manner, ending up as cheaply-paid or slavelabor.

In addition to the omission, collusion, and continued action directed by the State,action by judicial and executive authorities usually favors grileiros, large estate owners,illegal loggers, etc. The judiciary is quick to authorize police action to evict rural workersand imprison their leaders, thus granting innumerable benefits to large estate ownersand grileiros. Wealthy landowners who order the murders and pay the assassins (i.e.hired gunmen, or pistoleiros) are rarely imprisoned or brought to justice. Prison sentencesare not completed and gunmen often act in collusion with the police. For the crimesthat do make it to court, judicial action is only possible after many years of fighting,

3 The objective of the Sustainable Development Projects (PDSs) is to ensure the simultaneous peaceful settlement oftraditional inhabitants of the Amazon (indigenous peoples, extractivists, riverine communities, landless workers, andfarmers) in areas of environmental interest, while encouraging sustainable use and non-invasive growth, within acontext in which human rights are respected and protected. The PDS concept was created by INCRA through Porta-ria/Incra/P nº 477, on 4 November 1999 and detailed in Portaria/Incra/P nº 1.032 on 25 October 2000. Informationavailable from Diário Oficial da União, Section 1, nº 240, 12 December 2002. Available from http://www.in.gov.br/.See also Chapter IV, section 3.


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combined with continued pressure and complaints from rural workers and national andinternational human rights organizations.

The impunity covers up the criminal acts performed by these groups. There is noeffort made by the judiciary or organs of public security. The slow pace of justice isbiased and reflects a capitulation to political and economic pressures, thereby slowingdown or otherwise negatively influencing the progress of the legal proceedings. Thispenal lag has affected the majority of crimes against rural workers. Clearly, impunityfeeds the vicious cycle of violence against workers in Pará.

Pará’s government and judiciary have acted with alacrity when penalizing workersand their leaders. A prime example is the recent execution of more than 40 preliminaryeviction notices of farms occupied in south and southeastern Pará. Most of the noticeswere completed in June 2005. Almost 5,000 families were affected. The judicial decisionsthat granted these notices did not take into account the workers’ human rights (right towork, food, shelter, education) and instead were founded on the “absolute right toproperty.” Additionally, they did not take into consideration fulfilling the “social function”of land, as mandated by Article 186 of Brazil’s Federal Constitution. Furthermore,many of these plots do not constitute private property since they are “owned” by grileiroswho illegally appropriated the public land in the first place. In a significant number ofthese preliminary eviction notices, the National Institute for Colonization and AgrarianReform (INCA) had already begun initiating proceedings to dispossess or retake theproperties in question.

There has also been an increase in criminal charges and persecution, includingarbitrary arrests, as ways for civil and military police and the judiciary to weaken thesocial movements, rural workers, and their struggles. The judges refer to the landlessworkers as idle people who promote social instability by occupying public land or illegallyappropriated land. In the process, they ignore the constitutional mandate requiring theimplementation of agrarian reform as a public policy.

Consequently, the state is virtually absent from the formulation and implementa-tion of social redistributive policies, resulting in increased poverty and environmentaldestruction. On the other hand, there is active collusion as described above that furtherentrenches impunity, generating more violence and violations of the human rights of legallandowners, peasants, rural workers, extractive reserve workers, indigenous communities,and human rights defenders. One example of this “absence” is that, beyond not completingtheir own publicly stated goals of agrarian regularization and the settlement of families forthe past two years, the federal government has blocked more than 50% of the Ministry ofAgrarian Development’s 2005 budget destined for agrarian reform.

This state “absence” is evidenced in the many conflicts and numbers of rural workerskilled or threatened. These conflicts have taken the lives of many leaders in Pará. Themost well-known case is the massacre of Eldorado do Carajás that took the lives of 19landless workers in 1996. Unfortunately this is not the only case. The barbarity of largelandowners continues to victimize workers and human rights defenders.

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News about the devastation and assassinations in Pará fill the pages of local, natio-nal, and international newspapers, raising public awareness through the actions ofindividuals, labor unions, and principally, the voice of human rights defenders in theregion. The link between a model of development based on massive agribusiness (inclu-ding the rapid advancement of soy cultivation in the Amazon), the exportation of lumber,and the exercise of political power based on the “ownership” (oftentimes fraudulent) ofprivate property (large landowners, grilagem, private militias, and assassins) consequentlyproduces illegal and predatory appropriation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity,and endangering and loss of the lives of rural workers, legal landowners, riverine com-munities, extractive reserve workers, and indigenous communities of the Amazon.

The agrarian chaos in Pará has increased to such a degree that the federal govern-ment has on many occasions ended up expropriating public areas illegally “owned” bylarge landowners and paying the “landowners” for them, due to pressure from the large“landowners” and their private militias. A classic example of this situation was thedispossession of the Fazenda Flor da Mata in 1998, located in São Félix do Xingu. Thisarea, fraudulently “owned,” was located in an indigenous area and employed slave labor.In spite of all these illegal acts, the area was expropriated and the reparation (with paymentfor the land and its improvements) given to the “owners” who held false land titles.

Defenders of human rights and the environment fight and work on behalf of adevelopment model different than the current one established in the Amazon region ingeneral and in Pará in particular. Such a model proposed by the defenders is based onsocial justice, a sustainable environment, and respect for human rights. Maria Joel daCosta and Sister Dorothy Stang are protagonists in this struggle. They are symbols ofthe fight against “landowners,” loggers, and large estate owners who are murderingpeople and criminally appropriating and destroying the Brazilian Amazon.

The constant complaints to government authorities, dispatching of ministers andmilitary or judicial task forces to the region, and actions such as the establishment of theInternational Tribunal of Crimes of Large Estates in October of 2003 all seek to callattention to the seriousness of the situation. This Tribunal raised the issues and de-monstrated the systematic violation of human rights on the part of large estate owners,committed with the collusion of state authorities. Various cases analyzed in this reporthave already become exemplary in Pará.

There have been many actions and mobilizations undertaken as a direct result ofthe seriousness of the problem. After Sister Dorothy’s death, for example, the NationalForum for Agrarian Reform and Justice in the Countryside organized a national andinternational campaign, called “Agrarian Reform: Sustainable Development and Hu-man Rights.” It was named thus in order to pressure the federal and state governmentsto adopt effective means to investigate and hold accountable the criminals involved andprotect individuals under threat in Pará.

The CPT, Justiça Global, and Terra de Direitos undertook the present investigationsand prepared this report in order to contribute to the dialogue regarding the question of


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violence and impunity that victimizes rural workers and human rights defenders in theAmazon. This report has the following objectives:

� to place the need for agrarian reform, combating violence and impunity, andpromoting sustainable development on the agenda of Brazilian society with a par-ticular focus being on raising the awareness of urban areas;� to encourage immediate action from governmental authorities, particularly thecivil and federal police and judiciary, against impunity, environmental crime,grilagem, and threats, intimidation, “disappearances,” and assassinations faced byhuman rights defenders;� to mobilize international civil society and human rights organizations, the Orga-nization of American States (OAS), and the United Nations (UN) to pressuredifferent spheres of government (federal and state executives, legislative, and judi-cial branches) to implement effective actions for agrarian reform, environmentalpreservation/conservation, and the protection of human rights.

This report is based on the full spectrum of human rights violations. It is notlimited simply to the defense of civil rights (right to life, freedom of movement, physicalintegrity); rather, it includes economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights(ESCER). These indivisible human rights include the rights to land, a clean environment,work, and water, among others. It is unquestionable that the discussion regarding ESCERcreates barriers which will be confronted in the context of the development proposalsfor the Amazon, either on the part of the federal and state governments or privateindividuals such as large estate owners, agroindustrialists, and loggers.

The debate around human rights violations recognizes the dimensions of reparation,protection, and promotion of ECSER, demonstrating the difficulties and limitations ofaccess to these rights by rural workers in Pará. This extends the necessary benchmark inorder to guarantee human rights by the state and civil society’s sttrugle for rights. Hu-man rights defenders defend their rights through their concrete, daily actions establishinga direct correlation between their struggle and the oppression against them which attemptsto inhibit their role.

The present report focuses particular attention on the topic of human rightsdefenders, a group not recognized by the UN until 1998. At that time, the UN declaredthat human rights defenders were “individuals, groups, and associations of society whopromote and protect universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms”(Resolution 53/144, 9 December 1998). In the expanded understanding of this conceptin the UN Declaration of Human Rights, “human rights defenders are every one who,individually or collectively, act to promote and protect fundamental human rights.”

As a result of the recommendations of the Special Representative of the UNSecretary-General on Human Rights Defenders, Brazil’s National Human Rights De-fenders’ Protection Program was launched in Brasília in October 2004 by the Special

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Secretariat for Human Rights and re-launched in February 2005 in Belém). While theProtection Program remains almost entirely on paper, its organizational mandate de-clares that “the human rights defenders can integrate with unions, civil associations,religious groups, community groups, social movements, individual human rightsdefenders, police corporations, individuals defending the environment and combatingcorruption, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the magistrate, and state fiscal sectors andother institutions.”

This concept of human rights defenders does not deal with a few isolated individuals,but rather with all those who act in defense of human rights, including rural workersand community leaders. Therefore, this report adopts a broad concept of human rightsdefenders, as implied by the National Human Rights Defenders Protection Program.From the initial line of this report, in the impressive deposition of Maria Joel da Costa,to the murders of countless rural workers and leaders such as Sister Dorothy, action byhuman rights defenders is the key to combatting daily human rights violations as well asdeveloping and implementing projects based on strengthening socio-environmentalstewardship and human rights.

This publication seeks to ensure that the stories of Maria Joel da Costa and somany others in Pará do not remain in obscurity and to provide some degree of protec-tion for them, such that their lives do not end tragically as happened to Sister DorothyStang and dozens of other leaders assassinated in Pará in past years. The organizationsresponsible for this report wish it to be an instrument for use by rural workers, riverinecommunities, extractive reserve workers, legal landowners, other human rights defendersof Pará, Brazilian government and Pará state officials, domestic and international acade-mia, and international civil society organizations in their fight for the realization of anenvironmentally sustainable agrarian reform that strengthens human rights as anindispensable step in the direction of developing a truly sustainable Amazon.

Due to the vast territorial extension of Pará and diversity of the conflicts therein,this research looks at certain geographical areas, themes, and battles as emblematic ofthe reality of the average rural Paraense (a person from the state of Pará). The develop-ment models established in the region have led to concentrated land ownership,falsification of land titles, illegal lumber extraction, uncontrolled growth of agribusiness,and in large part are responsible for the violence and impunity in the region. Thisreport analyzes the agrarian situation and violence in Pará (Chapter I) and explains therelationship between environmental degradation, large estate owner actions, and hu-man rights violations.

Chapter II discusses governmental policies and programs — designed andimplemented or in the process of implementation — as attempts by the government torespond to popular demands for rights in Pará. The objective is not to establish anexhaustive description and analyze all state programs, but to systematize some actionsof the state and federal governments, as examples of government policies implementedin the Amazon.


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The governmental policies adopted to combat the illegalities and irregularities are,where existent, extremely weak. The analysis of the policies and programs to combatgrilagem and environmental devastation demonstrates those policies’ fragility inresponding fully and in a timely fashion to the destructive actions that continue todevastate Pará. Indeed, the present government’s policies continue being contradictory,at the very least, because they look for ways to implement sustainable developmentbased on agrarian reform actions and environmental preservation policies, whilesimultaneously devoting large amounts of public resources to stimulate economicallyproductive activities based on massive agribusiness expansion, promotion of environ-mental devastation, and frequently, increase in the illegal appropriation of land and theuse of violence.

In addition to the denouncements and struggles of rural workers, the reporthighlights the issues of deforestation, illegal land occupation, and human rights violations.It analyzes the difficulties in the implementation of a sustainable agrarian reform programand the demarcation of extractive reserves.

Representatives of the CPT, Justiça Global, and Terra de Direitos visited the com-munities of Rondon do Pará, Anapu, Terra do Meio, Castelo dos Sonhos, and Porto deMoz to gather the data included and analyzed in this report (Chapters III to VII). Thesechapters illustrate the criminal acts of large estate owners, illegal land grabbers, loggers,and oftentimes, criminal actions of government authorities themselves. The variousaspects of the struggle are described, focusing on the actions undertaken by legal lando-wners, riverine communities, rural workers, and human rights defenders as they fightfor agrarian reform and sustainable development that will ensure better standards ofliving for themselves, their families, and their communities, as well as the preservationof the ecological integrity of the Amazon.

Among these fights and proposals for development for the Amazon, the fight ofthe rural workers to establish PDSs deserves special attention. These are projects conceivedof by the social movements that make it possible to combine production and conservationof the Amazon Forest. Additionally, various other proposals come from the lives andexperiences of these traditional populations with their environment, creating a form ofsustainable development not found in other models imposed on the region from without.

Recommendations are presented (Chapter VIII) that seek to contribute concretelyto this struggle, specifying for each the relevant entities responsible for undertaking thesuggested actions. This report is not an end in itself. Beyond being an instrument forreporting and denouncing human rights violations and environmental destruction, itseeks to contribute to the transformation of this grave reality found in today’s Pará.

In this sense, it could help in the work of defenders in the processes of resistanceand defense of social and economic human rights of the Amazon population.

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Located in the eastern part of the Brazilian Amazon, Pará is one of the states mostaffected by the government’s Amazon-related policies, including its “agrarian policy”

with the implementation of various agrarian reform settlements.4 Also, incentives toencourage exports and construction of infrastructure projects such as roads and drainagesystems have created new investments in the production of livestock that has in turnincreased social and environmental problems.

The official plans for the occupation of the Amazon were based on the belief thatthe region was “demographically empty.” During the Vargas government in the 1940s,the first official plan to occupy the western center of the Amazon was developed, inclu-ding the area of highway BR-163. This plan was known as “The March to the West.”The Secretariat of the Amazon Improvement Plan (Plano de Valorização da Amazônia,SPVEA) was given the responsibility for organizing this project.

The military governments after 1964 defined a national integration strategy thatwas initiated by “Operation Amazon,” whose ideology formed the basis of “ProjectRondon,” namely, to “incorporate but not to let go.” The strategy also included supportfield investments and tax incentives from the Superintendency for the Development ofthe Amazon (Superintendência de Desenvolvimento da Amazônia, or SUDAM). Themilitary governments transformed the capitalists of the south and southeast into largelandowners who invested in the region, favoring the expansion of livestock that destroyedthe Amazon Forest.5

In 1966 SUDAM was established by Law 5.173 as the legal substitute to SPVEA.Created during the military dictatorship of General Humberto Castelo Branco, SUDAMwas part of a strategic plan by the military to promote the development and occupation

Chapter I

LAND OWNERSHIP AND AGRARIAN

DYNAMICS IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

4 The majority of the settlement is concentrated in the southern regions of Pará, where for many years peasants havefought for their right to access to land, i.e. settlements, or to remain on the land, i.e. maintenance and regularization ofpossession of their plots.5 Plan for the Regional Sustainable Development for the Area Influenced by Highway BR-163, Cuiabá-Santarém. Inter-Ministerial Working Group. Decree of 15 March 2004.


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of the Amazon, diminishing regional inequalities through the integration of the regioninto the rest of the country.6

In 1970, the government of General Emilio Garratazu Médici launched the Nati-onal Integration Plan (PIN) with the objective to occupy and populate the immense“empty space” of the Amazon. For that purpose, the National Institute of Colonizationand Agrarian Reform (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária, INCRA)carried out an analysis of the land in the state of Pará, including for example, the areathat today forms part of the region of Anapu. This study confirmed that the area surveyedhad no private property, and all these areas could be incorporated in the plan foroccupation in the Amazon.7

One of the PIN projects was the construction of two big highways in the Amazonconnecting the region with the rest of the country — the Transamazônica and theCuiabá-Santarém. The state of Pará had accelerated and consolidated its physicalintegration after the 1970s with the construction of these highways. The opening of theroads Belém-Brasília (BR-010) and Cuiabá-Santarém (BR-163) transformed the historyof Pará.

The expansion into and human settlement through road construction has followeddifferent patterns during the past 35 years. There have been periods of faster expansion(1975-85), slower (1986-1997), and an acceleration since then. These periods translateinto global rhythms of deforestation and violence, which are linked to the importancegiven to dynamic sectors such as large agribusiness interests (mainly of cattle, minerals,and the cultivation of soy).

The opening of new highways and accelerating process of land occupation in thestate of Pará has reactivated old economic activities, similar to what occurred in thenortheast, south, and west of Pará with soy cultivation and mineral exploitation. Thisphenomenon has reactivated non-explored areas such as Anapu, Castelos dos Sonhos(Altamira), Novo Progresso, and São Félix do Xingu. These new dynamics haveaccelerated the process of uncontrolled exploitation of the territory, which in turn hasresulted in deforestation and a spike in violence involving new and old inhabitants ofthose areas.

Since the Administration of Governor Almir Gabriel (1994), the state has prioriti-zed investment in commodity products for export. The activities of new exploitationareas and the reactivation of old ones is set up in this logic of investments on theproductive scale that dovetails with a national cattle-raising policy, which in turn is

6 Miranda, Verônica Maria. Analysis of the work developed by SUDAM and by SUFRAMA for the development ofthe Amazon. Legislative Advisor of the Chamber of Deputies, February 2002. Available at: http://www2.camara.gov.br/publicacoes/estnottec/tema14/ index.html/view? searchterm=SUDAM7 Information from Greepeace: Grilagem de terras na Amazônia: Negócio bilionário ameaça a floresta e populações tradi-cionais, available at: http://www.greenpeace.org.br/amazonia/pdf/grilagem.pdf.

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centered in large production for export. The results of the implementation of this modelin the state have been violence, deforestation, unemployment, and profound misery,affecting both cities and countryside.

1. ILLEGAL APPROPRIATION OF LAND AND TERRITORIAL MANAGEMENT

The illegal seizure/appropriation of public lands, known in Portuguese as“grilagem,”8 is a motif in the history of the development of Brazil’s pronounced state ofland concentration. According to a survey carried out in 1999 by the federal govern-ment, there are approximately 100 million hectares of land that have been illegallyseized by individuals in Brazil.9 This area is immense; it is equivalent to approximatelythree times the size of Germany, twice the size of Spain, or 10 times the size of Portugal.

8 Grilagem occurs in various forms in different regions of the country; more generally it occurs with the connivance ofthe Property Registrars that register nonexistent lands or supply false land titles. Grilagem de Terras — Perfil dos Propri-etários/Detentores de Grandes Imóveis Rurais que não Atenderam à Notificação da Portaria 558/99, available at http://www.incra.gov.br.9 Livro Branco da Grilagem, p. 12, available at http://www.incra.gov.br, consulted on 20 July 2005.


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Grilagem, according to data from the Pará state government, has been facilitatedby the weak system of land registry. It historically came about through the use of avariety of mechanisms: falsification of titles and registries; written registries of purchaseand selling without appropriate legal documentation denoting that the properties hadbeen inherited from one’s forebears; invasion of areas to cut down trees and raise livestock;and addition of new areas on ownership documents. Another key factor that permittedthe growth of grilagem was the overlapping responsibilities between federal and stategovernments to carry out property registry during history. According to the Ministry ofAgrarian Development,

The grilagem of lands normally happens with the involvement of officers of the PropertyRegistrars who often register areas one on top of the other, that is, they exist only on paper.There is also direct and indirect participation of governmental bodies that accept land titles ofvacant state or federal land to their political cronies, or even to nonexistent people, namescreated only to cheat the registry’s office into receiving title to a piece of land. After obtainingthe land title from the public notary, the forger then repeats the same process at the state LandInstitute, before INCRA’s registry, and the National Inland Revenue Service. The objective isto obtain registries that would give this fraudulent act a semblance of consistent legality.10

In 2000, the Chamber of Deputies established a Parliamentary Commission ofInquiry (Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito, CPI) to look into the occupation of publiclands, particularly through grilagem, in the Amazonian Region.11 This CPI concludedthat:

The notary and registry activity have greater importance in the context of grilagem because itis through the drafting of certificates and registries that are apparently legitimate that thetitles will then serve to sustain the illegal appropriation of land.

The situation of grilagem in northern Brazil is more acute than that found in therest of the country. INCRA information states that this region is responsible for morethan half of the area suspected of grilagem in the whole of Brazil. The extension ofgrilagem is astonishing: information from the Ministry of Agrarian Development in2001 on properties covering more than 10,000 hectares demonstrate that 0.2% of thesuspected illegally occupied agricultural lands comprise 26% of the territory of theregion.12

10 Grilagem: balanço definitivo. Available at http://www.mda.gov.br, last accessed on 20 July 2005.11 The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Occupation of Public Lands in the Amazonian Region wascreated by Representative Sérgio Carvalho, among others, through Request nº 2/99, and was installed by an Act of thePresidency on 14 March 2000, composed of 17 members. The final report and other documents related to CPIworkers are available at http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/comissao/.12 Sabbato, Alberto Di. Perfil dos Proprietários/detentores de grandes imóveis rurais que não atenderam a notificação daPortaria 558/99. Projeto de Cooperação Técnica INCRA/FAO. Projeto UTF/BRA/051.

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In this sense, the final report of the CPI on grilagem, presented on 29 August2001, pointed to the existence of more than 30 million hectares illegally seized in Pará.In the state of Amazonas, the numbers were equally high at 37 million hectares. In thestates of Acre and Rondônia, at least 1.5 millions hectares were identified as havingbeen illegally seized.

According to INCRA, the characteristics of landowners/managers of propertiessuspected of grilagem in the north, as compared to that of other regions of the country,are also different: the average size of large landholdings in the north is 69 hectares. Thenorth also has the largest number of properties per landowner (1,4 property perlandowner). Among the northern states, Pará has the largest average landholding sizeper owner, approximately 88,000 hectares per owner.

Around 15 million hectares of land have only been included in the government’saccounting when INCRA examined the landholdings of less than 10,000 hectaresregistered in Pará registrar offices. Only the three main grileiros in Pará, together, claimto possess approximately 20 million hectares (Carlos Medeiros claims to possess appro-ximately 13 million hectares, the CRAlmeida (Cecílio Rego de Almeida) Group claimsanother 6 million hectares, and Jari Celulose 3 million hectares).

The “Ghost Carlos Medeiros,” as we will see in more detail below, claims ownershipof 1,200 (false) property titles, spread over more than 83 cities and totaling more than13 million hectares. INCRA is ready to conclude a survey that would include 300irregularly titled proprieties whose ownership could not be proven with documentsfrom registry offices.

This process of land concentration in Pará13 has an essential component, beyondthe super-exploitation of work and natural resources (as a way to accumulate andconcentrate economic resources) and including grilagem14 of public lands. It can be saidthat grilagem goes hand-in-hand with the successive circles of regional “development,”particularly in terms of mineral wealth, lumber, livestock, and more recently, soyproduction for export.

As for Pará, the report of CPI of the Chamber of Deputies describes in detail someof the biggest cases of illegal land appropriation in Brazil. The report shows that onesingle case refers to the illegal appropriation of roughly 12 million hectares, correspondingto 8% of the land surface of the state of Pará or 1% of the entire country.15 As acomparison, this single case represents the illegal appropriation of territory equivalentto the total surface of Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland put together.

13 The GINI Index for Pará is the 4th higher in Brazil (0.87), being above the national average of 0.86.14 Confirming this fact, the report of CPI of grilagem analyzes the role of state authorities: “The successive governors ofthe state were actionless before all this situation. And, in the few times that they served as mediators, trying to discipli-ne the already chaotic agrarian situation of Pará, almost always favored the interests, by permitting concessions anddonations of lands and when alienating public areas with huge dimensions, promoting, with such unplanned actions,and growing disaggregation in the previously agrarian structure.” (Final Report, p. 236)15 Report available at http://www.camara.gov.br.


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This increase in forged documents started in the middle of the 1970s, when a“person” by the name of Carlos Medeiros (proof now exists that he was an invention)received an Adjudication Certificate that would have been transmitted through aninheritance process of Manoel Fernandes de Souza and Manoel Joaquim Pereira. Theproperties described in the certificate had been declared “legitimate” in 1975 by thejudge of the 2nd Civil Court of Belém, Armando Bráulio Paul da Silva, in an illegalprocedure.16

With ownership of this document and always through solicitors and representati-ves, “Carlos Medeiros” began selling parts of the land to third parties, negotiating plotsof different sizes and spreading new fraudulent documents. With these false docu-ments, countless land titles belonging to original communities and the land titlesbelonging to owners of small, yet legal, plots were taken illegally. The judicial processthat produced illegal land titles disappeared from the Registrar’s office where the docu-ments had been filed in 1981.

The files of this process were only restored (as with their disappearance, no oneknows who removed them from, or restored them, to the files) in 1993. That same year,the judicial authorities decided that part of the areas sold by “Carlos Medeiros” shouldbe properly registered (that is, legalized). The inventory and all of the steps taken in thatprocess were then voided in 1995, when the Court of Justice for the state of Parágranted a favorable decision to an appeal filed by Pará’s Land Institute (Instituto deTerras do Estado do Pará, ITERPA).

During his testimony before the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of theLegislative Assembly of Pará,17 journalist Lúcio Flávio described the actions of groupsthat illegally occupy millions of hectares thusly:

Then, in reality, the origin [of these frauds] was orchestrated by Dr. Veigas. It was a group ofslick lawyers who frequented and circulated through the Court of Justice, one of whom is thebrother of an Appeals Judge, who invented the plot. From the moment that they invented the“catch”, other smarter and more powerful judges started using it. The 22 cases of authorizationto forest management in areas of illegal land occupation “belonging” to “Carlos Medeiros,”which Dr. Felício Pontes [Federal General Attorney of Pará] denounced here, is in fact a newgeneration of smarter guys who are using this method to make huge amounts of money,much more than what those who plotted the scheme were able to do.

16 According to the dates of the report, the mentioned judge was removed from the bench for committing variousirregularities.17 Pará State Legislative Assembly set out this CPI in 1999 to “investigate denunciations of irregularities in the landacquired by the CRAlmeida company in the municipality of Altamira, Pará state.”

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Reporting this incredible case of illegal land occupation in Pará, Flávio wrote:18

Pará offers a good example on the need to control external judicial power, one of the burningtopics currently in Brazil. The case involves the second biggest illegal land occupation in thecountry and probably the world. This is an area located in the fertile valley of the river Xingu,800 kilometers to the west of Belém, which is currently being impacted by new economicactivities. There are at least five million hectares of illegal land occupation and fraudulentlyappropriated public lands, that might increase to seven million hectares.

The journalist continues:

With this size, it corresponds to six percent of Pará, the second largest state in the country.This area, comprising 1.2 million square kilometers, is equivalent to the area of Colombia,where 45 million people live (the population of Pará is 7 million).

The chain of ownership of this land, claimed by the CRAlmeida Group, showsthat it belongs to the government. The area was appropriated by the CRAlmeida Groupduring the time when the government of Pará and federal agencies made leasing contractswith private parties of areas producing chestnuts, rubber, and caucho19 . The contractswere generally valid for one year; they automatically expired when not renewed. Theyguaranteed the exploitation of products extracted from the forest.

Between 1995 and 2002, the state of Pará saw the consolidation of what is consi-dered to be the largest landed estate in the world. This is an area belonging to firms suchas Rondon Ecological Projects and Industry; and Trade, Export, and Navigation ofXingu Ltda (INCENXIL), covering six million hectares (60,000 square kilometers) inthe region of Altamira (Terra de Meio). Both of these companies are controlled by theconstruction firm Cecílio Rego de Almeida. This estate extends beyond the entire territoryof six Brazilian states (Sergipe, Alagoas, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Rio Grande doNorte, and Paraíba).

According to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of the Legislative Assemblyof the state of Pará, this large landed area was created through the illegal appropriationof public lands belonging to INCRA, the National Indigenous Foundation (FundaçãoNacional do Índio, FUNAI), and the General-Staff of the Armed Forces.

With regard to the objectives of the firm Cecilio Rego de Almeida, after intensesocietal pressure, ITERPA requested the nullification of registrations made in the registry’s

18 Lúcio Flávio Pinto, Grilagem: uma história confusa e uma moral nada recomendável, Jornal Pessoal, Belém, 2 Septem-ber 2004. On January 21 2005, Lúcio Flávio “registered a complaint of aggression and death threat against him, bybusinessman Ronaldo Maiorana and his security guards” (Ronaldo Maiorana is the owner of the largest communica-tion entreprise of Pará). See Lúcio Flávio’s clarification note at http://www.amazonia.org.br.19 Caucho is a variety of latex rubber.


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office of Altamira. The files of this legal procedure disappeared for two–and-one-halfyears. When it reappeared, it contained a sentence (dated a month after the files haddisappeared) in favor of the illegal land occupiers.

Recently, grilagem suffered a setback as a result of attempts to confront these illegalactivities. The Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor filed a civil suit against the BrazilianInstitute of Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA) and INCENXIL (Indústria,Comércio, Exportação e Navegação do Xingu Ltda.), which is controlled by the CRAlmeidaGroup, with the objective of blocking the compensation IBAMA would pay this companyfor the confiscation of approximately 4.7 million hectares of land located in Terra doMeio.20 It is noteworthy that these plots had false property titles, by-products of thefalsification schemes mentioned above. The Office of the Public Prosecutor obtainedprotection in anticipation, preventing IBAMA from making any payments to INCENXILas compensation for the expropriation of the Curuá Ranch.

In the past, the struggles for land in the Xingu region were a result of disputes forextractive products in the forest; currently, the battle is for mahogany, known as the“green gold of the Amazon.” This comes at a cost of US$1,800 per cubic meter in theEuropean market, while locals receive only U$100 in the interior of the Amazon Forest.Another difference in modern-day natural resource exploitation is that, where previou-sly cultivators and traders were merchants and so-called “colonels” of the Pará oligarchy,today they are big landowners from the south and center of the country, soy producers,and multinational companies exploiting minerals.

According to the final report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry in thePará Legislative Assembly in 1999,

...[T]he situation is so chaotic and critical that there exist cities whose registered area in theregistry office include individual properties larger than the given city’s territorial extension....[For example,] the city of Acará with a surface of 854,200 hectares has 1,040,112.7 hectaresregistered in the registry’s office; Tomé-Açu, with a surface of 2,716,800 hectares, has 3,327,234hectares registered at the registry’s office; and the case that has caused the most turmoil,Moju, although having a dimension of 1,172,800 hectares, now has registered in the registryoffice 2,750,080.4 hectares.

The grilagem of public lands, associated with illegal logging and deforestation,represents other serious forms of violence that are often fostered by the same govern-ment and judicial authorities. The process of grilagem has always been favored by state

20 In part of this area, the federal government created the Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve on 8 November2004. As the Presidential Decree authorized IBAMA to proceed with the dispossessions for social interests fromprivate owners, including any developments made on the land within the extractive reserve, certainly the governmentwould pay indemnity for federal lands that were grabbed illegally.

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entities. According to Flávio Pinto, ITERPA, created in 1975 with the mandate toassume administrative control over lands, “ended up becoming a governmental body toresolve the problems of wealthy groups interested in the land of Pará.”21

In evidence in the CPI of the Legislative Assembly, Flávio Pinto highlighted that

...Pará’s last attempt to exert administrative control over state lands occurred in 1975, whenITERPA was created. ...Those who closely review the law that created ITERPA, will verifythat there it is full of traps for a few privileged law firms to use that structure for its partners,its clients. ...As ITERPA transformed itself into a governmental agency to resolve the proble-ms of big groups interested in acquiring land in Pará, I feel that ITERPA did not fulfill itsfunction.22

The official agencies for the environment and agrarian reform, at both the stateand federal levels, did not adopt effective measures in order to prevent the growingillegal appropriation of public lands. The agrarian chaos in Pará reached such a proportionthat on many occasions, the federal government expropriated — with the payment ofcompensation — public areas illegally obtained (griladas) by large landowners. A classicexample of this situation was the expropriation of Fazenda Flor da Mata in 1998, locatedin São Félix do Xingu. This area had been illegally acquired and was located in anindigenous territory and had slave labor therein. In spite of all these irregularities, thearea was expropriated and the “owners” compensated (payment for the land and deve-lopments therein) for a value 25 times higher than what the “owners” had paid for theforged property titles.

The grilagem of lands therefore forms the backdrop for many forms of humanrights violations in the state of Pará. These violations range from the denial of anecologically balanced environment and the illegal extraction of forest resources, to theviolent expulsion and imprisonment of small farmers who have peacefully occupied theland for decades. These violations increase in tandem with the use of slave labor and haveresulted in the assassinations of a shocking number of rural workers and their leaders.

The illegal seizure of public lands is closely related to the violations of humanrights in the Amazon region in general, and in Pará in particular. Firstly, it is an essentialcomponent of the process of concentration of land, which in turn contributes to violationsof economic, social, and cultural rights. These violations are thus strongly associatedwith the loss of territories by traditional populations, small farmers, and agriculturalworkers.

The resources approved by SUDAM had financed improvements for whichcompensation was later provided, when the landowners were forced to give up thepublic lands they had taken, thus constituting a “cycle of compensation” and a close

21 Deposition of Lúcio F. Pinto to the CPI of grilagem, Pará State Legislative Assembly.22 Idem.


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alliance between public resources and grilagem. In truth, SUDAM’s public resourceshad thus actually promoted the grilagem of lands in the Amazon, because first of all,illegally appropriated lands served as “guarantees” for accessing loans. Secondly, the fictitiousprojects of investments in cattle required the presentation of projects with areas availablefor its implementation, hence again stimulating the grilagem of public lands.

In many cases, the illegality of the titles of the false “properties” serves as a factormotivating large landowners to utilize force, violence, and corruption to guarantee theircontinued ownership and stop the intervention of public entities attempting to regula-rize land ownership. Furthermore, various official documents, among them the Planfor Combating Deforestation, point out that an essential measure in public policiesaimed at reducing the environmental degradation of the Amazon is to fight grilagem.

The challenge involving the conflicts and violence in Pará is set in a context of anabsence of official administration of the territory, mainly as relates to the control overborder areas and the gravity of the agrarian question. The State is either negligent,conniving, or acting forcefully in these situations, marked by the illegal appropriationof natural resources, legal titling of landed property (thereby inciting the illegalappropriation of public lands), and violence. This is made possible through police actionsin eviction operations and by private militias, who attempt to restrain the actions oforganized social movements. The slowness of the judicial process and historical impunityserve to exacerbate these problems.

While the territorial management on the part of the state is a subject even moreserious in border areas, it actually involves virtually the entire territory of the state. InPará, the data are alarming: from more than 124 million hectares, only 40 millionhectares (nearly 32.1% of the state of Pará) are officially registered in the NationalSystem of Rural Registry (Sistema Nacional de Cadastro Rural, SNCR). However, morethan 84 million hectares (about 67.8% of the state) are not registered in SNCR.

This situation is even worse if we consider the statistics of the agricultural properties.Of the areas registered (32.1% of the total), about 24 million hectares constitute only26,000 properties, while the rest (16 million hectares) is owned by 84,124 individuals.This results in only 111,000 registered properties, which form more than 30% of thetotal area of the state, demonstrating the high level of agrarian concentration in Pará.

The detailed analysis of the properties in Pará registered in the SNCR confirms theabove thesis. Of the 111,000 proprieties registered, about 100,000 (90% of the totalregistered) have areas of up to 500 hectares, covering 7.3 million hectares. These landscorrespond to 18% of the registered area. While 5,414 owners (6% of the total), eachcovering more than 500 hectares, own more than 50 million hectares, that is about25% of the total registered areas. Most of these rural properties measure between 2,000-5,000 hectares.23

23 Data from INCRA’s National System of Rural Registry (SNCR).

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The data indicate the lack of management on the part of the state, conniving withthe illegal appropriation of public lands, not taking measures to collect or register publiclands, not giving incentives to register private properties, etc. Additionally, these dataconfirm the high rate of land concentration and further strengthen the allegation thatstate governments assist in the concession of titles to the large estates.

The local and federal governments do not publicly acknowledge this chaotic anddisturbing scenario, but they know that the situation is grave and calls for an effectivestrategic plan with short- and long-term facets. With the “opportunities” in Pará beingclose to an end24 due to the accelerated expansion of the economy, representatives ofagents of agricultural businesses are eager to acquire more lands. This challenges thestate to provide solutions on territorial management, or otherwise, conflicts will increase,followed by violence, death, and environmental destruction.

A significant part of the agrarian conflicts and environmental problems is the resultof the implementation of settlement projects promoted by the military governments(1964-1985). Under the motif of the Statute of the Land (Estatuto da Terra), agrarianpolicies were based on the distribution of new agricultural areas as a way to diminishthe pressure for land in the south, southeast, and northeast of Brazil. The settlementprojects, motivated by the government’s propaganda and resources, led to the migrationof millions of families in the direction of the Amazon. The absence of promised gover-nment assistance to new settlers once they arrived in the Amazon, however, producednew points of conflicts and disputes over land, increased the levels of violence, andproduced greater ecological destruction in the region.

The biggest challenge is Pará’s history of inequitable management of public lands.The state has always pushed for, and even planned, the economic cycle, including offeringfiscal incentives to big investors that enabled them to acquire lands in the Amazon. Paráhas couched its rhetoric in the terms of “freedom of competition” to justify the inactionin terms of the appropriation of illegal lands. It connived with grilagem of large extensi-ons of land, in the hopes of encouraging investment in projects such as cattle ranching,as it was seen as a way to actively promote economic development. The result, however,has been the continued concentration of land, which has in turn generated violence andpoverty in rural Pará.

2. CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN RURAL AREAS

The state of Pará is infamous, both nationally and internationally, due to its severeand violent conflicts over land ownership, which in the last decades have victimized

24 An end to opportunities means the accelerated advance of productive fronts focused on forest management, mineralextractivism, and agribusiness. These fronts occupy and illegally appropriate the last available plots of land, even thenthey still contain protected flora.


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hundreds of agricultural workers, union and religious leaders, lawyers, environmenta-lists, parliamentarians, and other human right defenders.

The changing nature of conflict over land in the non-central areas is due to theclash between two opposing economies and resulting competition for the same land:poor small farmers undertaking subsistence agriculture versus large firms and landedestates with monoculture export-focused agriculture. Thus we see the wave of immigrantsrunning towards the border in search of access to work and freedom, thereby becomingtrapped in a capitalist type of subordination. According to Martins, “In the borderareas, an endemic conflict between appropriation of free land by independent farmersand the conversion of land in capital is taking place.”25

Alfredo Wagner, analyzing the changing nature of agrarian conflicts in the Amazon,affirms that: “The agrarian conflicts in the Amazonian region were formally recognizedas a relevant issue for government intervention in the second half of the 1970s. Despitethe repressive actions, the conflicts are getting bigger and creating barriers to the imple-mentation of agricultural, timber, and mineral projects that threaten the preexistingsystem of settlement.”26

Wagner relates that in the military period as well as in the years of democratictransition, Brazil treated the questions relating to conflicts and violence in the field,mainly in bordering areas, as part of the state bureaucracy. The federal governmentfailed to effectively prioritize the control of the endemic clashes in the interior of theAmazon. According to Wagner,

The inconsistency between the intensification of land conflicts and the irregular and unevengovernmental intervention in the region has constituted itself in a striking feature of theagrarian structure in the Amazonian region in the past two decades. During this period, theprevailing official view was of a technocratic understanding of the conflicts, and particularlyof the violence. These factors were both considered as inherent to the modernization ofagriculture and to the development of productive forces in a new agricultural region. Thedeepening of social tension was interpreted as a natural phenomenon resulting fromconfrontations in the context of brutal force and coercion. The subjugation through violenceof different groups of farmers regionally known as posseiros and peões and of several indigenousgroups, despite not provoking public statements of moral disapproval, implicitly manifesteditself as a “necessary fact” that was peculiar to the economic processes and the structuralpolicies of the “border.” This situation can be observed in both explicitly dictatorial periods(1964-85), as well as in periods defined by the “transition to democracy” (1985-89). Withoutknowing major reviews of these cumulative tendencies, it reproduces intrinsic cultural standards

25 Martins, José de Souza. Fronteira: a degradação do outro nos confins do humano. São Paulo. Hucitec, 1997.26 De Almeida, Alfredo Wagner Berno. O intransitivo da Transição: o Estado, os conflitos agrários e a violência na Amazô-nia. In: Amazônia — fronteira agrícola 20 anos depois. Museu Emílio Goeldi, 1991, p. 263.

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to the formation of large estates verified in ancient periods of colonization. The principle ofsubordination of the peasants through coercive acts and through modalities of banditry andweaponry reveals itself to exist historically alongside the consolidation of large territorialproperty, which was founded upon a model of access to the means of production through thedestruction of preexisting systems of ownership and in the adoption of immobilization me-chanisms, that is, forms of slavery through debt, an extreme modality of repression of theworkforce.

The majority of the conflicts that involve the agrarian question are associated withthe practice of banditry, a recent phenomenon that started also to inhabit the dailyroutine of land occupations. This phenomenon in Pará and the Amazon dates to appro-ximately 30 years ago. But in this aspect, the hired gunman (pistoleiro) differs from thecangaceiro or the northeast bodyguard (capanga). The pistoleiro has a different historicaland social origin.

The hired gunman’s role is to “protect” from “invasion” (on the part of landlessrural workers) the great extensions of land obtained illegally by large landowners butthat lie unoccupied and unproductive. A hired gunman can be contracted to kick farmersoff of occupied lands, assassinate their leaders and union members, and/or “help” thepolice to evict rural workers. As the number of police officers is insufficient to the taskof forcibly removing rural workers from lands they have occupied, large landownerscontinue to hire gunmen to reinforce the police contingents in charge of these expulsions.

Under the tolerant eye of the state, private firms and grileiros form private militiasto “monitor” and provide “security.” These militias are in fact hired to guarantee theownership and defense of large landed interests in the Amazon.27 It is thus that the largelandowners and local authorities come to share common objectives — the landownersseek to acquire more land illegally (or keep that which they have already acquired illegally)and the authorities ignore the participation of the militias in order to ensure that thelandowners support them politically/financially.

Even with the process of re-democratization of Brazil after the fall of the militaryregime, the state was not able to regain the power it had previously enjoyed and thatinformally it had given to large regional landowners to help them “restore agrarianorder” and thereby control the continuing confrontations. The central origin of thehired gunmen in the Amazon is clear: it is the result of the power “distribution” betwe-en the federal and state governments and the representatives of the new capital thatwere set up in a disorderly fashion in that region starting in the 1970s.

27 The strategies adopted by landowners and grileiros to fight the work of rural workers and human rights defendersinclude setting up clandestine “security firms,” using heavy armament, training sessions, and attacks on camped workers.The website of the Rural Democratic Union (União Democrática Ruralista, UDR) presented, in July 2002, an articleentitled “Private Security of Rural Properties: A Right,” justifying the arming of landowners for their own “self defense.”


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For many decades, the state tolerated this division of police power, ignoring thedenunciations of the CPT and other organizations of the participation of gunmen inthe police and the formation of private militias. This blatant pattern of human rightsviolations developed deep socio-political roots that exist today in the region. Today, thegovernment tries to retake control over this situation that serves as a great source ofembarrassment to Brazilian society; however, it has had great difficulty overpoweringand controlling these outlaw forces.

Pará is the state in Brazil with the largest number of conflicts and deaths related tothe land issue. In fact, in the last 10 years, the relative numbers of land-related conflicts,murders, and death threats are extremely high, as can be seen in the table below.

TABLE 1: CONFLICTS IN PARÁ 1994-200428

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 TOTAL

Land Conflicts 35 38 63 60 37 86 53 115 110 136 104 837

Assassinations 12 14 33 12 12 9 5 8 20 33 15 173

Death Threats 42 54 24 29 11 36 17 46 78 61 103 501

Source: Cadernos de Conflitos no Campo — Pastoral Land Commission, 2004.

The registry of the CPT shows that from 1971 to 2004, 772 farmers and otherhuman right defenders were assassinated in Pará, with the majority of those deaths(574) being registered in the southern and southeast regions of the state. Between 1971and 1985, 340 of those assassinations in agrarian conflicts were registered. In the secondhalf of the period (1986-2004), 432 farmers were victims, demonstrating the persistencethrough time of the level of existing violence in Pará.

It is important to note that during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Administrati-on (1995-2002), according to data collected by the CPT, 271 agricultural workers andleaders were assassinated in conflicts related to land ownership in all of Brazil. Of thesemurders, 113 were agricultural workers killed in Pará during the tenure of GovernorAlmir Gabriel, corresponding to 41.69% of the national number of murders. Duringthe last year of the Cardoso Administration (2002), 20 agricultural workers wereassassinated in Pará, corresponding to 46.51% of the national total (43 cases).

28 The CPT defines as “land conflicts” the actions of resistance and confrontation for the possession, use, and ownershipof the land, and for access to natural resources, e.g. seringais, babaçuais, or chestnut trees, when they involve smallfarmers living on the land (posseiros), settlers, populations from Quilombos (communities of descendants of Africanslaves), eventually hired workers, small leaseholders, small proprietors, occupiers, landless workers, workers of theextractive industry such as seringueiros, processers of babaçu, coconut, chestnut gatherers, etc.

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Between 1985 and 1994, the number of agricultural workers killed in Parácorresponds to 39.23% of all of those killed nationally in land-related incidents. Duringthe period 1995-2002, two years of major proportional participation of the state on thetotal national assassinations of agricultural workers were registered: 1996 with almost72% of the cases of murdered rural workers coming from the state of Pará, and 2002with almost 47%. In no year between 1964 and 1994 were there identified higherproportional numbers as in 1996 and 2002. These numbers clearly indicate the continuityof violence in Pará, including the fast growth in the proportional participation of Paráin the total number of murders nationally.

During the first two years of the Lula Administration, this level of violence did notchange: there were 48 assassinations in Pará. The hope that there would be an increasein the implementation of agrarian reform policies led to a steep increase in the numberof families in encampments and occupations of large estates. The extremely slow pace ofthe government in expropriating land provoked a violent reaction by large estate owners,culminating in the murders of dozens of workers and their leaders.

As an example of the tragic and increasing pattern of violence in Pará, more ruralworkers were assassinated during 1995 to 2004 (169) than in the first 15 years of themilitary dictatorship (1964-1979), when 89 workers were killed. These were preciselythe years usually considered the most repressive of the popular movements.

The official data are even more worrysome. At the end of 2002, the SpecialSecretariat of Social Defense of the state of Pará published a study entitled “Inventory ofthe Registers and Denunciations of Deaths Related to the Ownership and Exploitation ofLand in the State of Pará 1980-2001.” In this survey, the data covering 1995-2001indicate that 328 murders were committed in Pará related to conflicts over the ownershipand exploitation of land. The sources of this study are criminal registers specialized inagrarian conflicts of the Pará State Civil Police.

During each year in the period 1995-2004, Pará held the national record of murdersof rural workers in conflicts related to land ownership. In that period, there were 128assassination attempts and 459 death threats against agricultural workers and otherdefenders of human rights in Pará.

TABLE 2: PERSONS THREATENED WITH DEATH IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

Raimundo Deumiro de Lima dos Santos Maria de Fátima Moreira

Benedito Freire Cícero Pinto da Cruz

Raimundo Pereira do Nascimento Geraldo Margela de Almeida Filho

Dionísio Pereira J. L. S. (53 anos)

Ednalva Rodrigues Araújo Francisco de Assis dos Santos Souza

Sebastião Alves de Sousa Gabriel de Moura


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In absolute and proportional terms, the violence against rural workers surpassesany national reference. In 1996, 33 rural workers were assassinated in Pará. This numberrepresents 4.79% of the total number of homicides (688 cases) in the entire state thatyear. In that same year, there were 54 assassinations of agricultural workers in Brazil,corresponding to 0.21% of the total number of homicides (42,131). The proportion ofhomicides of rural workers and total number of homicides in Pará was 39 times higherthan the national average for 1996.

During the period 1995-2004, the assassinations of agricultural workers becamemore selective, aiming to reach the principal leaders of social movements. The objectivewas to hinder the strengthening of the workers’ organizations that fight for agrarianreform, environmental protection, and human rights. The assassinations of OnalícioAraújo Barros (known as “Fusquinha”) in 1998; José Dutra da Costa (known as “Dezinho”)in 2000; Ademir Alfeu Federicci (“Dema”) in 2001; José Pinheiro Lima (“Dedé”) in2001; Bartolomeu Morais da Silva (“Brasília”) in 2002; Ivo Laurindo do Carmo in 2002;Ribamar Francisco dos Santos in 2004; and Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005 are clear evidenceof a new pattern of violence against agricultural workers in Pará.

José Agrício da Silva Pe Amaro Lopes de Souza

filhos de José Agrício Idalino Nunes Assis

Raimundo Vicente da Silva Adernei Guemaque Leal

Tereza Ferreira da Silva Antonio Ferreira de Almeida Silva

Gilson José da Silva Raimundo Nonato dos Santos (Índio)

Francisco de Assis Soledade da Costa Raimundo Nonato Costa Silva (Italiano)

Ivanilde Maria Prestes Alves Manoel

Genival Soares dos Santos Antonia Melo da Silva

Raimundinho Claudio Wilson Soares Barbosa

Maria Joel Dias da Costa José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva

José Soares de Brito Odino Ferreira da Conceição

Antonio Gomes Frei Henri des Reziers

Maria do Espírito Santo Elias Pereira de Sousa

Cordiolino José de Andrade Eloina Estevão de Araujo (Maria)

Geraldo Soares Fernandes Deurival Xavier Santiago

Tarcisio Feitosa da Silva Raimundo Paulino da Silva

Carmelita Felix da Silva Sebastião Rodrigues de Castro

Sandra Barbosa Sena Maria Gorete Barradas

Source: Pastoral Land Commission (Pará regional office)

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Also during the period 1995-2004, the physical violence against rural workersgreatly expanded to many parts of Pará, outside of the south and southeast where theviolence had been traditionally focused. The violence thus moved to areas of expansionof the agricultural fields, along the Xingu River (Altamira and São Félix do Xingu) andCuruá River (Novo Progresso), where important leaders of agricultural unions have beensystematically assassinated. The deaths of Bartolomeu Morais da Silva (“Brasília”) in 2002,Ademir Alfeu Federicci (“Dema”) in 2001, and of Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005 are alsoexamples of this new phase of repeated physical violence against popular leaders.

“Red April”, south of Pará, 2004.Photo by João Laet.

Demonstration at the “S” Curve,where the Eldorado do CarajásMassacre took place on 17 April1996. Photo by João Laet.

Rural workers being arrested in Marabá.Photo by João Laet.


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3. THE PRACTICE OF SLAVE LABOR

Unfortunately, Pará not only stands out nationally for its assassinations in ruralareas, but also in other crimes such as slave labor, grilagem of public lands, illegal defo-restation, violent evictions, death threats, among others. Sadly, this daily violence hasmarked the lives of the poor population and the Amazonian ecosystem.

According to data from the National Campaign to Fight Slave Labor, coordinatedby the CPT, there have been more than 300 large farms denounced for the crime ofslave labor in the last five years, involving more than 10,000 workers. In response tothese denunciations, the mobile monitoring units of the Ministry of Labor freed about50% of these workers.

In the past two years, despite the continuous oversight, slave labor continues topersist on the majority of the big farms in Pará, a situation that does not appear tobother the executive authorities or the judiciary of Pará. The Terra do Meio region holdsthe highest concentration of slave labor in the country. CPT estimates indicate thatclose to 10,000 workers are kept enslaved in the region.

The situation of slave labor in Pará is widely known and documented. Repeatedlyin the last few years, the press has warned of the horrors lived by millions of agriculturalworkers. The members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)of the Organization of American States (OAS),29 on the basis of a visit they made toPará in 1997, indicated that:

The same situation of poverty and lack of opportunities provoked by the bad distribution ofaccess to land and services leads to exploitation, in conditions of servitude, of the agriculturalworkers. The Commission proved the existence in Pará of groups who took advantage of theseconditions to drive the workers to other states to situations of semi-slavery, establishing aclimate of insecurity and illegality through physical aggression against workers as well as theirleaders. Their impunity is assured by the slowness and outmoded nature of the judicial system,as well as the lack of effectiveness of the authorities in preventing and punishing these activities.

The IACHR concluded its report by recommending that Brazil “adopt legislationand effective policies to put an end to the conditions of servitude and of criminal actionsof contractors who perpetuate this situation. To create special conditions of security andensure the full respect of the rights of agricultural and union leaders, especially in areaswhere there are major denunciations of persistent work in conditions of servitude.” Theserecommendations were not taken into consideration by the Brazilian government.

29 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, Report on the Human RightsSituation in Brazil, Washington, Organization of American States, 1997, p. 133.

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Clear examples of the failure of official initiatives to halt the repression of enslavedworkers is the recurring tax recognized during the period 1995-2002. The Brasil VerdeFarm in Xinguara was denounced in 1996 (78 slave workers) and the following year itwas denounced again for the same crime (49 slave workers freed). The Santa LúciaFarm in Curionópolis was denounced by the public authorities in 1996 (133 slaveworkers) and again in 2002 (25 slave workers). Between the 117 large farms denouncedin 2002, 27 had already been denounced for using slave work in previous years.

In 2002, the Forkilha Ranch, located in Santa Maria das Barreiras, property ofJairo Andrade, was denounced by the Ministry of Labor for once again using slave laborin several inspections over 10 different years. The large plantation Rio Vermelho, locatedin Sapucaia and belonging to Grupo Quagliato, was denounced nine different years forcontinuing to use slave labor.

In 2003, the federal government launched the National Plan to Eradicate SlaveLabor, as a collaboration between various agencies in the executive and judiciary alongwith civil society, with the mandate of eradicating all contemporary forms of humanenslavement. The plan represented a joint effort aimed at improving the administrativestructures of the Mobile Surveillance Group (a special task force that inspects ruralareas accused of using slave labor) of the Ministry of Labor and Employment, theFederal Public Ministry, and the Public Ministry for Labor issues, developing specificactions for promoting citizenship and combating impunity, developing specific actionsof designed to build awareness and capacity.30

Pará is the focus of the National Plan for the Eradication of Slave Labor, not onlydue to the concentration of large landed estates that use slave labor, but also becauseseveral of its municipalities recruit workers who end up as slaves.31 The plan foreseesspecific actions for each Brazilian state, including the following for Pará: 1) six permanentunits of the Mobile Surveillance Group of the Ministry of Labor and Employment; 2)creation of public prosecutor offices in the municipalities of São Félix do Xingu, Xinguara,Conceicão do Araguaia, and Redenção; 3) installation of offices of public defenders inmunicipalities of Pará; 4) installation of Labor Courts in the municipalities of São Felixdo Xingu, Xinguara, and Redenção; 5) implementation of a mobile unit of the RegionalRepresentative of the Ministry of Labor in the south of Pará; 6) permanent presence ofthe federal police investigating cases of slave labor, with a minimum of 60 investigators

30 Report available at http://www.mte.gov.br/Empregador/FiscaTrab/TrabEscravo/ErradicacaoTrabalho Escravo/Conteudo/7337.pdf.31 The registry of employers who went through administrative procedures for the use of slave labor was created byPortaria n.º 540 on 18 October 2004 (Ministry of Labor and Employment), better known as “the dirty list” (lista suja),presented 68 large farms in the state of Pará that were fined for using slave labor (list available at http://www.mte.gov.br/Noticias/download/lista.pdf ). The municipalities of Redenção, Açailância, Marabá, Santana do Araguaia, Sapucaia,Xinguara, and Curionópois originate the most part of the workers who were lured and later freed by actions of theMobile Surveillance Group (Observatório Social em Revista: Trabalho Escravo no Brasil, São Paulo, ObservatórioSocial, n.º 06, 2004, p.6).


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and 12 federal police chiefs in the state; 7) creation of branches of federal police in themunicipalities of São Félix do Xingu, Tucuruí, and Redenção with a specific mandate toeradicate slave labor.32

However, since the launch of the Plan in 2003, few actions directed towards thestate of Pará have materialized. The Offices of the Federal Prosecutors for São Félix doXingu, Xinguara, Conceição do Araguaia, and Redenção have still not been created.Pará has only two Federal Prosecutors in the interior of the state — in Marabá andSantarém — besides the Office of the Attorney General in the capital.33 As for thefederal public defenders, Pará has only one who covers the entire state and is based inthe capital.34 The creation of Labor Courts in the municipalities of São Felix doe Xingu,Xinguara, and Redenção has not been fully operationalized. On 2 July 2004, the LaborCourt of Redenção was created with jurisdiction over the municipalities of Redenção,Bannach, Cumaru do Norte, Pau d’Arco, Santana do Araguaia, Floresta do Araguaia,Xinguara, Água Azul do Norte, Rio Maria, Piçarra, Sapucaia, São Félix do Xingu, andTucumã. This Court has only one main judge post, which is vacant. The activities arecarried out by substitute judges who remain for only short periods of time in themunicipality.35

Pará has federal police branches in the municipalities of Marabá, Redenção,Santarém, and Altamira, in addition to the Regional Superintendent located in thecapital; it also has representatives in the municipalities of Óbidos, Anapu, and NovoProgresso.36 There was not, until recently, the creation of new federal police branchesin the municipalities of São Félix do Xingu and Tucuruí, as had been foreseen under theNational Plan for the Eradication of Slave Labor. The plan of allocating 60 agents and12 federal police chiefs permanently available for action to fight slave labor did not takeplace. The Regional Superintendent of Belém currently has 12 federal police chiefs andthe other branches have only a police chief and two investigators. There are no agentsspecifically focused on the eradication of slave labor.37

It is important to note that all of these actions set out in the National Plan shouldhave be implemented in the short term.38 Two years after being launched, important

32 Report available at http://www.mte.gov.br/Empregador/FiscaTrab/TrabEscravo/Erradicacao TrabalhoEscravo/Conteudo/7337.pdf.33 Information available at http://www.prpa.mpf.gov.br/instituicao/instituicao.php.34 Information available at http://www.mj.gov.br/defensoria/links.htm#BELÉM/PA.35 The municipalities are Redenção, Bannach, Cumaru do Norte, Pau d’Arco, Santana do Araguaia, Floresta do Ara-guaia, Xinguara, Água Azul do Norte, Ourilândia do Norte, Rio Maria, Piçarra, Sapucaia, São Felix do Xingu, andTucumã. Information available at http://www.trt8.gov.br/vtredencao/index.asp?cod=vtredencao.36 Information available at http://www.dpf.gov.br.37 Information provided by the Regional Superintendency of Pará on 20 September 2005.38 Information available at http://www.mte.gov.br/Empregador/FiscaTrab/TrabEscravo/ErradicacaoTrabalhoEscravo/Conteudo/7337.pdf.

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measures for halting slave labor in Pará, such as strengthening the Federal Police andincreasing the number of Labor Courts and Federal Prosecutors to investigate the de-nunciations of enticers and large landowners who use slave labor have not been effective.The result has been continued impunity and enticement of poor workers to work infarms where they are enslaved.

The National Plan also contains, as short-term goals, the approval of a Constituti-onal Amendment Bill (Projeto de Emenda Constitucional, PEC) 438/2001, that wouldregulate the expropriation of lands wherein workers have been found to been in slavelabor conditions. The National Plan also includes the approval of Draft Bill 2022/1996that incorporates the prohibition to formalize contracts with governmental agenciesand entities and the participation in auctions of companies that directly or indirectlyuse slave labor in the production of good and services.

PEC 438/2001 represents a big advance in the fight to eradicate slave labor, but itfaces great obstacles for its approval. The proposal was presented by Senator AdemirAndrade on 1 November 2001 and, after almost four years of moving through theNational Congress, is still awaiting a second vote in the Chamber of Deputies.39

In May 2005, then President of the Chamber of Deputies, Severino Cavalcanti,committed to making a vote on PEC 438/2001 a priority for the second half of theyear.40 However, the PEC remained outside of the list of draft bills that would gothrough a vote since 14 December 2004, being out of the government’s priorities.41

Law Project 2022/1996, presented on 11 June 1996, has also not progressed to a votefor 11 years. Since 11 November 2004, it remains in the Congressional Commission ofConstitution, Justice, and Citizenship, without a rapporteur being appointed for itsanalysis.42

The search for approval of PEC 438/2001 and Law Project 2022/1996, accordingto the National Plan, falls within the responsibility of the President of the Republic, theParliament, the Ministry of Labor and Employment, and the Special Secretariat forHuman Rights. Despite the importance of these proposals for eradicating slave labor byrestraining and punishing those responsible, there is no hope of their being approved,transformed into law, and implemented effectively. The approval of PEC 438/2001would make it possible to confiscate the lands of 68 large landowners in Pará who wereincluded on the “dirty list” of employers who have been brought to court for enslavingmore than 2,000 workers since 2003.43

39 See the phases of the legislative process at http://www2.camara.gov.br/proposicoes.40 Information available at http://www.noticiasdoplanalto.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=148&Itemid=43.41 Information available at http://www2.camara.gov.br/proposicoes.42 Information available at http://www2.camara.gov.br/proposicoes.43 The “dirty list” elaborated by the Ministry of Labor and Employment is available at: http://www.mte.gov.br/Notici-as/download/lista.pdf.


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Slave labor is used by the big names in agribusiness in Pará in order to reduceproduction costs and increase their competitiveness in domestic and foreign markets.The relationship between agribusiness and slave labor is blatant: Pará is the state ofBrazil with the highest number of workers freed between 1995-2004. In total, 5,695workers were liberated, the majority of them from cattle raising farms.44 The tradingnetwork, in which these farms are included, connects them with buyers in Asia and theEuropean Union. Brazil has increased its market share significantly in the last eightyears, from 138,600 tons in 1996 to roughly 800,000 tons of exported meat. Thisincrease means now 20% of the world market, instead of previous 7%.45

This is the reality of agribusiness in Pará, which is similar to other states whereslave labor is found. While workers are enslaved, with long working hours and totaldisrespect for their human rights, the cattle receives first-class treatment: balanced diet,vaccinations, with computerized control and artificial insemination for birth control.This is the situation of human beings living in an extremely degrading situation.

44 Information available at http://www.cpt.org.br.45 Sakamoto, Leonardo. Os compadres da casa-grande. Available at http://www.reporterbrasil.com.br/materia_escravo.php?nick=casagrande.

Enslaved worker.Photo by João Laet.

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4. IMPUNITY IN THE COUNTRYSIDE: ONE OF THE CAUSES OF VIOLENCE

If the pattern of violence shocks, than impunity shocks even more. In the lastdecades, the agrarian conflicts have resulted in numerous slaughters in which theconnivance of public authorities and the organized crime in the countryside of Pará isunequivocal. Those who order the assassinations are not imprisoned or even brought tocourt; arrest warrants are not executed, and gunmen act in collusion with the police.

In the table below we list just some of the brutal crimes against agricultural workersand leaders of the region where the gunmen and those who ordered the murders havenever been punished:

TABLE 3: VIOLENCE IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

Source: Pastoral Land Commission

CASE YEAR Nº OF DEAD INVESTIGATION

Dois Irmãos Slaughter – Xinguara June 1985 6 No case brought to court.

Ingá Slaughter – Conceição do Araguaia May 1985 13 No case brought to court.

Surubim Slaughter – Xinguara June 1985 17 No case brought to court.

Fazenda Ubá Slaughter – 13 June 1985 8 Lawsuit has been stopped

São João do Araguaia 18 June 1985 for 20 years

Fazenda Princesa Slaughter – Marabá 28 Sep. 1985 5 Lawsuit has been stopped

for 19 years

Paraúnas Slaughter – São Geraldo do Araguaia 10 June 1986 10 No case brought to court.

Goianésia Slaughter – Goianésia do Pará 28 Oct.1987 3 The files of the lawsuit

disappeared

Fazenda Pastorisa Slaughter – 6 Aug.1995 3 Lawsuit has been stopped

São João do Araguaia for 10 years

Eldorado do Carajás Massacre – 17 Apr.1996 19 Only two commanders

Eldorado do Carajás were charged

Fazenda Picadão Slaughter – 1996 5 Lawsuit has been stopped

Água Azul do Norte for 9 years

Fazenda São Francisco Slaughter – 21 Aug.1996 5 No case brought to court.

Eldorado do Carajás 4 Jan.1997

Fazenda Santa Clara Slaughter – 13 Jan.1997 3 Lawsuit has been stopped

Ourilândia do Norte for 8 years

Chacina de Morada Nova 10 July2001 3 Lawsuit has been stopped

for 4 years

Chacina de São Félix do Xingu 4 Oct. 2003 8 Lawsuit has been stopped

for 3 years


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It is critical to remember the assassinations of important leaders in Pará, who standout for their undying defense of the human rights of agricultural workers. For thatdedication to their cause they were assassinated and, in virtually all of the cases, thecrimes continue unpunished.

As previously indicated, these are selective assassinations, wherein the victims servedin important/leadership positions in workers’ organizations. They were human rightsdefenders and, for that simple reason, were assassinated. The clear objective is to weakentheir organizations and the overall struggle of the workers.

All of these assassinations are simply a few of the hundreds of assassinations thathappened in the region in the last 30 years and that are still unpunished today. In themajority of the cases, not even a police inquiry was made to identify those responsiblefor the crimes. According to the CPT registry, in the last 33 years, there were 772assassinations in Pará’s countryside. Only three trials against those who ordered thecrimes have occurred. In the last 10 years, reports the CPT, there have been an averageof 13 workers assassinated per year.

This situation of reigning impunity has been denounced repeatedly to nationaland international human rights entities. In its 1997 report based on its visit to theregion, the IACHR noted that: “The situation in the south of Pará continues to be anissue of special concern, with respect to the Commission that has pronounced itself ondifferent occasions, although some actions of the federal government continue to be anarea of grave human right violations, and complicity of the police and the judicialbodies.”

Even though one could recognize the importance of the convictions of landownerJerônimo Alves do Amorim on 6 June 2000 (nine years after the assassination of Expe-dito Ribeiro) and Adilson Carvalho Laranjeiras and Vantuir de Paula on 29 May 2003for the death of João Canuto (18 years after the crime was committed), these were thefirst and only assassinations against agricultural workers in which those responsible forthe crimes have been punished. However, Amorim served his time under house arrestand the other big landowners mentioned above lost their appeals and had their prisonwarrants issued but they have not been apprehended as of this writing.

The trial of the military police that commanded the massacre of Eldorado doCarajás on 17 April 1996 is a clear example of how the state in general, and the judiciaryin particular, act to ensure impunity. Then governor of Pará Amir Gabriel, along withthe Secretary of Public Security and General Commander of the Military Police, wereresponsible for giving the orders to “clear the people” the PA-150 Highway “at anycost;” however, they were excluded from the trial.

Throughout the course of the legal procedure, the state judiciary’s actions clearlyfavored the accused. During the first session of the trial, on 16 August 1999, the officialswho ordered the operation were acquitted. This trial was annulled due to the biasedbehavior of the judge who presided over the judgment, Mr. Ronaldo Vale. In the secondjudgment on 21 May 2002, the judiciary’s position was demonstrated as being manifestly

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in favor of the accused. This led the social movements and lawyers assisting the prosecutorsto boycott the trial in protest.

As a result, only two commanders were convicted. Two years after this conviction,the High Court of Pará finally denied the appeals and maintained the original conviction.The arrest warrants for officers Pantoja and Oliveira were issued and they began servingtheir terms at the barracks of the military police in Belém. They have been already beenfreed.46 The remainder of the 142 officials and police officers involved were absolvedand continue to enjoy impunity.

It is important to note that even in the cases that made it to court, the judicialactions came only after long years of fighting, pressure, and denunciations of impunityand judicial slowness by national and international human rights organizations. Thisclearly demonstrates the slow pace of the justice system, that is subject to the considerablepressure brought by political and economic authorities, thus serving to delay, influencecases’ progress and judgments, and often to fully halt the progress of a case altogether.Exemplary cases that deal with the murders of leaders and agricultural workers remainstalled in the courts of small municipalities in the interior of the state.

Hundreds of people — those who order the crimes, intermediaries, and hiredgunmen — are involved in these murders in Pará. However, only nine judgments havebeen handed down: 1) Jerônimo Alves de Amorim (ordered the crime); 2) Francisco deAssis Ferreira (intermediary) and José Serafim Sales (gunman); 3) Ubiratan Ubirajara(gunman); 4) two military officials (Mário Pantoja and José M. Oliveira) who wereresponsible for the massacre at Eldorado; 5) Adilson Laranjeira and Vantuir Paula (orderedthe crime); 6) Escorpião (gunman); 7) José de Ribamar Rodrigues (gunman), acquittedin the trial that took place in Curionópolis; 8) Péricles (gunman) tried and convictedfor the death of former congressman João Carlos Batista; and 9) Vita Lopes (intermedi-ary), tried and convicted for the death of former congressman Paulo Fonteles.

A jury trial does not guarantee that the accused will ever serve the sentence in jail.Several examples will serve to amply illustrate this situation of impunity. JerônimoAmorim, sentenced to 19 years in prison, is in fact serving out his sentence under housearrest in his mansion in Goiânia. Ubiratan Ubirajara, sentenced to 50 years in prison,remained in prison six months and then escaped in October 1994 and has never beencaptured. José Serafim Sales, sentenced to 25 years in prison, served eight years of hissentence, then escaped from prison facilitated by prison guards on 14 March 2000 andhas never been apprehended. Francisco de Assis Ferreira, sentenced to 21 years in 1994,was set free in 1998. Adilson Laranjeira and Vantuir Gonçalves, sentenced for orderingthe murder of João Canuto, continue free.

46 In 2005, César Peluso, from Brazil’s Supreme Court, accepted the request made by Pantoja’s lawyers and set him freeuntil the final decision of the appeals pending in his case. The same thing happened to Mr. Oliveira. Even though theylose their appeals, the possibility that they will return to jail is very remote, once they are free also to escape.


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During the last few years, due to strong evidence, the Civil Police arrested some ofthe large landowners who have ordered murders but had not been convicted in court.One of these cases was the one of large landowner Carlos Antônio da Costa, who orderedthe assassination of two MST leaders (Onalício Araújo Barros, known as “Fusquinha,”and Valentin Serra, known as “Doutor”) in Parauapebas in March 1998. He remainedin prison for 22 days. Another case deals with large landowner Décio José BarrosoNunes, who had ordered the murder of José Dutra da Costa (“Dezinho”), the ex-presidentof the Rural Workers Union of Rondon of Pará, in November 2002. Nunes remainedin prison for only 13 days. Both men are accused of committing violent crimes(premeditated) murder, classified in Brazil’s law as a hideous crime), but were freed bythe decision of the Pará State High Court.

In Xinguara, a city that has witnessed 76 assassinations of agricultural workers andother defenders in the last 30 years, has still not punished these crimes definitively. Thisrepresents a rate of 100% impunity. In São Geraldo do Araguaia, where 49 murderstook place in the same period, the impunity rate is identical. This complete state ofimpunity reigns in São Félix do Xingu, where there have been 47 murders, and inMarabá, with 37 murders. Among the 40 municipalities in southern Pará, only four(Rio Maria, Curionópolis, Parauapebas, and Eldorado do Carajás) do not have a rate of100% impunity in relation to murders of agricultural workers in the last 32 years.There are very few lawsuits going through the legal process in these counties, where theaverage time for the conclusion of a case is above 10 years.

The picture of impunity is not related to structural problems (lack of human andfinancial resources), as the judiciary alleges. It is the result of a close alliance andconnivance between state authorities and members of the Executive Court with thegrileiros, large landowners, timber merchants, and others. After the first judgment inthe Eldorado Massacre, in which the commanders of the massacre were scandalouslyacquitted, the jury had to be canceled due to clear partiality on the part of the judgewho had presided over the process.

In view of this, the magistrate had to be removed and, surprisingly, all 12 judgeswho sit in the capital (Belém) refused to preside over the process, alleging “intimatereasons.” The judge who agreed to preside over the process had to be removed from thecase three days before the judgment was to be handed down as a consequence of herbehavior, described as an affinity with the military.

Impunity reigns over the criminal actions of hired gunmen and large estate ownersin Pará. Only in the southern part of the state there have been 30 arrest warrants issuedagainst large landowners and hired gunmen. No effort has been made by the agencies ofpublic security or by the judiciary to arrest these criminals. The lack of political willfrom the Executive Power and the reluctant State Court hinder, if not impede altogether,the arrest of the hired gunmen and those who order the murders committed.

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NAME MUNICIPALITY BACKGROUND

1. Valter Valente Rio Maria Intelectual author and assassin of trade unionist Belchior

2. José Herzog Martins Costa, on 2 March 1982

3. Aprígio Menezes Rio Maria Assassin of Mr. Ronan and Mr. Braz, on 3 April 1990

4. José Serafim Sales, (Barreirito) Rio Maria Convicted to 26 years in prison for the assassination

of Expedito Ribeiro, in 1991. He escaped Marabá’s

penitentiary in 2000, and is also charged for other

homicides in Rio Maria

5. Adilson Carvalho Laranjeira Rio Maria Landowners convited to 19 years and 6 months in prison

6. Vantuir Gonçalves for the assassination of trade unionist João Canuto

7. Marlon Lopes Pidde

8. João Lopes Pidde Marabá Intelectual authors and assassin of massacre against five

9. Lourival Santos da Rocha workers in Fazenda Princesa, in 1986

10. Orlando Dias da Silva Marabá Middleman of the July 2001 massacre, in which

José Pinheiro Lima, Cleonice Lima and Samuel Lima died

11. Manoel Cardoso Neto (Nelito) Marabá Intelectual author of the assassination of lawyer

advogado Gabriel Sales Pimenta, in 1982

12. Aldimir Lima Nunes Marabá Charged with several crimes, including use of slave labor,

(Branquinho) conspiracy to form a criminal gang, threats, grilagem etc

13. Raimundo Nonato de Sousa São João Assassin of eight workers in the Ubá Farm, in 1985

14. Expedito Alves dos Santos São João Assassins of the massacre in the Pastpriza Farm,

15. Reginaldo Gomes Cardoso do Araguaia which took place in 1996

16. Raimundo Nonato da Silva Marabá Accused of killing José do Carmo Silva, (Dodô), in

the Fazenda Santa Rita, March 2003

17. João Diniz filho Assassins of brothers José and Paulo Canuto, on 22 April

18. Sargento Edson Matos Xinguara 1990. Edson Matos escaped from the headquarters of the

19. José Ubiratan M. Ubirajara Military Police (PM) in Belém, in 1992. José Ubirajara was

convicted to 50 years in prison in 1994, but escaped that

same year.

20. Velho Luiz

21. Ademir Rodrigues Xinguara Assassins of several persons linked to the occupation of

22. Geraldo Mendes the Nazaré Farm, in Gerônimo Amorim, in 1994

23. Wanderley Borges Mendonça Xinguara Middleman of the killer of two workers in the occupation

of the Nazaré Farm. He remained arrested in Xinguara for

a few days but had his escape planned by civil police

officer Lucivaldo Haroldo

TABLE 4: GUNMEN AND INTELECTUAL AUTHORS OF ASSASSINATIONS WHO

HAD THEIR ARREST WARRANTS ISSUED AND NOT CARRIED OUT


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Analyzing the question of impunity in Pará, the IACHR, on the basis of localinspections and numerous evidence, concluded in its 1997 report: “[R]eliable informa-tion provided to the Commission indicates that the State Court of the State of Pará actsin order to facilitate impunity and the continuity of organized crime in the state.”

Death threats are frequent in Pará. Every year, the CPT publishes a list of peoplethreatened with death by large landowners and timber merchants. Countless leaders onthese lists have been murdered (including Expedito Ribeiro, João Canuto, Paulo Fonteles,José Dutra da Costa, and Sister Dorothy Stang). Even with frequent alerts and denun-ciations from civil society, state authorities do nothing to stop these murders.

Union leader José Dutra da Costa (“Dezinho”) was on a death-threat list from1995-99 and was finally murdered in 2000. Union leader José Pinheiro Lima (“Dedé”),assassinated simultaneously with his family in 2001, was on a death-threat list in 1999and 2000. The agricultural worker and land-rights activist Ivo Laurindo do Carmo,assassinated in 2002, was on such a list in 2001.47

Many official documents detail the functioning of this specific form of violence.According to the IACHR Report mentioned above: “[T]he phenomenon of lists ofthose ‘marked to die’ is one of the cruelest and most violent characteristics of the southernregion of Pará. These lists circulate in the region accompanied by a table of prices forexecutions, differentiating the values according to the social position of each personbeing threatened.” The list that the delegates from the IACHR had access to on 4October 2001 contained the names of 24 workers and popular leaders marked to die.

NAME MUNICIPALITY BACKGROUND

24. José Mariano Neto Ourilândia Assassins of three rural workers during the occupation

25. João Batista dos Santos do Norte of the Santa Clara Farm, in 1997

26. Ygoismar Mariano Rondon Middlemen of the assassination of trade unionist José

27. Rogério de Oliveira Dias do Pará Dutra, known as “Dezinho”, on 21 November 2000

28. Osniel Coelho de Souza Redenção Accused of killing Iraildes de Souza Maciel, in 2003.

He had his escape from the Redenção Police Station

facilitated that same year

29. Manoel Timóteo Filho Eldorado Gunman accused of assassinating trade unionist

(MANU) do Carajás sindicalista Arnaldo Delcídio Ferreira, in Eldorado do

Carajás, in 1993

30. Francisco R. Sindeaux Parauapebas Middleman of the assassination of trade unionist Soares

Costa Filho, in 14 February 2005

Source: Pastoral Land Commission (Pará regional office)

47 As registered in the report Conflitos no Campo-Brasil, published annually by the Pastoral Land Commission.

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According to the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies:

Names are only removed from the list when they are murdered,” stated a representative ofFETAGRI [Federação dos Trabalhadores da Agricultura], regarding the death list. The currentgovernor of Pará seems unconcerned with the depth of the problem. At least that is the impressionof the social movements in the region. According to interlocutors of these movements withpublic authorities in Pará, the predominant belief of state authorities is that “to occupy land is arisky activity and the state cannot do anything, the risk is that of the workers.” The assassinationof rural workers and their supporters is preceded by threats, then becomes reality. The tactic ofintimidation is used to deter leaders from continuing to defend the rights of the landless as wellas to warn the workers and society in general, thereby creating a climate of fear.48

Despite the ample advertising of the threats, including in the local and nationalpress, the state and federal authorities in charge of public security have never adoptedadequate means to investigate the threats and prevent the assassinations. Due to thecontinued inaction of federal and state authorities in guaranteeing the physical safetyand life of agricultural workers in Pará, the IACHR, in examining the case of JoãoCanuto (case 11405) in April 1999, recommended that the Brazilian Government:

1. ...[A]dopt measures so that the competent authorities establish procedures andguarantee the necessity to carry out an independent, complete, serious, and impartialinvestigation of the facts occurring in southern region of Pará, with the objectiveto identify and punish all of the people who are pointed out as responsible for thedeath threats.2. That in fulfillment of its obligations foreseen in Articles 2, 8, and 25 of theAmerican Convention, [Brazil] adopt necessary measures in order for the rights tolife, to personal integrity, and the guarantee to judicial protection for all inhabitantsof the southern region of the state of Pará become fully effective, in particular forthe rural workers, their representatives, and human rights defenders.

None of the IACHR’s 1997 recommendations were followed by either the federalnor local governments. On one hand, there is absolute impunity when it comes tocrimes committed against workers, while on the other hand, there is a rapid anddisproportional response of the judiciary and system of public security when it comes tothe defense of large landowners and grileiros, especially in the concession and fulfillmentof eviction orders. The state’s judicial and executive authorities do not measure theirefforts to guarantee the “right to property,” which is critical to ascertaining whetherhuman rights have been violated.

48 Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. Violence in Southern and South of Pará. Brasília: Câmarados Deputados, 2001.


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The data are self-explanatory, as illustrated by the period 1995-2004, wherein thestate of Pará consolidated the practice of using arrests as an instrument of dissuasionand weakening of the rural social movements. During this period, 607 agriculturalworkers were imprisoned for occupying large estates and areas that had been griladas. Ina clear demonstration of the increasing use of criminalization and arrests as instrumentsto demobilize these fights, there were 372 agricultural workers and other human rightsdefenders imprisoned from 2000-04.

During the same period, 1,383 agricultural workers were arrested throughout Brazil.The number of arrests in Pará correspond to 25.62% of the national total.49

Between 1995 and 2004, Pará’s Military Police carried out eviction orders on morethan 30 farms. More than 4,000 families were forcibly removed from the land they hadoccupied.

With an extraordinary demand for land and slowness of implementation of thefederal land reform programs in Pará, rural landless workers intensified the occupationof proprieties that were not fulfilling their social function, according to the principle setforth in the Brazilian Constitution. The reaction of the state during the 1995-2004period was often to enhance the repression against these occupations. Excessive forcewas used by the police, as well as by grileiros and their private militias, to aggressivelyexpel hundreds of landless workers, destroy their houses, belongings, and plantations.More than 60 workers were arrested or prosecuted and hundreds of children missed theschool year.

Throughout that period of eight years, 5,446 families of agricultural workers wereforcibly evicted from areas they had occupied and all of their belongings and crops weredestroyed. Evictions of 8,761 additional families of agricultural workers occurred withoutimmediate destruction of their belongings and plantations. On innumerable occasions,in addition to the countless number of forced evictions carried out by the police, thestate government directly allowed the eviction of areas allegedly “owned” by grileiros,thus violating the right of workers through the arbitrary exercise of their own power.

CONCLUSION

Impunity, connivance, negligence, economic interests, and agribusiness are someof the principles that have directed the so-called “development model” of the Amazon.The (state and federal) governments’ decisions and options have historically fostered amodel based on the predatory economic exploitation that matches the interests of loggers,cattle ranchers, soy plantations, large landowners, and grileiros.

49 The UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nigel Rodley, visited Pará in 2000 and presented his report in Geneva in Aprilof 2001. His report recognized explicitly that the detention centers for rural workers were absolutely inferior to therecommended minimum international standards. The report also recognized the dissemination of torture in such places.

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This perverse logic has its efficiency linked to all sorts of crimes: grilagem of publicland, assassinations, intimidation and persecution of popular leaders, use of slave labor,establishment of private militias, environmental destruction, corruption, andembezzlement of public funds. These crimes are marked by the omission, connivance,and even support of the state. This logic has been responsible for the destruction of theAmazonian environment and traditional way of life.

The serious situation of violence in rural areas that prevails in the state of Parátherefore does not come only from the impunity that characterizes the judicial powerand is translated into a sort of “license to kill.” It contributes markedly to the absence ofa serious agrarian reform policy. There are more than 20,000 families camped on oroccupying large landed estates in the state of Pará. Without an agrarian reform plan thatpromotes a true deconcentration of land, a halt to grilagem, and a retaking of landsillegally grabbed, and without punishing those responsible for human rights violationscommitted against agricultural workers and human rights defenders, the violence willcontinue cutting down the lives of people who fight for the right to land, the preservationof the environment, and a life of dignity in this part of the Amazon.

Demonstration against impunityin Rondon do Pará.Pastoral Land CommissionArchive.

Bartolomeu Moraes da Silva(“Brasilia”)’s coffin in Castelo dosSonhos. Terra de Direitos Archive.


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Governmental policies for the state of Pará have been, and continue to be,fundamentally linked to the development of infrastructure and the exploitation of

natural resources. The construction of roads, waterways, hydroelectric plants, andinstallation of mining companies were the driving force behind the settling and landoccupation in Pará. Historically, the state has put in place a governmental policy ofimplementing a pattern of development characterized by environmental devastationand wealth generation. This system has greatly benefited the mineral, energy, and natu-ral resource interests.

Governmental policies for the Amazon, however, were an amalgamation of twovisions: firstly, the necessity to exploit the region’s immense natural potential; andsecondly, the goal of “domesticating the environment.” This development model, whichwas brought to the Amazon from southern Brazil, was based for the most part on theneed for urbanization. The official view on the traditional inhabitants and on Amazonianculture was marked by the necessity to “liberate and free them from their backwardness.”In this vision, the traditional inhabitants were killed or forcibly removed from theirland, thereby losing control over it. This development model, conceived and laterimplemented by the state, created a situation of continuous and grave human rightsviolations.

In Pará, governmental policies were characterized by a marked uncertainty. Onone hand, there was a high degree of regulation and state intervention in infrastructureprojects thereby ensuring that economic activity would be feasible. On the other hand,there was a lack of state policies that encouraged the distribution of wealth and protec-tion of human rights and other interests.

It is not just the Brazilian government and the state of Pará that see the Amazon aspart of a plan to profit from the region’s natural resources. Countries in the northernhemisphere and international agencies have developed plans and invested funds in projectsto encourage what they deem to be “development.” Programs such as the Pilot Program

Chapter II

GOVERNMENTAL POLICIES FOR THE

AMAZON AND THE STATE OF PARÁ


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for the Protection of the Tropical Rainforest in Brazil (PPG-7)50 and investment frominternational funds such as the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), combine bothfederal and state policy with international bodies’ plans for the region.

Below we discuss some of the policies that have been implemented or are in theprocess of being implemented by the federal and/or state governments. These policiesand programs were chosen by the researchers so as to maintain a connection with themunicipalities researched for this report. They were also mentioned by numerousinterviewees in the process of developing the report, all of whom are members of thecommunities (listed below) affected by these proposals.

1. ECONOMIC AND ECOLOGICAL MACRO-ZONING (MACRO-ZONEAMENTO ECOLÓ-GICO E ECONÔMICO)

The Pará state government has emphasised that one of its principal programs isEconomic-Ecologic Macro-zoning. According to information from the government,“macro-zoning” is a form of land-use planning methodology. The objective of macro-zoning is to make scientific and technological developments compatible with environ-mental conservation and preservation, as well as encouraging the carrying out of landsurveys and periodic monitoring of specific geographical areas of the state. According tothe government of Pará, this zoning process should take place regularly, thus guaranteeingthe conservation of the different parts of the ecosystem.

Even though this is the picture is painted by the state government, an in-depthdiscussion is required on this subject. This discussion should include the need to controlthe process of land occupation and expansion of the agricultural frontier, as the wholeland management of Pará cannot be circumscribed to this policy of Ecologic-EconomicMacro-zoning alone.51

In the first stage of the project, the law on Ecologic-Economic Macro-zoningprovides for the mapping out of land in the state of Pará and creation of conservationareas, protected areas, and areas of economic expansion, using satellite imagery technology

50 The pilot program for the Protection of the Tropical Rainforests in Brazil (PPG-7) is considered one of “the largestmultilateral partnerships ever developed in search of a solution to a specific environmental problem that has globalrelevance.” (http://www.delbra.cec.eu.int/pt/eu_and_country/5htm). The objective of the partnership is to reduce therate of destruction of the tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Atlantic Rainforest and to encourage sustainableecological use of the forest. It is coordinated by the Ministry for the Environment, Hydrologic Resources, and theAmazon and is implemented through partnerships between federal government bodies, civil society groups, and privatesector.51 Brazilian legislation provides for carrying out zoning provided there is an agreement with civil society on how theland should be used. Without such an agreement, zoning is not efficient. There should be permanent, regular, andcontinuous dialogue between the state and civil society, so that this process does not just come down to it being law, aswas the case in Pará’s State Legislation.

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(scale of 1:2000). This means that the mapping of land will remain far removed fromthe reality of the inhabitants and social actors, removed from the very reality (describedin the previous chapter) that calls for urgent action. To ensure that land occupationtakes place in a sustainable fashion, it is vital that the different ways of life and types ofproduction, particularly in the areas of expansion, are identified and taken intoconsideration when developing the macro-zoning.

The cost of this program — and others that will be implemented in the Parágovernment’s52 macro-regional plan — is fairly high (an estimated 43 million Reais,equivalent to US$19 million) and a priori it does not resolve the land conflicts and ruralviolence in Pará. The greatest concern is who will be benefited by this project. Will it bea means of evaluating and utilizing the resources sensibly, guaranteeing the traditionalcommunities’ right to their land? Or will it serve to map the areas of economic expansion,thereby satisfying agribusiness greed and further strengthening large-scale cattle ranching,one of the main reasons for the high levels of deforestation in Pará?

It is important to stress that there was limited consultation with civil society aboutthis project.53 It was shrouded in propaganda, including a “response” to the murder ofSister Dorothy Stang, on 12 February 2005. According to the government, this macro-zoning will reduce rural conflicts and violence. However, simply demarcating the land,with no real state presence in the areas of conflict or a reliable method for organizingand managing the land, is not the solution for the social, agrarian, and environmentalproblems. The solution to this problem will thus remain out of reach.

Among the critics of this project are researchers from the Emilio Goeldi Museum.Besides acknowledging that macro-zoning is an advancement in the creation of diverseunits of conservation, with different categories of land and forestry management, theymaintain that some of the proposed areas for the creation of these protected units areunviable due to their size, isolation, and degree of deforestation.54

52 The implementation of the Pará Rural Program relies upon the following method of zoning: “detailing of Ecologic-Economic Macro-zoning (ZEE) into zones of consolidation, expansion of productivity, and the recuperation offraudulently owned land, is essential to the implementation of macro-zoning, according to Law no. 6745, 6th May2005. The detailed ZEE should accurately locate the land with the greatest potential for economic development, themost fragile land, and land with the highest ecological value. Equipped with this information, the public bodies will beable to set up a more satisfactory process of land and environmental management, allowing for funding to be directedtowards infrastructure and loans, with priority being given to the most favorable areas, and restrictions applied todevelopment processes in the most fragile areas.” (Executive summary, Programa Pará Rural: Avaliação Ambiental)53 The process that led to the creation of the law is questionable because it did not establish a basis for any form ofagreement with society. The state government actually chose the social actors and agents with whom they held talks,thus excluding the majority of social groups representing society in the state of Pará. They even excluded the StateCouncil for the Environment, which leads us to believe that macro-zoning will face many problems and limitations.54 An initial discussion about Ecologic and Economic Macro-zoning, proposed by the state government of Pará andpresented by Leandro Valle Ferreira and Jorge Gavina Pereira, researchers from the Emílio Goeldi Museum.


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Furthermore, reducing the solution to human rights violations resulting fromagrarian issues related to the division of land into different plots, is founded upon themistaken conclusion that these violations simply take place as a result of the disorderlyoccupation of land, whereas the disorderliness is just one of the consequences of thispattern of development. Macro-zoning has the potential to be used as a tool for theexecution of public policies. It must, however, not be thought of as a governmentalpolicy in and of itself, nor as a solution to the problems that need to be confronted.

As Loureiro and Aragão Pinto pointed out,

Ecologic economic zoning, or the single registry, is only one of various resources that could beutilized [in the present case], but it will take years to be developed and will not have anyimpact over the majority of the social and legal issues. A number of environmental problemscould be sorted out by states without resource to zoning, such as: the review of concessions,grilagem and frauds over land property; the use of technical and technological resources suchas satellite images in order to halt and punish those who are responsible for deforestation andgold prospecting in indigenous areas or areas of environmental conservation; deforestation ofhills, sources of rivers and borders; act against the big fires and other cases easily identifiable.It is also possible, through political and legal means, to regularize the land property situationof thousands of settlers who have been become precarious due to many years without any typeof documentation; to establish guidelines for simple procedures for federal, state, and munici-pal actions about land occupation; to continue the investigation of the hundreds of deaths inthe countryside, cases of hired gunmen widely known and denounced by the Church, BarAssociation, and rural workers unions.55

The notion that zoning itself would be able halt the conflicts and violence in ruralareas is mistaken. Simple demarcation of the territory without both an effective Ssatepresence in areas of conflict and a system of property management that bears in mindthe democratic distribution and use of the territory is not the solution to the social,agrarian and environmental problems in the region.

2. THE PARÁ RURAL PROGRAM

The state government — acknowledging both the importance of Pará’s countrysidefor the development of the state as a whole, and the existence of rural poverty —created the Pará Rural Program (Programa Pará Rural). This program is currently in theprocess of being implemented. According to information from the state government, it

55 Loureiro, Violeta Rejkalefsky e Pinto, Jax Nildo Aragão. A questão fundiária na Amazônia. Estudos avançados, agostode 2005, vol.19, n. 54, pp. 77-98.

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is split into three main parts: territorial organization, income generation, and a thirdwhich is related to the administration of the program. The “territorial organization” and“generation of income” elements could have just as positive as negative impacts on theenvironment. It must be noted that the organization of the territory is essential not onlyfor helping to generate income but also for the socio-environmental management of thestate.

The total cost of the program is estimated to be US$100 million, of which US$60million will be provided by the World Bank, through the Inter-American DevelopmentBank (IDB)). The remaining US$40 million comprise the Pará government’s contributionto the project. Up until August 2005, the program was still in the preparation stageswith the presentation of studies and research, all of which should aid in the execution ofthe underlying policies.

The document that lays out the Pará Rural Program affirms that:

Pará is the most developed state in the Amazonian region, with a relatively diverse economybased in the service industry, taking advantage of the timber and farming potential. The statehas a population of 6.2 million, 2.7 million of whom live in extreme poverty. Poverty is moreserious in rural than urban areas. Urban poverty lies at 38% and at 58% in rural areas. Thedisparity between employment and education in urban and rural areas presents exacerbateddifferences.56

In spite of the rhetoric, the documentation is not clear as to which mechanisms thestate intends to use and the type of policies that it intends to implement to achieve theaforementioned objectives. The absence of these mechanisms, or the failure to publicizethem, are reasons for concern, especially since historically these mechanisms have beengoverned by old models of development that did not encourage economic growthalongside adequate quality of life for the people of Pará. The people of Pará are constantlyleft grappling with the environmental cost of such plans and having to endure theviolence in the state.

Another worrisome fact, within the text of this program, is the strategy of“municipalizing” the execution of these public policies — transferring the responsibili-ty for the implementation of the policies to municipal authorities. In many areas (notablyeducation, health, and sanitation) municipalization does not, as a rule, go hand-in-hand with modifications in the distribution of tax revenue. This process was identifiedas a way in which to enable the privatization of the provision of public services.

Yet another important issue is the lack of dialogue with civil society and affectedpopulations. The current governmental projects for the state are characterized by adistinct lack of consultation with civil society. When some form of consultation does

56 Text extracted from the Development Project for the Rural Pará Program (Pará Rural), July 2005.


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take place, it is often a mere formality. The objectives and plans have generally alreadybeen decided upon before the public consultation process begins, thus repeating thesame mistakes made when projects were implemented in the Amazon in the 1970s.

3. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS FOR THE AMAZON AND PARÁ

The federal government has significant influence upon the policies implementedin the state of Pará, particularly those concerning environmental policy and landownership. INCRA, for example, is carrying out the geo-referencing57 of all the federal(government-owned) estates in the state, under the Plano Pará.58 This plan articulatesstate policy regarding agrarian regularization. From the geo-referencing, INCRA hopesto identify and demarcate land belonging to the federal government (União) in Pará,mapping out the irregular occupation as well as regularizing the occupation of publicland.

The Ministry for the Environment supports the approval of the draft bill (Projetode Lei) 4776/2005, which seeks to implement a Forest Management Program.59 Thisbill has three objectives: 1) creation of a regulatory framework for forest management;2) creation of the Brazilian Forest Service (Serviço Florestal Brasileiro); and 3) establishmentof a National Fund for the development of the forests.

This bill proposes three forms of forest management for sustainable use: 1) creationof conservation areas to encourage sustainable forest growth, such as those in nationalforests; 2) designating forest areas for use by communities as settlements, extractivereserves, areas of land belonging to afro-descendant communities (áreas quilombolas),and Projects for Sustainable Development (PDS); and 3) sections of the forest to besold at public auction.

This bill was praised by various environmental groups who see the concessions asa potential way to limit the deforestation of public lands. Nevertheless, the analysis ofthis project must not be detached from the analysis of the more broader agrarian question:the forestry concessions must contribute to enforce or increase the land concentrationin the state.

57 Geo-referencing is just as much about the surveying of geographical data with satellite equipment (NavigationSystem with Time and Racing Global Positioning System — GPS) and remote satellite imagery, as fieldwork withtechnical teams and the evaluation of data for the development of technical work, identifying the location of the land,working out physical boundaries, and the potential uses for the land, all with the aim of supplying the rural registerswith reliable information for the mapped out plots of land. Information available from http://sidornet.planejamento.gov.br/docs/cadacao/cadacao2002/downloads/ 0138.pdf.58 According to Carlos Guedos (a representative of the Ministry for Agrarian Development in Pará, or MDA) theagreement between the MDA and Brazilian Army was already signed and the work involving the mapping out of thearea had started in the municipalities of Rondon do Pará and Santarém.59 In September 2005 the project was at the Brazilian Senate’s Constitution and Justice Committee.

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Another point that must be emphasised is that the implementation of the proposedbill depends fundamentally upon a greater federal presence in the state of Pará, especiallyfor the purpose of conducting inspections. Otherwise, these concessions will turn intomere licences to fell trees. Additionally, this loophole in the bill allows loggers to use theforest as a guarantee for borrowing and receiving public funding, thereby reproducingthe same advantages obtained through the illegal appropriation of land (grilagem) andfrom SUDAM projects.

For this reason the weakening of federal and state bodies is particularly worrisome,making the process of accompanying the projects or the inspection of the plans alreadyimplemented extremely difficult. If an overhaul of state bodies does not follow theimplementation of these projects, the fate of the 1970s planning could repeat itself,resulting in a scenario of increased land titling/ownership precariousness and a significantdevastation to the natural resource base.

4. THE BR-163 PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The Plan for Sustainable Development for the area around the BR-163 Highway,linking Cuiabá and Santarém, is part of a series of plans and federal actions for theregion. Of these plans, the following stand out: the Plan for a Sustainable Amazon(Plano Amazônia Sustentável, or PAS) and the Action plan for the Prevention and Controlof Deforestation in the Amazon (Plano de Ação para Prevenção e Controle do Desmata-mento na Amazônia Legal).

The area surrounding BR-163 is characterized by a high degree of violence, grilagem,and deforestation. Faced with strong popular pressure, the federal government began adiscussion process to develop short—, medium—, and long-term plans for the region.The development of the BR-163 Plan for Sustainable Development was entrusted tothe Inter-ministerial Working Group (Grupo de Trabalho Interministerial, or GTI), whichacts as an umbrella for 21 bodies, including ministries and several offices attached to thePresidency of the Republic. The state governments of Mato Grosso, Pará, and Amazo-nas, municipal councils, and groups representing diverse sections of civil societyparticipate in this Inter-ministerial Working Group.

The Plan’s sphere of influence includes 71 municipalities, 28 of which are in Pará,37 in Mato Grosso, and six in the state of Amazonas, amounting to a total area of1,232,000 square kilometers. This corresponds to 14.5% of Brazil’s national territory,of which 828,619 square kilometers are in the state of Pará (65% of that state’s territory),280,550 square kilometers in Mato Grosso (31% of that state’s territory), and 122,624square kilometers in Amazonas (about 8% of that state’s territory).

According to official documents prepared to aid in the second stage of consultationswith civil society, the federal government’s priority is “to create a new model for viabledevelopment in the Amazonian Region, a model based on social inclusion, the reduction


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of socio-economic differences, respect for cultural diversity, with viable dynamic,competitive, and economic activity, which creates employment and revenue, based on asustainable use of natural resources, an appreciation of biodiversity, and the maintenanceof the ecological balance of this important Brazilian heritage.”60

A critical reading of the development plan shows the incompatibility of the prioritieshighlighted by the federal government. The plan’s objective is to consider the concernsof various different sectors of government and civil society, all with different priorities,distinct demands, and conflicting ideas. It is not sufficient to simply put together thedemands from the various different groups into one single document, with the assumptionthat one single action plan covering all the interests of each of these constituencies ispossible. It is necessary to highlight the priorities and political direction in which thegovernment will go in order to bring about an end to the conflicts of interest betweenthese groups.

According to Adriana Ramos, from the Instituto Socioambiental, who has followedthe discussions on the development of the plan, “[T]he formal governmental processhas been superficial. Meetings took place in some of the municipalities, such as those inNovo Progresso and Santarém (Pará), Guarantã and Sinop (Mato Grosso), but there’sno logic or methodology to them. The [federal] government brings along a document,everyone gives a talk, and there’s no logic to the meetings.”

Ramos continues:

The meetings in general, consider all the [interested] parties, and in the same planningdocument, you find proposals from the loggers, from the farmers, the soy growers, the socialmovements, as if somehow you could deal with all of them in the same areas. It doesn’t helpthat the government puts it all on paper and says they’re going to do it all, because there arepoints of conflict that the government has still not sorted out. This is why everyone thinks theplan is ok, there’s a certain amount of comfort from the plan being a good idea, but when thegovernment has to decide upon which political option to take, it’ll be a mess.

According to the schedule proposed by the federal government, the final version ofthe plan would be presented after the second stage of consultation with the public inJune 2005. However, to date, this document has not been officially presented.

Alongside the preparation of the BR-163 Sustainable Development Plan, the fede-ral government presented a package of emergency measures. It is important to clarifythat the majority of these measures were launched just after the murder of Sister DorothyStang, as a way of responding to the numerous demonstrations and demands fromsocial movements.

60 Regional Plan for Development for the area surrounding the BR-163 Highway which links Cuiabá and Santarém.

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The emergency measures announced for the area surrounding the BR-163 were:(1) measures to strengthen public security and promotion of citizenship; (2) measuresdirected at organizing the territory as well as the monitoring and control of theenvironment; (3) encouragement of sustainable development activities; and (4) measu-res directed at the eradication of slave and child labor.

Given that many of the measures that have been announced by the governmentare rooted in the demands of the region’s popular movements, the prospects for the planare good. However, there are still reservations about the political choices that will bemade during the execution of the plan, since during the developmental phase the plansought to consider the concerns of all sections of society. In other words, the plan is fullof good intentions and proposals for action, but these are in themselves contradictory.An understanding of the history of the region, added to the disproportionate correlati-on of forces, leads us to the conclusion that predatory exploitation and internationalagribusiness will in fact be the beneficiaries of this plan.

Total area

Municipalities within the area

State border

Seat of the municipalityRoads

Paved

Not-paved

Hidrography

Location of BR-163

Source: Ministry of the Environment, http://www.mma.gov.br


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5. POLICIES FOR CONFRONTING GRILAGEM

Although grilagem is old news, the policies that seek to confront the matter —seizing and retaking the unoccupied land and land that had been subjected to grilagem— are very recent. The first federal government measures concerning the regularizationof land in the Amazon occurred between 1979-1984. According to Saiago and Macha-do, in this period “INCRA made an effort to speed up the activities of listing of properties,allocation of land and land titles, with particular emphasis upon the projects forcolonization and settlement and numerous variations of these projects: the Project forIntegration and Colonization (Projeto de Integração e Colonização, PIC), SettlementProjects, Projects for Controlled Settlement, Projects for Agro-extractivist Settlement(Projetos de Assentamento Agroextrativista, PAE), and the Project for Rapid Settlement(Projetos de Assentamento Rápido, PAR), among others.”61 Citing figures from the Ministryof Agrarian Development, the authors emphasize that at the end of this period, 120million hectares were set aside for land distribution and a total of 97 million hectareswere repossessed and registered in the federal government’s name (União).

Although these can be seen as policies intervening in the agrarian structure, littlewas done to guarantee that the land selected remained in the government’s hands. Littlehas been done to prevent grilagem, which continues to take place in areas set aside forre-distribution.62

It was only in 1997 that the federal government presented a proposal for theunification of federal, state, and municipal registries. The main objective of this proposalwas to make the state aware of the agrarian situation in Brazil. The proposal was unviablein the face of evidence that not even the data for the creation of a Unified Registry forRural Property (Cadastro Unificado dos Imóveis Rurais) was reliable.

In 1999 the government decided (under Decree 596) to re-register all rural propertywith a total area equal to or exceeding 10,000 hectares in the states of Acre, Amapá,Amazonas, Bahia, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais,Pará, Paraná, Rondônia, São Paulo, and Tocantins. According to the terms of this decree,the inspection process should be preceded by a process in which the original owner ofthe land is found, as well as ensuring the legality and regularity of the land and that theproperty has undergone the geo-referencing process. The proprietor or owner that doesnot fulfil the conditions laid out in this decree is able to keep the land title, but wouldlose the registration with INCRA, and consequently the possibility of obtaining financing.

61 Saiago, D. O. Pulo do Grilo: o Incra e a questão fundiária na Amazônia. In: Amazônia: Cenas e Cenários, Brasilia,Editora UNB, 2003. p. 217.62 Report of the Chamber of Deputies Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Illegal Occupation of Public Landin the Amazon Region, p. 231.

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In December 1999, INCRA passed administrative order (Portaria) 558. This orderedthe cancellation (under the National System of Rural Registration) of the registration ofall properties declared to INCRA by owners and holders of any form of land titles,which had already been subject to inspections under the previous federal decree (596).This measure had the effect of making previous Certificates of Rural Registration (Cer-tificados de Castro de Imóvel Rural, CCIR) invalid.

The owners of these properties were subjected to a re-registration under the Nati-onal System for Rural Registration, which required the presentation of appropriatedocuments as proof of ownership. The same decree ordered that the Directorates ofRural Registration and Agrarian Funds carry out, in the presence of the Registry officescited in the documents, surveys and studies into the corresponding land ownershiptitles and original chains of ownership, as part of a general overhaul of propertyregistration.

In December 2000, INCRA classified the data relating to the rural propertieswhich had not heeded Portaria 558/99. They concluded that 55% of the propertiesunder suspicion were involved in agribusiness and cattle rearing. Following theclassification of this data, the registration of properties totalling an area of about 70million hectares was cancelled. A third of this area (about 20.8 million hectares) islocated in Pará and comprises 422 large estates. This classification led to the conclusionthat there is no information on 200 million hectares of the total 850 million hectares ofBrazil’s national territory.63

Another measure to establish control over the registration of property was theapproval of Law no. 10.267, on 28 August 2001. According to this law, all rural propertywould be given an individual identifying code and the location of the land would bedefined by geographical co-ordinates. The creation of a National Registry of RuralProperty was also proposed. The implementation of this registry relied upon the priorregistration of all property with INCRA. The registration and declaration of registrationwould be compulsory if there were any change to land in the area, to ownership, or ifthere were any environmental restrictions.

Other than this, each month the registry offices were obliged to send a report toINCRA on the alterations that had taken place in the property register following changesof ownership, the division of land into lots, regrouping of lots of land, adjustments tothe area, creation of reserves and changes to the natural heritage, and other environ-mental restrictions or limitations involving rural properties, including those not onpublic land.

63 Figures taken from the document Grilagem: Balanço Definitivo — 2000 from the Ministry for Agrarian Develop-ment. According to information from the CPI Report on the Occupation of Public Land in the Amazon Region, theNational Revenue Database, maintained for issues related to the Rural Territorial Income Tax (Imposto TerritorialRural, ITR), accounts for approximately 130 million hectares of estates with an area of more than 10,000 hectares, p.570.


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The law contains specific articles related to indigenous lands, requiring the federalgovernment to encourage the registration of land with previously agreed-upon boundaries.It also obliges the federal government to apply to the Registry Official for legal registrationwhen private property lies within the boundaries of indigenous land. Information isrequired from properties which are located in the middle of indigenous land.

This law was only regulated in October 2002 through Decree no. 4.449. Article10 of this decree established deadlines, by which time the owners would have to presentthe geo-referencing coordinates of their properties. The step-by-step schedule followeda criteria based on the size of the property, starting with the properties with the largestareas. The deadline was set for 29 January 2003 (a period of 90 days for the study) forproperties with an area equal to or larger than 5,000 hectares; 31 October 2003 (oneyear) for areas between 1,000-5,000 hectares; 31 October 2004 (2 years) for areasbetween 500-1,000 hectares; and until 31 October 2005 (3 years) for areas smaller than500 hectares.

The registry offices submitted various queries related to the processes laid out in thedecree. This led INCRA, on 20 November 2003, to issue two Normative Acts ofInstructions (Instrução Normativa) (nos. 12 and 13) and an Administrative Order (Porta-ria) (no. 1.101) containing a detailed account of the proceedings and interpretation of thevarious terms of the previous decree. INCRA did not change the rule extending thedeadlines outlined within the law; consequently, all the properties that did not fulfil theclauses in the contract risk having their registration cancelled by the federal government.

In December 2004, INCRA issued Portaria 10, which established proceedings tobe adopted in the event of possession being gained legally by simple occupation.64

These rural estates were all located within 314 municipalities in the Amazon (the statesof Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, andTocantins).

In accordance with these proceedings, the new requests for the inclusion or alterationof information held on rural properties, irrespective of their size, will only be dealt withby INCRA if they are accompanied by corroborative documentation, especially plansand graphical records with geo-referencing. The INCRA regional superintendents willonly be able to issue a Certificate of Registration for Rural Properties (CCIR) uponpresentation of this documentation. If the owners do not fulfil the conditions, theregistration should be cancelled and they will be unable to apply for funding.65

One important aspect established by this Portaria is that should the superpositionof rural land with federal public land be proven, the cancellation of the registry must beprovided immediately, with a copy of all the documentation being sent to the Federal

64 These are rural estates which have, in their chain of ownership, only documents referring to possession or occupationof the land, not ownership rights or titles.65 Fazendeiros e trabalhadores protestam no Pará, Contag online, 10 Februrary 2005. Available at http://www.contag.org.br/Clipping/02-02-2005.html#conteudo3.

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Public Prosecutor of INCRA so that the federal government’s interests can be protected.Following the publication of that decision, INCRA representatives would be prohibitedfrom issuing declarations of ownership or similar documents for areas covering morethan 100 hectares for purposes of agrarian regularization, land management plans, de-forestation, or funding from private or public companies.

The deadlines established for the fulfilment of the conditions laid out by Portariano. 10 were: 1 January 2005 for land of more than 400 hectares and 31 March 2005 forthose smaller than 400 hectares. Non-compliance with these deadlines results in thecancellation of the registration of the property in question with the National Registry ofRural Property (Cadastro Nacional de Imóveis Rurais, CNIR).

The Ministry of Agrarian Development’s Portaria was praised by organizationssuch as the Amazon Working Group and the Federation of Agricultural Workers (FE-TAGRI).66 The general approval of this decree was mainly due to the fact that unlikeprevious measures it was able to prevent part of the process of grilagem of public lands.This decree suspends the issuing of ‘declarations of possession’ (declaração de posse) andthe immediate cancellation of the registration of property located in federal govern-ment areas.

Faced with the initial effects of the measures (the cancellation of 33 ForestManagement Plans) and the deadline (30 January 2005) for the re-registration of landtitles for properties larger than 400 hectares, loggers and landowners in the region ofSantarém blockaded the roads for 10 days, demanding the revocation of the Decree and‘legalization’ of their land, over and above the reinstatement of the suspended landmanagement plans. They alleged that they did not have enough time to present therequired documentation. On the other hand, these supposed “owners” have increasedthe speed of deforestation and illegal occupation, continuing the historic pattern ofgrilagem.67

On 2 February 2005, the Ministries of Agrarian Development and Environmentmet with bodies representing loggers and landowners. They agreed that, even if theDecree were not to be suspended, the government had failed to enforce the penaltieslaid out by the decree in 2005.68 This negotiation reveals the state’s flexibility andlenient treatment of large landowners, grileiros, and loggers in the Amazon. This lenience

66 O Liberal, 10 January 2005, p. 12.67 Information gathered from a conversation with Father Amaro of the CPT on 7 March 2005. A research team fromJustiça Global visited the municipality of Anapu between 2-21 March 2005.68 Information contained in a joint release by the Ministries of Agrarian Development and Environment, on 3 February2005. According to the release: “It has been agreed that management plans approved until 30 November 2004 andlater suspended for presenting ‘precarious documentation’ will be revalidated by the government. In case no environ-mental or social shortcoming comes to light, such as conflicts with conservation units or indigenous areas, the projectswill be revalidated and will be able to operate this year after signing the term of agreement between the personresponsible for the project, IBAMA and INCRA.”


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is not granted to laborers or their leaders, by the state or by the large landowners. Oneweek after this agreement, Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered in Anapu, as a conse-quence of a plot by a group of grileiros.69

Despite the numerous proposals and the establishment of a legal mechanism thatcould contribute to fighting grilagem, there exists no consolidated public policy for theregion. The federal government has still not implemented a unified land registry, oreven a specific registry for large properties. There is also no exchange of data betweenthe agrarian bodies at all three levels of government (federal, state, and municipal). Inaddition, there is a continued existence of several property titles covering the same pieceof land and inefficient inspections of the Property Registry Notaries.

In most cases, the repossession of properties belonging to the government andtheir transformation into projects for agrarian reform only takes place as a result ofpressure brought by peasants’ movements in their struggle for land.

Among the principal obstacles in the effective combat against grilagem are not onlythe lack of structure and insufficient number of public body representatives, but alsothe numerous cases of corruption and intimidation of INCRA officials by landowners.For example, INCRA’s Superintendency in Marabá relies on one lawyer and threeassistants who must cover the whole of the south and southeast of Pará. As a result ofthis insufficient presence, to date in the region, only two cases of repossession of landhave been brought to court.

In actual practice, proceedings already laid out by law and decree, such as theverification of the chain of ownership (cadeia dominial), a process in which the originalownership of land is determined by tracing the different owners and tenants, and thecancellation of registration in practice, rarely take place. The exception to this are thoseareas where there is conflict, pressure from peasant movements, and workers have alreadybeen murdered.

There’s a continual game whereby “no one wishes to assume responsibility,” or inPortuguese a “jogo de empurra,” between federal and state bodies. Those that benefitfrom this are the grileiros. For example, a problem highlighted by INCRA is the work ofthe Pará Land Institute (Instituto de Terras do Pará, ITERPA). Despite the two bodieshaving agreed in May 2004 on a Memorandum of Understanding which anticipatescombined actions and enables the transformation of state public land into projects foragrarian form, in practice the state body has shown itself to be reluctant to repossessland and take it away from private “owners.” This is not even carried out when the sizeof the land exceeds the limit of 2,500 hectares as outlined in Article 188 of the FederalConstitution.

69 In June 2005, Pará’s judiciary authorized more than 40 preliminary orders of eviction of farms occupied by landlessfamilies in the south and southeast of the state. These decisions threatened around 5,000 families of landless workers.

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ITERPA’s practice revolves around the legitimization of situations involving grilagemor the illegal appropriation of public lands. In the municipality of Parauapebas in 1998,80 families occupied the Tapete Verde Farm. Their lots of land were very productive anda school was built by the city hall. In July 2003, the Military Police evicted those families.In December of the same year, ITERPA granted the property title to the landowner.The families remained camped out on the boundaries of the farm and in July 2005,INCRA began the process of expropriation of the land to settle those very same families.70

ITERPA’s work (and the setting aside of state land for agrarian reform) is turningout to be of fundamental importance in many regions. In Rondon do Pará, for example,of the 17 areas taken on by an INCRA task force in the first six months of 2005, 14have land titles. These land titles, however, are all fake, or have been registered fraudulentlyby the municipal registry offices. Even so, ITERPA continues to be reluctant to seizethese lands and set them aside for landless families.

BR-163. Terra de Direitos Archive.

Rural workers’ encampment in Castelo dos Sonhos. Terra de Direitos Archive.

70 The landowner Valemar Rodrigues do Vale is accused of having paid 4,000 Reais for the murder of the tradeunionist Soares da Costa on 14 February 2005, two days after the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang. Even though he hasbeen denounced by the gunman (pistoleiro), this landowner remains free, residing in Parauapebas.


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The judicial authorities, in the few cases which are aimed at the seizure of publicland, have on numerous occasions granted preliminary decisions in favour of the grileiros,for example in the case of the Sustainable Development Project Esperança in Anapu,71

where the processes were suspended for a long period of time, thus once again allowingthe grileiros and their private militias to take action. In other cases, the state’s judiciaryended up cancelling the creation of settlement projects on public land that had alreadybeen seized and registered in the name of the federal government.72

CONCLUSION

The analysis of some of the aforementioned programs and policies points to achange in the position of the government and the way it operates in the Amazon. It isundeniable that, principally in the last two years, alongside the development policiesand infrastructure works, the government has given more and more attention to polici-es that respect and encourage the social diversity of the Amazon.

However, we can confirm that the public policies being discussed in Pará continueto reflect the contradictions and disputes over development models. On the one hand,violence associated with the pattern of development is still strongly present, with thecycle of violence being intensified with severe human rights violations. On the otherhand, it is in this region that governmental policies, directed at strengthening equalityand promoting social justice, respect for diversity, and the assertion of cultural identity,seem to have been more vigorous.

The debates surrounding the construction of roads and hydroelectric plants, andtheir social and environmental impact, have coexisted alongside innovative proposalsput together by social movements, and taken on in the form of public/governmentalpolicy. Projects for sustainable development, extractive reserves, and settlements (whichform part of agrarian reform programs) are examples of state intervention which hasfocused on alternatives to models of development centered on income and land thathave traditionally prioritized the creation of wealth and the exportation of nationalresources.

Among the most important governmental measures that particularly stand out arethe issuing of Portaria no.10 by INCRA, the creation of the Extractive Reserve VerdePara Sempre, the Projects for Sustainable Development, and the Decree that aims to

71 The local court granted a Preliminary Decision of Reintegration of Ownership of plot number 55 to the landownerBida, weeks before the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang. After her death, the preliminary decision was revoked.72 The Agrarian Court in Marabá granted a Preliminary Decision of Reintegration of Ownership to a grileiro whoclaimed to be the owner of a property in Rondon do Pará, where a settlement project was created three years ago. ThisSettlement Project is called Unidos para Vencer.

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regulate the acquisition of land belonging to Afro-descendent communities. However,there are still projects that have the potential to cause human rights violations and thedestruction of the environment; for example the construction of the hydroelectric plantin Belo Monte, in the municipality of Altamira, which was recently authorized by theBrazilian Congress; the alarming rate of deforestation; incentives for the expansion ofmonocultures, with an increasing dedication of land to the cultivation of soy, etc. Thechallenges are certainly huge, but it remains vital that governmental policies areimplemented to guarantee the integrity of the poorest — of rural workers and humanrights defenders.


72

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“It is of the utmost importance that you are aware of the facts that have occurred in themunicipality. I also hope that I can continue my work. I never tire of speaking that word thatfor me is very powerful, which is ‘justice.’ I am here to give this deposition and because it isvery important for others to know, particularly about [the actions of] the large landowners ofRondon do Pará. ...Lately, I have been receiving threats and, when I speak about that whichI am living, it is dangerous. It is because of this that today I am the widow of Dezinho, aman who never kept quiet and always made denunciations — and unfortunately the denun-ciations he made were never given any attention.”Maria Joel da Costa - President of the Rural Workers Union of Rondon do Pará

Rondon do Pará is located in the southeast region of Pará and, according to IBGEstatistics, 39,856 people inhabit its 8,240 square kilometers. Rondon is located

next to BR-222, 80 km from the Belém-Brasilia highway, and about 450 km from thestate capital, Belém. The municipality is 26 years old, the settlement of the regionhaving stabilized in the 1970s. Since then, the principal economic activities have been,successively, logging, agriculture, cattle-raising, and most recently, the manufacture ofvegetable coal.

Against this backdrop, the municipality of Rondon do Pará stands out asrepresentative of a pattern that has repeated itself with little variation throughoutsoutheastern Pará: the reproduction of a model of development that exacerbates theunequal distribution of land and income. This model is made possible by the ongoingaccumulation of predatory extraction of natural resources and the exploitation of theworkforce, producing an immense number of human rights violations.

Currently, Rondon do Pará is one of the most violent municipalities in southeasternPará. Between 1996 and 2004, eight workers directly linked to the land struggle weremurdered, and there were countless beatings, threats, attempted murders, andkidnappings. This reality is reinforced by complaints of slave labor, grilagem, and en-vironmental devastation perpetrated by local landowners.

Chapter III

ILLEGAL CONFISCATION OF LAND AND VIOLATION OF

HUMAN RIGHTS: THE CASE OF RONDON DO PARÁ


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Due to the extreme violence against rural workers in the municipality, in May2004 Terra de Direitos sent a fact-finding mission to the area, with the objective ofcollecting information to denounce violations suffered by workers to local, national,and international authorities. The central objective was to bolster the work being carriedout for years by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) (Marabá Diocese) and the Rondondo Pará Rural Workers Union.

In addition to interviews with members of the Rural Workers’ Union, the LoggingIndustry Workers’ Union, and workers living in encampments, the fact-finding missionincluded hearings and meetings with the city judge, the local representative of the Officeof the Public Prosecutor, and the police chief responsible for investigating the murdersand threats against rural workers.

In February 2005, at the request of the CPT, the Rondon do Pará Rural Workers’Union (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Rondon do Pará, STR), Terra de Direitos,and Justiça Global, a public hearing was held in the Rondon do Pará Sports Arena. Thismeeting was attended by nearly 1,000 rural workers, representatives of large landedestates, then Human Rights Special Secretary Nilmário Miranda, and representatives ofthe Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), the state government, and federal police.This report and the analysis of the human rights violations in Rondon do Pará aims atcontributing to the work that has been done to date.

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1. A HISTORY OF TERRITORIAL OCCUPATION

Southern and southeastern Pará were settled as a result of the changing govern-ment-sponsored policies for populating and developing the region. During the militarydictatorship in the 1970s, plans to develop the Amazon were created alongside biginfrastructure projects, such as the construction of the Transamazonian Highway andthe hydroelectric dam at Tucuruí, this last allowing for the extraction of minerals in theCarajás mountains (Serra de Carajás).

The trademark characteristic of successive settlement projects, in addition to mi-neral extraction and logging, was the attempt to transplant the ranching model alreadybeing implemented in the southern and southeastern regions of the country (i.e., assigninglarge expanses of land to a few economic groups). To enable the implementation of thismodel of development and at the same time encourage the extraction of natural resour-ces, roads were constructed, with businesses and settlements springing up alongside.

The settlement of the region where Rondon do Pará73 is now located took place inthis context. It began in the 1970s with the construction of Highway PA-70 (today knownas BR-222), connecting BR-010 (Belém-Brasilia Highway) to Marabá. The encampmentof workers was located at Km 86 of that highway. Having moved to the region to work onbuilding the road, they stayed there and formed the seat of the municipality.

The region was originally inhabited by the indigenous Gavião people who weregradually expelled from their land. Their expulsion, according to the Indigenous People’sEncyclopedia published by the Socio-Environmental Institute, began with the profit-oriented harvesting of chestnuts at the end of the 1940s and lasted until the 1970s. In1976, the Gavião were installed on the Mother Maria Indigenous Reservation, located 70km from Rondon do Pará, where they were finally able to reclaim their independence.74

The construction of the highway encouraged the beginning of logging in the region.Initially, logging occurred on land handed over by the state of Pará, as well as onexpropriated and federal land. With the passage of time and the depletion of the forest,logging gradually gave way to cattle ranching and subsistence agriculture.

The end of the gold reserves in the Serra Pelada mountains caused millions offamilies to relocate to the region, where they went to work in logging, coal mines, andon the new, small ranches. Some of these workers went to more outlying areas where

73 The name of the municipality comes from the installation of a small settlement of employees of the Rondon Projectat the site of the current seat of the municipality.74 According to the Indigenous People’s Encyclopedia: “The end of the 1960s, the infiltration of settlers and land-grabbers, facilitated by the opening of PA-70 and the rapid advance of cattle landowners, ended up confining, underintense pressure, that group that took refuge in Maranhão, at a place that came to be known as Igarapé dos Frades, inSaranzal, close to Imperatriz (Arnaud: 1975, 72-76). At the end of 1968, the area where the “Maranhão group” was(close to PA-70, but 150 km from Mother Maria), was enjoined by decree (no. 63.515 of 31-10-68), a measure thatwas not respected by the pioneer population. The Gaviões reacted violently, and there were deaths on both sides,which provoked a general panic throughout the region (O Estado de S. Paulo, 30 May 1972).”


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they practiced subsistence agriculture. Vila Gavião is the most populous area settled bysmall farmers.

Loggers transformed devastated land into large landed estates where the principaleconomic activity is grazing cattle. The result of this process was the intense concentrationof land ownership and income and the maintenance of the status quo of extreme inequalitybetween large land owners and workers. Rondon do Pará’s Human Development Index(Índice de Desenvolvimento Humano, or IDH) is one of the worst in Brazil (.685).75

2. ILLEGAL LAND OCCUPATION AND THE

CONCENTRATION OF LAND IN RONDON DO PARÁ

Rondon do Pará has been highlighted, in various official surveys conducted sincethe end of the 1990s, as one of the areas where illegal appropriation of land is mostwidespread. Not coincidentally, grilagem is one of the most important structural causesof human rights violations perpetrated against rural workers.

The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) of the Federal Congress meantto investigate the settlement of the Amazon highlighted the Rondon do Pará Real PropertyRegistry as one of the registries with the highest number of irregularities in the entireAmazon.76

TABLE 5: LIST OF REGISTRARS UNDER INVESTIGATION AND INVOLVED IN IRREGULARITIES

State Municipality State Municipality State Municipality

AM* Apuí AM Lábrea PA São Domingos do Capim

AM Boca do Acre AM Manicoré PA São Félix Do Xingu

AM Borba AM Novo Aripuanã PA São Miguel Do Guamá

AM Canutama AM Pauini PA Santa Isabel

AM Carauari AM Tapauá PA Tomé Açu

AM Envira

AM Eurunepé PA** Acará AP*** Amapá

AM Guajará PA Altamira AP Ferreira Gomes

AM Humaitá PA Marabá AP Porto Grande

AM Ipixuna PA Moju

AM Itamarati PA Paragominas AC**** Sena Madureira

AM JURUÁ PA RONDON DO PARÁ

* Amazonas; ** Pará; *** Amapá; **** Acre. Source: Report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on thesettlement of public land in the Amazon Region (CPI da Grilagem)

75 According to data from UNDP and IBGE (2000), Brazil’s IDH is .775, and Pará’s is .720. Brazil is currently in 72nd

place of a total of 175 countries.76 Report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the settlement of public land in the Amazon Region (ComisãoParlamentar de Inquerito da Grilagem), Federal Chamber of Deputies, p. 523.

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One of the most well-known cases of grilagem in the state of Pará and throughoutthe Amazon is the aforementioned “case of Carlos Medeiros’ ghost,” that also hasramifications for Rondon do Pará. In 1987, the Pará State Land Institute (ITERPA)found that at least 6,534 hectares of federal government land had been illegally confiscatedby the “ghost” were in Rondon do Pará.77

In addition to this case, a recent survey done by technicians from INCRA’s Regio-nal Superintendency in Marabá, in the municipalities of Rondon do Pará, Abel Figuei-redo, and Bom Jesus do Tocantins, reveals that of 26 areas inspected, 80% actuallybelong to the state of Pará (in effect, expropriated land) and not the cattle ranchers whooccupy them.

Falsified land documents (documentos grilados) are registered in several registries inthe region. Data from the INCRA survey indicate that in the Municipal Registry of SãoMiguel do Guamá, 100 km from Belém, estates that were negotiated grew up to 2,000%in relation to their original size. Through the registry’s fraud, an estate measuring ap-proximately 4,000 hectares grew to 95 million hectares in 30 years. This also had theeffect of allowing one person to own more 116,000 hectares. In total, the threemunicipalities have about 810,000 hectares of illegally confiscated land. The parcels arelocated in a 100-km radius of the Belém-Brasilia and Transamazonian Highways. 78

According to information provided by the CPT and the Rondon do Pará RuralWorkers’ Union, the most well-known case of illegal confiscation of public lands doesnot appear in recent official surveys. According to these groups, it has to do with a44,000-hectare area. In 1918, the state of Pará allegedly granted the land title to ManoelJosé de Brito, possibly a non-existent person, along the lines of “Carlos Mendeiros.”The land title was declared fraudulent by ITERPA in 1978.

Among the properties covered by this ownership document was the ranch knownas the Black Tulip, an area of 3,000 hectares.79 In 1983, the now-defunct Araguaia-Tocantins Land Executive Group (Grupo Executivo das Terras do Araguaia-Tocantins,GETAT), delineated the area where the property was located (Gleba Água Azul).Disregarding the validity of Pará’s titles, it claimed all the land surrounding the BlackTulip (including the ranch itself ) and registered it as property of the federal governmentin São Miguel do Guamá’s Real Property Registry. The federal government, since thebeginning of the 1980s, has been the actual owner of the 44,000 hectares. As a result,there is a superimposition of two property titles: a false one issued by the state govern-ment in 1918, and a real one, resulting from the delineation of the land by GETAT.

77 Information from the ‘White Book of Illegal Land Confiscation in Brazil’, published by the Ministry for AgrarianDevelopment, p. 57.78 Information from the Ministry for Agrarian Development on the illegal confiscation of public lands in southeasternPará. Available at http://www.mda.gov.br.79 This ranch was repossessed by the state in 2000, and became Rondon do Pará’s first Settlement Project: the JoséDutra da Costa Settlement.


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As is common in Pará, ITERPA, despite knowing about the falsity of the title formore than 20 years, took no action to have it removed from São Miguel do Guamá’sregistry. Consequently, the non-cancellation of the title permitted new transactionsregarding the land to occur based on false titles. INCRA, GETAT’s successor, also didnothing to maintain possession of the reclaimed lands. Thus the government’s omissionallowed large-scale grileiros to take possession of the land and remain there.80

During 2004, the Rondon do Pará Property Registry was audited by the StateCourt, following complaints lodged by the CPT, Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricul-tura (FETAGRI), and the Rondon do Pará Rural Workers’ Union. According to thePará State High Court:

In the issued report, the internal affairs judges, besides highlighting several irregularities in the

Real Property Registry’s bookkeeping, which are described in the Minutes of Extraordinary

Audit, were able to identify, by means of information provided by INCRA, the occurrence of

several registrations based on titles with false land descriptions and other clear indications that

the titles were established on other falsified bases.81

Through this process, an embargo on registering property from the following areaswas issued: the Black Tulip (which had already been repossessed by the federal govern-ment), Serraria Jerusalém Ltda., Santa Cruz, Bela Vista, Jucamarhe, Pantanal, Coraçãodo Brasil, Garrafão, Futuro, and Graciosa.

In addition to several cases of illegal land confiscation already proven by the state,there is strong evidence that illegal titles of ownership on other properties have beenacquired illegally through grilagem. Recently, the news of the cancellation of a ForestManagement Plan for Barroso Ranch was widely divulged. Barroso Ranch belongs tothe biggest landowner in that region (José Decio Barroso Nunes) who is said to haveillegally sold timber in Rio de Janeiro.82 Another ranch belonging to the same landowner,called Lacy Ranch, covering approx 112,000 hectares, and corresponding to roughly20% of the total area of Rondon do Pará, has had its chain of ownership since 1999investigated by the Federal Attorney General (Advocacia Geral da União, AGU).83

80 The accusations of illegal land confiscation that the Rondon do Pará Rural Workers’ Union brought to the publicsince the beginning of the 1990s were again recognized in the Partial Audit process, carried out by the Pará State HighCourt, through process no. 2004.400.887, concluded on 27 January 2005.81 Case decision 2004.440.887, Minutes of the Audit in the Rondon do Pará County Registrar.82 It is important to mention that PMF no. 02018.002848/99-03 was suspended because the land was not registeredwith INCRA and because there was no paperwork for the property, evidence of illegally confiscated public land.83 This investigation was part of Registrar Investigation Administrative Case no. 54100.00339/99-10.

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With respect to the titles that comprise the aforementioned chain of ownership,one of the titles was nullified by ITERPA itself in 1979, and the other was rendered“non-existent.” Only a 4,356-hectare portion of the ranch possesses a valid title.84 Theinvestigation of this ranch’s titles has been underway for six years as of this writing.

Although the public agencies have taken some action towards investigating the realproperty registries and canceling some registrations, mainly since 2004, it is not possibleto affirm the existence of any structured policy to combat the illegal confiscation ofland in Rondon do Pará. In fact, the only areas reclaimed by INCRA were repossessedafter having been occupied by landless workers, revealing the lack of a territorialmanagement policy.

Despite the innumerable probable false registrations, there are no lawsuits torepossess public lands and earmark them for agrarian reform. In a statement to O Globonewspaper, the Ministry of Agrarian Development’s representative in Pará referred tothe applicability of Decree 10 (re-registration of CNIR properties) in the municipalityof Rondon do Pará: “In the case of Rondon do Pará, where there are large expansions ofpossessed (i.e. not owned) land, we will take the appropriate measures as soon as thedeadline expires. The limit for released land is 2,500 hectares. There will be no propertiesof 110,000 hectares, for example.”85 However, up until now, no concrete measure hasbeen taken to reclaim illegally acquired public land in Rondon do Pará and allocate it toagrarian reform. INCRA reclaimed some areas while Portaria 10 was still valid, andonly after the land was occupation by landless workers.

In March 2004, soon after the assassination of trade unionist Ribamar Franciscodos Santos, the MDA announced the establishment of a task-force composed of 30INCRA employees (from the Superintendencies in Rondônia, Roraima, Acre, andAmazonas) for the purposes of “differentiating between publicly- and privately-ownedareas, regularizing these areas, and settling workers on them as determined by the profilerequired for agrarian reform.”

According to information published in the newspaper Correio de Tocantins, “[I]nRondon, the task force will reclaim all public areas (federal- and state-owned) and allocatethem to the National Agrarian Reform and Settlement Program, and through legal actionwill expel the grileiros who are occupying those lands.”86 Nevertheless, until February2005, INCRA had not even concluded the required inspections in Rondon do Pará.

Following a public hearing that took place in February 2005 in Rondon do Pará,the MDA promised to intensify its territorial regularization actions. Once again, due toINCRA’s lack of resources, particularly human resources, the actions in Rondon do

84 The aforementioned INCRA Administrative Process was opened as a result of non-compliance with Decree 558/99,which established that all rural properties of 10,000 or more hectares must present documents proving the validity oftitle.85 O Liberal Newspaper, 17 January 2005, p. 8.86 Correio do Tocantins, 9-11 March 2004, 3rd section, p. 4.


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Pará were not carried out. Up to the time this report went to the press, there was nonews regarding results of the inspection and determination of which areas are publiclyowned and which are private in the region.

A further important factor in the region is the presence of slave labor or super-exploitation of the workforce. Between 2003 and 2004, 43 denunciations of slave laborwere investigated, resulting in the freeing of 811 workers in Pará, of whom 291 werefreed in Rondon do Pará. The last week of August 2005 saw 79 workers freed insoutheastern Pará, 40 of whom were freed from slave labor conditions in the FazendaCórrego do Limão in Rondon do Pará, a farm owned by Agropecuária Rio do Ouro S.A.

In March 2004 the Logging Industry Workers’ Union (Sindicato dos Empregadosna Indústria Madeireira) denounced to the Labor Public Ministry the occurrence ofslave labor, non-payment of the 13th salary87 , no paid holidays, and death threats to thedirectors of the union and rank and file members. These threats and violations of thelabor and employment laws were committed by José Décio Barroso Nunes (known as“Delsão”), a major logger and landowner in that municipality. According to the laborunion, Delsão employs around 800 people and is the alleged offender in 500 caseslodged against him in Labor Courts.88

In September 2004 the public prosecutor in Rondon do Pará, Mauro Mendes deAlmeida, filed a criminal case against logger Sérvio Venturini and businessman JoséCarlos Gonçalves dos Santos. A month earlier, Mr. Venturini was told by accomplicesin the region that a Mobile Inspection Unit of the Ministry of Labor and Employmentwas about to carry out a slave labor inspection in his farm. He then ordered the withdrawalof all the workers from his farm so that he would not be caught with slave labor on hisproperty. The truck taking the workers out of the area fell into a canyon, resulting infive workers being killed and nine others injured.

The predatory exploitation of wood is another support for Rondon do Pará’seconomy. As a result, only 35% of the municipality’s forest area still exists.89 Rondondo Pará is located in what is known as the “Deforestation Arch” (Arco do Desmatamen-to).90 Additionally, the municipality has the fifth highest deforestation rate in the country(as a percentage of its deforested surface). In 2004, deforestation grew 279% in Rondondo Pará, in comparison with previous years.

The quickly growing rate of production of vegetable coal has contributed to defo-restation. In September 2005, IBAMA released a report stating that there is a deficit inthe amount of coal used by mining companies and that officially produced by the coal

87 The 13th salary is a benefit foreseen in Brazil’s Employment Legislation.88 Notes of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Land Issue, 28th ordinary meeting, 6 April 2005. Infor-mation available at http://www.senado.gov.br.89 Data from the Ministry for the Environment: consolidated deforestation figures for the 2002-2003 period.90 In Pará the following municipalities are part of the “Deforestation Arch”: Santarém, Itaituba, Novo Repartimento,Itupiranga, Parauapebas, Marabá, Paragominas, Dom Eliseu, Rondon do Pará, Redenção, Cumaru do Norte, SãoFélix do Xingu and Santana do Araguaia.

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industry. This is evidence that a large part of the production is done illegally. A researchteam from the national newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo discovered three illegal coalfactories in Rondon do Pará. The newspaper described the impact of coal productionon the region’s deforestation:91

On the way to the coal factories, several hectares of what used to be native flora burn inflames. Years ago, after loggers removed big trees with high economic value, everything leftbehind turned into the illegal production of coal. First the area is burnt in order to removeroots and animals — frequently this is done irregularly and the fire gets out of control, invadinggreen areas nearby. After that, the chain saws take action, removing practically all the treesthat remained standing. What is left is only black and dead earth, without any living organisms,either macro or micro, in the soil.

3. THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IN RONDON DO PARÁ

The gradual depletion of the forest — with the resulting change in patterns ofproduction and decrease in mining activities in other regions of southern Pará — leftthousands of families in the region without means of survival. So they began to occupy,as settlers, uninhabited areas far from the main roads, practicing subsistence agriculture.

In Rondon do Pará, the oldest settled area is called Vila Gavião (located about 40km from the municipality’s urban area). According to Maria Eva dos Santos, a localresident: “The settlement began in the late 1970s, when a few families went to the areaby themselves. About 30 families created a village and began establishing small farmingplots on its outskirts. In time, other families came to live in the village and cultivate thesurrounding area.”92

Maria Eva also said that, in 1992, a landowner named José Hilário began threateningthe settlers, claiming to be the owner of the land. He began intimidating and persecutingthe rural workers, attempting to impede them from cultivating the land they had occupiedfor more than 10 years.

In 1994, with the restructuring of the (STR),93 settlers and rural workers began toorganize a resistance. According to Maria Eva, there have been several conflicts sincethen. In 1995, a landowner went so far as to bring a truck with dozens of gunmen andpolice to expel the workers from Vila Gavião. José Dutra da Costa — known as“Dezinho,” who years later would become president of the STR — mediated the conflict

91 O Estado de S. Paulo, report published on 16 September 2005.92 Information provided by Maura Kelly to Maria Rita Reis in Rondon do Pará on 4 April 2004, during Terra deDireitos’ fact-finding mission to the municipality.93 The workers stated that the Union was founded in 1982, but until 1988 the STR was completely controlled bylandowners.


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and was taken by the landowners and police to a nearby ranch. The workers blocked theroad and did not let a single vehicle get through until Dezinho was returned.

Three workers were assassinated between 1994 and 1997: Alfim Alves Fagundes, aworker named Ronaldo (known as “Pezão”), and another named Francisco. The gunmanwho killed Ronaldo was arrested, but escaped from the police station. The residents ofVila Gavião suspect that there were two more murders, as two other workers haddisappeared.

In 1997, the area where Vila Gavião is located was recognized as federal govern-ment property. At that time, INCRA then created a settlement project in the area,where135 families live today.

The struggle for possession of the land in Vila Gavião and the organization of theRural Workers’ Union were fundamental to the workers’ and squatters’ resistance. Sincethen, the number of organized workers has grown. This organization happenedsimultaneously with, and in opposition to, the efforts of large rural landowners to haltland reform in Rondon do Pará.

In 1993, Dezinho became president of the STR and stayed in this position until1999 (two terms). After becoming president, he became the target of constant threatsand persecution, especially as a result of his denunciations of grilagem of public lands inRondon do Pará. He started to investigate several land titles and divulged that themajority of the land in Rondon belonged to the state or federal governments.

The primary target of denunciations was the Tulipa Negra Farm, held by KiumeMendes Lopes. The false title that gave rise to this ranch’s documentation is the sameused in several areas in Rondon do Pará. The beginning of the process to repossess theproperty provoked an organized reaction by the large landowners, particularly becauseif INCRA investigated the chain of ownership of other properties, more landownerswould lose their land.

According to Maria Joel da Costa, current President of the STR and Dezinho’swife:

Dezinho was threatened, because Vila Gavião was an area heavily within the landowners’control. Dezinho went to do grassroots work, to figure out how the area could be legalized.He researched whether the area had documentation. This incited the landowners’ fury, andthe threats started. Six months after he took over the presidency of the union, we asked forprotection for Dezinho. He spent six months with four policemen providing protection. Heconducted a survey of the municipality and reported that several areas did not have propertitles. He took these demands to INCRA. At the time, he discovered a clandestine cemeteryon Josélio de Barros’ ranch. During this time, hard evidence emerged that Josélio had hired agunman to kill Dezinho. At the time, Josélio was called to testify. ...Everything got worse afterthe occupation of the Tulipa [Negra] Farm. Two things converged: the land conflict at theTulipa [Negra Farm], and the possibility of Dezinho being elected city councilman.

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José Dutra da Costa (“Dezinho”) was assassinated on 21 November 2000. At thetime, the state of Pará had removed the police protection that had accompanied him fortwo years. The assassination had nationwide repercussions. Like so many others in Pará,the press called it a “murder foretold” since Dezinho himself, the CPT, and FETRAGRIhad all reported the threats he received to the authorities countless times.

In the first year after the murder of the labor leader, the STR organized ademonstration demanding measures be taken by the judiciary. The main plaza in thecity was occupied by workers. Striking a violent posture, cattle-farmers and loggers inthe municipality fashioned barricades with tractors and trucks, thereby impeding theopening of the Catholic Church.

Dezinho’s assassination and the constant threats to the STR’s directorship scaredmany workers, causing a decrease in STR activities. In 2003, the workers’ organizationrestructured with the election of Maria Joel da Costa, Dezinho’s widow, to the presidency.The number of workers enrolled in the STR is growing. Currently, there are 2,200members, all potential beneficiaries of agrarian reform.

Since the beginning of 2003, the resumption of workers organizing (and the pos-sibility of new settlements) precipitated a new cycle of threats perpetrated by the region’slandowners. On 7 February 2004, Ribamar Francisco dos Santos, one of the STR’sprincipal leaders, was assassinated. Other union members are under constant threat.This climate of tension is aggravated by the fact that the demand for land in the regionhas never been so great.

In addition to the over 2,000 enrolled workers, there are four encampments, withabout 150 families in each: Água Branca, Bom Fim, Deus nos ama, and Campos Dou-rado, all organized by the Rural Workers’ Union. There are two areas of land squatting(Vila Galvão and Vila Mantenho) also organized by the Union. Both are located onuntitled land belonging to the federal government and currently regulated by INCRA.

Logging in Pará.Terra de DireitosArchive.


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There are four settlements in Rondon do Pará, with a total of 300 families: theNossa Senhora Aparecida Settlement, Unidos para Vencer, José Dutra, and Nova Vitória.The first decree creating a Settlement Project was issued in 2002 for the José DutraSettlement, despite it being the area that had been occupied for the shortest length oftime. Among these settlements, at least two (Unidos para Vencer and Nova Vitória) haveserious regulatory problems, because they were public lands repossessed from grileirosby INCRA. INCRA repossessed the land and created the settlement projects, but theputative “owners” obtained a preliminary court order to remove landless workers fromthe land, thereby impeding the regulation of these projects.

4. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

As in all of southern Pará, violence against workers has permeated social relationsand is manifested in several ways: enslavement of men and women,94 expulsion ofpeasants from their land, physical and emotional aggression, death threats, and murders.

Since the beginning of the occupations organized by the STR in 1996, eight ruralworker leaders have been assassinated. In 2003, with the resumption of union activities,STR leaders, the main defenders of agrarian reform and of the human rights of settlersand rural workers, have been under constant threat. These leaders and their familiescommonly receive anonymous telephone calls and are followed by strangers.

In the beginning of 2003, a rumor spread through the city that two members ofthe STR were going to be assassinated at the behest of landowners in the region. Thethreats were directed at Maria Joel da Costa (STR president and widow of José Dutra daCosta) and the other directors: Ribamar Francisco dos Santos (finance director),Cardiolino José de Andrade (vice-president), Geraldo Soares Fernandes (agrarian policydirector), Zuldemir dos Santos (social policy director), Maria Eva dos Santos Dias(secretary for gender issues), and Maria das Graças da Silva (president of the José Dutrada Costa Settlement Rural Workers’ Association).

Between December 2003 and the middle of February 2004, all of these leaderswere the target of threats. They received anonymous calls, were followed by strangers,and their movements were watched. On 7 February 2004, finance director RibamarFrancisco dos Santos (47 years old and the father of three daughters) was assassinated.Throughout 2004, the workers continued to be under constant threat. As far as punishingthis violence, the responsible public bodies took no action. The police investigationsinto the murders have not moved forward.

94 The Rondon do Pará region (which includes the municipalities of Abel Figueiredo, Bom Jesus, Dom Eliseu, andRondon do Pará) has a high rate of slave labor and extreme workplace exploitation. Between 2003 and 2004, therewere 43 complaints of slave labor lodged, with 811 workers freed in Pará, 291 of them from ranches in Rondon doPará.

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Some of the characteristics of the conflicts in the city of Rondon do Pará should behighlighted. The first observation, upon analysis of the recent cases of extreme violence(mainly murders), is that this violence is not generalized; rather, it is specifically directedat popular leaders. All the pressure is put on the leadership of the organizations thatfight for the redistribution of land, so the workers in the encampments do not sufferdirect threats. The way in which these threats are made is always the same: anonymoustelephone calls and information that “leaks out” and reaches people close to the leaders.The murders have always happened after a period (usually lasting several weeks) ofextreme tension, punctuated by occurrences that effectively advertise one or moremurders.

A fact known to all workers is that the hostilities toward human rights defendersare not planned by isolated individuals, but rather by a sort of conspiracy, a “consortium”of individuals. These people meet and develop strategies for dismantling the move-ments fighting for the redistribution of land as well as pay for the gunmen to carry outthe crimes.

An analysis of what has happened in Rondon do Pará confirms that the workers’perception is correct: there is a strong focus on persecuting and intimidating the leadersof the Rural Workers’ Union and of the Rural Workers’ Associations, demonstrating aclear interest to destroy the resistance by any means, including through killing people.

All of the violence perpetrated against landless workers and rural workers in Rondondo Pará — repeatedly denounced by the organizations that support the STR — was setout in detail by a witness for the prosecution in the murder case of José Dutra da Costa.This witness, Francisco Martins da Silva Filho, was the brother of a gunman close toJosé Décio Barroso Nunes. Before being assassinated in 2000, this gunman denouncedseveral crimes committed by Barroso Nunes. Da Silva Filho was threatened with deathand is currently in a federal witness protection program.

According to da Silva Filho, there is a death squad in Rondon do Pará. This groupwas led by José Décio Barroso Nunes and supported by other landowners in the citysuch as Antonio de Ângelo, Olávio Rocha, among others. When da Silva Filho returnedto the municipality to testify, he stated that his relatives were threatened by José DécioBarroso Nunes.

The indifference and complicity of the government is made obvious by the factthat the official inquiry into the crimes denounced by da Silva Filho disappeared fromthe Rondon do Pará Criminal Registry, according to a State Court certificate, requestedby the Terra de Direitos research team. During Terra de Direitos’ fact-finding mission inRondon do Pará, it was found that there had not been any follow-up investigation ofthe registered threats suffered by workers, and that the police officer could not evenlocate the records of these threats.

A major problem that was also observed is the fear people have about reportingthreats they have received or crimes they have witnessed. This fear is not unfounded. Itis a widely known fact that anyone who reports the activity of gunmen hired by lando-


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wners suffers reprisals. One of the principal witnesses to José Dutra da Costa’s assassina-tion, his neighbor Magno Fernandes, whose testimony put away one of the assassins,was assassinated two months after José Dutra da Costa’s death. One of the principalwitnesses in the assassination of José Dutra da Costa, Magno Fernandes do Nascimen-to, was assassinated by a gunman on 10 September 2002, near his home. The inquestabout this assassination has been at a standstill since March 2003 and there exists noother hypothesis developed other than a “burning of the archives” [removing a witnesswho might otherwise incriminate others involved in the original murder].

Another key witness in the process, Francisco Martins da Silva Filho, was includedin a [federal] Witness Protection Program (PROVITA), although he did not remainthere long, due to the rigidity of the rules of the Program and their alleged impossibilityto be adjusted to his specific case. The CPT requested that PROVITA reintegrate daSilva Filho into the Program, but the request was turned down. In July 2005, CPT,Terra de Direitos, and Justiça Global formally requested that this decision be reconsidered,but there has not been a response to this request as of this writing.

CONCLUSION

Similar to other border areas and regions of the state of Pará, Rondon do Pará isalso known for many cases of human rights violations and environmental destruction. Among the many violations exist cases of grilagem of public lands, threats andassassinations of leaders and human rights defenders, predatory exploitation of timber,and illegal logging.

The most emblematic case was the assassination of labor leader José Dutra daCosta (Dezinho). The disregard and connivance of governmental bodies to combat,investigate, and hold to account those responsible is explicit, including the disappearancefrom the Criminal Registry Office of Rondon do Pará of inquests to investigate crimes.

Despite the constant threats against labor leaders, Rondon do Pará is also a regionmarked by the struggle and resistance of rural workers against human rights violationsand environmental destruction. This resulted in advances such as, for example, winningthe right to land for hundreds of families. Even so, effective government actions arefundamental to combat the grilagem and put a halt to the deaths of workers and thepredatory exploitation of the environment in Rondon do Pará.

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Maria Joel accompanied by actresses Camila Pitanga and Letícia Sabatela during a demonstrationagainst impunity in Rondon do Pará. Photo by João Laet.

Maria Joel da Costa Dias at work. Photo by João Laet.


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“I’ve received death threats from landowners and grileiros of public lands. They even daredto threaten me and ask for me to be expelled from Anapu. All because I cry out for justice. Ithank God for these rich years of learning, my friendship with the local people. I’m captivatedby their sincerity, altruism, hospitality, resistance, steadfastness, and their willingness to beinvolved.”Sister Dorothy Stang

Anapu covers an area of 11,875 km2 and has an estimated 7,271 inhabitants. It islocated in the central region of the state of Pará, 600 km from the state capital,

Belém. In 1995, under state law (Lei Estadual n.5.929/95), the locality was raised to thecategory of a municipality.95

The disorderly process of occupation came about through the discovery of a newarea of development by grileiros, thus increasing the illegal appropriation of land anduncontrolled deforestation, resulting in land conflicts involving new and old tenants.The land conflicts in the municipality of Anapu became nationally and internationallyknown after the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang on 12 February 2005.

At the center of the illegal appropriation of public land and the public authorities’disinterest in the serious agrarian situation in Anapu, are the rural workers that arebeing systematically persecuted, criminalized, and threatened with death by large lan-downers. According to reports from residents and rural workers, these grileiros relyupon the support of the police to burn down huts, expel workers from their homes, andeven arrest them arbitrarily.

Chapter IV

ANAPU: PUBLIC FUNDS, THE FALSIFICATION

OF LAND PROPERTY DOCUMENTS AND

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF DEVELOPMENT

95 Anapu is a term with a geographical origin, referring to the Anapu River. The municipality’s name comes from thetupi words ‘anã’ which means ‘strong, large/great’ and ‘pu’ which means ‘noise,’ giving us ‘great noise.’


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1. A HISTORY OF LAND OCCUPATION

The birth of the municipality of Anapu was linked to the opening of the Transa-mazonian Highway (BR-230). This region received immigrants from the northeast andthe south, who came to the Amazon duped by governmental programs promising themaccess to land and the means to cultivate it.96

The region was divided by the east-bound (towards Marabá, 500km from Altamira)and west -ound (400km from Altamira and Rurópolis) Transamazonian Highway. Thearea east of the highway, where Anapu is located, has not received the same type ofassistance from the federal government. According to experts sent to the region, theland quality was thought to be poor and various pockets of malaria were reported.

The objective of the federal government’s project for the eastern region of Pará wasthe transfer of government-owned land to landowners interested in taking part in thesettlement of the Amazon, through the sealing of CATPs (Contratos de Alienação deTerras Públicas).97 The landowners could make use of the land and if they fulfilled therequirements laid out in the contract, acquire the official papers certifying ownership.According to the transferal contracts, INCRA’s inspections to assess the fulfillment ofthese requirements are supposed to take place after five years’ usage of the land.

The plots of land offered by Formal Procurement Number 3/75 formed the estatesof Belo Monte and Bacajá, both located between the towns of Altamira and Marabá, oneto the north of the Transmazonian Highway and the other to the south. The largeexpanse of land attracted people interested in logging or farming.

In the Anapu region, the settlement plan resulting from the CATPs), was notcarried out exactly as announced by the federal government. In fact, this region sufferedfrom a process of irregular occupation. As a result of the aforementioned lack of technicaland financial support provided by the government, the majority of rural workers wereunable to survive in the area. Those who were unable to settle in the region sold orabandoned their land, breaking the requirements laid out in the CATPs. This had theeffect of increasing the number of grileiros in the area.

The illegal appropriation of land was characterized by illegal tree felling and cattleranching on federally owned land by people who did not have permission to occupy it,as they had not obtained it through a CATP, or by holders of CATP who had registeredthe land as theirs before INCRA had done so.98 Upon arrival in the region, those who

96 Analysis of the structure of Brazilian agriculture from the Statistics Department at INCRA, available at http://www.incra.gov.br/_htm/serveinf/_htm/pubs/pubs.htm.97 Special Instruction (Instrução Especial) INCRA/nº 6A, 29 November 1977. Approved by Portaria/MA nº 841/77(DOU on 6 December 1977, Section I). “Fixa critérios para alienação de terras públicas de domínio da União ou doINCRA, mediante licitação visando a implantação da pequena e média empresa rural em áreas individuais de até 3.000hectares.” Available at: http://www.incra.gov.br/_htm/serveinf/_htm/ legislacao/instrue/6a.htm.98 Grilagem de terras na Amazônia: Negócio bilionário ameaça a floresta e populações tradicionais, report by Greenpeace,available at http://www.greenpeace.org.br/amazonia/pdf/grilagem.pdf.

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called themselves the ‘owners’ of a particular plot of land settled on it, then cut and soldthe timber illegally.99

In 1980 and 1981, INCRA began inspecting areas located in the Bacajá and BeloMonte Estates in Anapu to check whether the requirements drawn up in the CATPwere being fulfilled. INCRA reported that many plots were found abandoned or in thehands of third parties. Under pressure from rural workers in Anapu, INCRA set inmotion legal actions to cancel the registration of property in these areas and returnthem to the government, in order to re-allocate them for agrarian reform. Some of thelegal outcomes favored the government; however, the grileiros did not leave the land.This disorganized settlement in Anapu has caused legal confusion over the ownershipof property and continues to incite agrarian conflicts and violence against workers andmany human rights defenders.

99 According to the report from the External Commission of the Federal Senate, following the investigations linked tothe murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, it is estimated that up to 31 March 2005, the loggers had opened about 3,000 kmof roads to remove timber from the forest.


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2. PUBLIC FUNDS AND AGRARIAN CONFLICT

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Superintendency for the Development of theAmazon (Superintendência do Desenvolvimento da Amazônia, SUDAM) undertook toset priorities, analyze and approve projects, authorize the release of funds, and accompanyand oversee the enterprises benefiting from financial incentives.100 According to figurespublished by SUDAM, there was a concentration of these projects in one area: of the732 approved for the Amazon between 1991 and 1999, 287 are located in Pará. In Pará,the investments reached a total of R$1.6 billion (US$ 735,500 million), whichrepresented 26.5% of the funding destined for the Amazon in the period 1991-99.

At least 15 of these projects were approved for the Anapu region, resulting in yetanother motive for relocation to the region, this time attracting landowners interestedin the high monetary values attached to the funding plan. These landowners becameknown as ‘sudanzeiros’ (or those who exploit and misuse SUDAM funds).

These projects were responsible for the mass deforestation during the last 10 years.A large proportion of the financial incentives were directed at logging and later at farmingprojects, themselves becoming one of the greatest forces behind the destruction of theenvironment. It was particularly among the farming projects that the highest numberof failures in the policy of incentives implemented in the region was concentrated. Thisresulted in an unrecoverable loss of an inestimable amount of public funds.

The sudanzeiros, apart from misusing the resources granted to them by SUDAMand illegally felling timber and harming the environment, additionally embezzled largesums of public funds that should have been used for the projects. For example, accordingto a denunciation by the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the State of Pará (Ministé-rio Público Federal do Pará, or MPF), through the Federal Prosecutor for the municipalityof Santarém, Laudelino Délio Fernandes Neto is responsible for the embezzlement ofnearly 5 million Reais credited to the Agropecuária Pedra Roxa S/A company’s account.This company is owned by his father, José Albano Fernandes, who had a project approvedby SUDAM.101 More than R$4.5 million (US$2 million) in invoices, receipts, and fakecontracts for the cultivation of cocoa and the rearing of cattle were found.102

The Rural Workers Union (Sindicato de Trabalhadores Rurais, STR) in Anapu andSister Dorothy Stang denounced Laudelino Délio Fernandes Neto on various occasionsfor falsifying land documents on plots 56, 58, and 61 on the Bacajá estate, a place where

100 This mandate has been transferred to the Amazon Development Agency (Agência de Desenvolvimento da Amazônia,or ADA), created through Provisional Decree (Medida Provisória) nº 2.157 in 2001. This Decree did away withSUDAM and created Amazon Development Agency (Agência de Desenvolvimento da Amazônia or ADA) and theAmazon Development Fund (Fundo de Desenvolvimento da Amazônia) in its place.101 Project approved by resolution of SUDAM’s Deliberative Council number 8.886, on 1 October 1998.102 Denunciation made by the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the State of Pará, through the Federal PublicProsecutor in the city of Santarém, addressed to the Federal Court of Santarém, on 10 June 2002.

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the forest is being destroyed. According to accounts from workers, he cleared and burnt2000 hectares in 2004, and planted pasture in its place for grazing cattle.103

In May 1999 the workers in plots 124 and 126 on the Belo Monte Estate werethreatened by grileiros who requested and lodged a Reintegration of Ownership Lawsuit(Ação de Reintegração de Posse) with the intention of expelling the families living therein.The intention was to clear the area so that the landowner Danny Gutzeit could implementa project financed by SUDAM. However, the intervention by the Federal Prosecutorsucceeded in demonstrating the interest of the federal government in the case, hencetransferring the competence to judge the matter to federal courts. This measure allowedINCRA to claim the right to the land.

In November 1999, Danny Gutzeit, assisted by 50 armed men, expelled 40 peoplefrom plots 126 and 128 of the Belo Monte Estate. The squatters retook the area inDecember and informed all the relevant public bodies requesting action. They neverreceived a response. In March 2000 Gutzeit expelled them once again and destroyedtheir homes. He placed hired gunmen on the perimeter and planted grass seed oncultivated land, thereby ruining the harvest.

The Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the State of Pará (the Federal Prosecutorfor the municipality of Santarém) also denounced Gutzeit,104 accusing him of channelingnearly 3 million Reais (US$1.3 million) from a project approved by SUDAM105 intothe company Propanorte Agroindustrial e Empreendimentos da Amazônia S/A, ownedby Lindolpho Gutzeit, his father.106 Propanorte is located on the TransamazonianHighway, neighboring Boiadeira, plot 50 A on the Bacajá Estate, in Anapu. Thiscompany’s purpose was to cultivate dendê (a palm used to make oil and other products);however, the office of the Federal Public Prosecutor verified that none of these saidactivities actually took place, and none of the goods described on the invoices found bythe Federal Public Prosecutor were ever received.

Danny Guzeit used 80% of the 12 million Reais he received from SUDAM for theimplementation of productive projects in Altamira. This municipality is today still oneof the electoral strongholds of the former senator and current Federal Representative,

103 Official communication sent by the Rural Workers Union of Anapu (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Anapu)to the competent authorities on 28 July 2004.104 Laudelino Délio Fernandes and Danny Gutzeit were indicted for intentional forgery (estelionato qualificado) (Art.171,3 of the Brazilian Penal Code (CP)); substantively connected (Art. 69, CP) to the following crimes: falsification ofdocuments and identity (falsidade ideological) (Art. 299, CP); falsification of a public document (falsificação de docu-mento público) (Art. 297, CP); use of false documents (Art. 304, CP); formation of a criminal gang (formação dequadrilha) (Art. 288, CP); and crimes against the financial system (Arts. 6 and 11, Law n. 7.492/86). The indictmentwas signed by the Office of the Public Prosecutor for the State of Pará, to the Federal Court in Santarém.105 Project approved by resolution of SUDAM’s Deliberative Council number 9.199, on 12 November 1999.106 Denunciation made by the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the State of Pará, through the Federal PublicProsecutor in the city of Santarém, addressed to the Federal Court of Santarém, on 10 June 2002.


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Jader Barbalho. In April 2002 the Federal Public Prosecutor declared that former SenatorJader Barbalho, had used political influence in the approval and release of SUDAM’sfunds and was consequently involved in the embezzlement that had taken place.

In an official statement to the Federal Police in 2002, Gutzeit declared in evidenceto the federal police that Jader Barbalho’s brother would have demanded a fee ofR$400,000 in order to ensure that the project be approved by SUDAM. According tothe Federal Prosecutor’s investigations, Jader Barbalho’s brother, Lionel Barbalho, wasthe person who acted as the intermediary between Jader and businessmen interested inhaving their projects approved by SUDAM.107

Jader Barbalho and another 57 people (the co called “SUDAM mafia”) were accusedof committing crimes against the administration of the Amazonian Investment Fund(FINAM), run by the now defunct SUDAM, in the administrative process that led tothe approval of projects and the release of funds for companies in the Amazon.108 Gutzeitwas arrested by the federal police for fraud, but upon being freed by habeas corpus, hefled to Switzerland, benefiting from his dual nationality. Another nine businesses locatedin the Anapu region were investigated and their owners prosecuted for embezzlingfunds for projects approved by SUDAM. Among those involved, Agropecuária BeloMonte S/A; Agroindústria Terranorte Ltda; and Rio Anapu Agroindustrial S/A.109 Theabove information establishes that more than 10 landowners have been accused ofencouraging the clearing and destruction of the Amazon forest and of using politicalinfluence to embezzle public funds. These funds were used to finance political campaignsand to keep the old and new oligarchies in power.

There was (and still is) a close relationship between the illegal appropriation ofland and the embezzlement of funds, as the land served as a type of “guarantee” and aplace where the fictitious plans financed by SUDAM were “implemented.”

This scheme of corruption and use of public funds, interlinked with the falsificationof land documents in Pará, involved executive authorities and members of parliament andthe judiciary, thereby consolidating a pattern of a state shot through with impunity, violence,and the exclusion of the poorest. This resulted in the stirring up of agrarian and environ-mental conflict, causing more violence against workers and human rights defenders.

3. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS (PDS)

The furthering of the struggle for a new agrarian and environmental policy inAnapu has come about as a result of political pressure from social movements in the

107 “Depoimento de irmão de Jader compromete ex-senador no caso Sudam,” Agência Folha, 10 April 2002; available at:http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u31225.shl.108 “Inquérito contra o Deputado José Tourinho deve virar Ação Penal,” 16 June 2005,; available at http://www.prr1.mpf.gov.br/s0_data/outras_noticias_corpo.htm.109 List of companies that embezzled funds from SUDAM. National Integration Ministry, Project Coordination Unit.

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region. Struggling against land concentration, the movements demanded that the landbelonging to the federal government be transformed into conservation areas or settlementprojects, incorporating a new way of working the land and sustainably using andconserving its flora and fauna.110

Sister Dorothy Stang and the social movements in Anapu prepared a developmentplan, reconciling familiar methods of production with the sustainable use of the rainforest,known as Sustainable Development Projects (PDS). In 1997, the request from thesocial movements for the creation of two PDSs was officially registered with INCRA(No. 54100.002349/00-97). The objective of the PDS111 is to ensure the simultaneouspeaceful settlement of traditional inhabitants of the Amazon (indigenous peoples,extractivists, riverine communities, landless workers, and farmers) in areas of environ-mental interest, while encouraging sustainable use and non-invasive growth, within acontext in which human rights are respected and protected.

The landless workers, rural workers, extractivists, and riverine communities insistedupon the need to transform large farms into areas of settlement and conservation. Theproposal included 24 plots, each measuring 3,000 hectares, on the Belo Monte Estate,as well as 21 plots, each measuring 3,000 hectares, on the Bacajá Estate. Thus, theywere requesting that 45 plots be destined for environmentally sustainable extractivism.112

After submitting the application for the implementation of the PDS, INCRA re-quested a re-registering of all the land that made up the municipality of Anapu (1998).This process of re-registration was carried out in 1999, establishing that all of the contestedplots of land were large and unproductive. In other words, all of the plots of land putforward by the workers were legally eligible for allocation under the program of agrarianreform. Some of these plots of land had already been legally returned to the governmentand others were in the process of having their CATPs cancelled.

In November 2002, through decree INCRA/SR-01(G)/N 39/2002, INCRA officiallycreated the PDS in Anapu, as a new model of the federal government’s program foragrarian reform in the region.113 INCRA’s plan anticipated the implementation of fourPDSs in Anapu, settling approximately 600 families. These families would receive technicalassistance, financial support, and the infrastructure needed for their development.114

Following the criteria laid out in the decree that defines the rules for the imple-mentation of the PDSs, the STR in Anapu and the popular organizations involved

110 Document sent by the Federation of Agricultural Workers from the State of Pará and Amapá (FETAGRI) to thenINCRA Superintendent in Pará, Maria Santana da Silva, on 5 February 2001.111 The PDS concept was created by INCRA through Portaria/Incra/P nº 477, on 4 November 1999 and detailed inPortaria/Incra/P nº 1.032 on 25 October 2000. Information available from Diário Oficial da União, Section 1, nº 240,12 December 2002. Available from http://www.in.gov.br/112 “Grito dos Posseiros de Anapu,” Manifest or the STR of Anapu, September 2004.113 Diário Oficial da União, Section 1, number 240, 12 December 2002, available from http://www.in.gov.br/.114 Procedure INCRA/SR-(01)/nº 54100.002349/00-97. Information gathered from INCRA’s Portaria do INCRAthat created the PDS in Anapu.


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formulated a plan for the use of PDSs in the region. It was made clear that the beneficiarieswould have to pledge to respect the environmental legislation and follow the sustainabledevelopment guidance, implementing and consolidating profitable activities that wouldallow the constant re-growth of types of vegetation and the replanting of deforestedareas, allowing the locals to live in improved and more dignified conditions.115

The popular organizations involved were concerned with drafting the rules ofusage for the PDS, in order to prevent beneficiaries from repeating the errors commit-ted by those who used their CATPs incorrectly, selling their land or using it in animproper way. For this reason, the use plan prepared by the STR established not onlyrights, but also responsibilities and a system of inspection and penalties.

Another substantial obstacle to the implementation of the projects for sustainabledevelopment has been the violence inflicted by loggers, landowners, and grileiros withinthe plots of land set aside for the aforementioned projects. The families are intimidatedand expelled from the land by private armed militias contracted by loggers and grileiros.Following the creation of the PDSs in 2002, INCRA undertook a legal battle with thelandowners and loggers to reclaim the land belonging to the government. The aforementionedbody was not able to carry out the demarcation of the plots of land for the PDS.116

Experts from the Brazilian Environment Institute (IBAMA) revealed the difficultiesfaced carrying out the inspections in the project areas due to the climate of animosity,including direct threats, from the grileiros. A report on the visit, circulated on 30 August2002 by experts from IBAMA, denounced the presence of hired gunmen in the area.The team had traveled to Anapu with the intention of examining the implementationof a Forest Extractive Reserve (Reserva Extrativista Florestal, RESEX) on the Bacajá Estateand two PDSs, PDS Jatobá and PDS Esperança.117

With the election of the new federal government in 2003, the process was resumed,heeding the demands of the social movements in Anapu. The four PDSs outlined in theINCRA decree, amounting to 70,000 hectares, were created.118 However, the plan isfacing problems in being implemented, given that the majority of the land has beensubject to speculation by grileiros and sudanzeiros for many years.

Laudelino Délio Fernandes Neto was one of the landowners who occupied land setaside for agrarian reform. He established a farm on plots 56 and 58, which is protectedby hired gunmen, and also occupied and then sold plots 60, 61, and 62 on the Bacajá

115 Usage Plan of the Association of the Project for Sustainable Development of Anapu, Pará.116 “Reforma agrária: sustentabilidade ambiental e direitos humanos”, National Rapporteur on the Right to an Environment,Brazil ESCR Platform, statement released on 16 February 2005. Available at: http://www.dhescbrasil.org.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=30&sid=19.117 Report of the mission presented by IBAMA technician Ruth Maria A. Tavares, 30 August 2002.118 PDS Anapu I covers plots 16, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 60, 61, and 62; PDS Anapu II covers plots 56 and 58 in theBacajá Estate. PDS Anapu III and IV were also created, covering respectively plots 110, 136, 138, 139, 158, 162, and178, and plots 107 and 132, both in the Belo Monte Estate.

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Estate to third parties. These plots had been set aside for PDSs. Délio Fernandes remainson the land, as he was conceded this right by the Federal Court in Marabá in a lawsuitto maintain his ownership of the land (Ação de manutenção de posse). He requested theright to remain on the land and to the surprise of rural workers and INCRA employees,the judge in charge of the case granted him this right, basing her judgment upon thesimple possession of a CATP exhibited in the case.

As has been stated, INCRA had already re-registered the whole of the Anapu areaand reported that the region was riddled with irregular CATPs. For this reason, it isinadmissible that Délio Fernandes be allowed to stay on the aforementioned land. Thisepisode demonstrates how vulnerable the rural workers in the Anapu region are, evenfrom a legal standpoint.

In a visit to Anapu in March 2005, research teams from Justiça Global and Terra deDireitos reported that the workers benefiting from the PDS were found to have beencompletely abandoned by the authorities responsible. The police, who should haveprotected them, in fact persecuted and criminalized workers who found themselves inareas of conflict. Technical help is not carried out by public bodies, but rather expertsfrom the Economic and Ecologic Solidarity Association of Fruits of the Amazon (Asso-ciação Solidária Econômica e Ecológica de Frutas da Amazônia, ASSEEFA) with a teamunsuitable to service the 70,000 hectares set aside for the PDS.

The workers were awaiting the distribution of survival packages from INCRAwhich would ensure their subsistence until such time as they were able to being marketingtheir production. However, another source stated that the arrival of the packages wasbeing hindered, as there was no vehicle for their transport to Anapu. The packages werebeing stored in the municipality of Altamira. Also at the time of the research teams’ visit,there was no evidence found to demonstrate that the financial and technical support thatthe federal government had supposedly set aside for the PDS had in fact been provided.

4. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS: AN EMBLEMATIC CASE OF A MURDER FORETOLD

The negligence, disregard, and inaction of the public authorities dealing with thefalsification of land documents, the encroachment of the timber industry, and the gro-wing level of deforestation represent the background for the violence against the populaceand social movements of Anapu. It is well-known that 90% of the timber from thisregion comes from illegal logging.119 The federal government has negotiated with thelandowners, but rural workers continue being threatened, thrown off their land, andcriminalized, and their leaders murdered.

119 “Reforma agrária: sustentabilidade ambiental e direitos humanos,” National Rapporteur on the Right to an Environment,Brazil ESCR Platform, statement released on 16 February 2005. Available at: http://www.dhescbrasil.org.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=30&sid=19.


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One of the most active leaders in the municipality was Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American, who had become a naturalized Brazilian. She had worked in Pará asa Missionary of the Congregation of Notre Dame de Namur since 1966 and was knownas a defender of environmental, agrarian, and human rights causes, confronting theloggers and large landowners.

Just like the many other threats that have resulted in the death of union leaders,members of the church, and lawyers in Pará, Sister Dorothy’s case had been reportednumerous times to the appropriate authorities by the social movements. Sister Dorothyherself had sent official letters to the Federal Public Prosecutor, Special Secretariat ofHuman Rights, INCRA, and local branch of the Brazilian Bar Association in Belém,reporting that she was being threatened. In those letters, she reported both the names ofthe landowners who were threatening her and the lawlessness of the crimes they werecommitting on government land.

On 15 June 2004, the Federal Prosecutor in Belém, Felício Pontes, Jr., sent anofficial letter to the Special Secretary for Civil Defense of Pará, Manoel Santino Nasci-mento, Jr., asking for protection for Sister Dorothy. On 3 February 2005, eight daysbefore her assassination, Sister Dorothy handed a letter to the State Civil Police Chief inPará, Luiz Fernandes, accompanied by rural workers who were being threatened andrepresentatives from human rights organizations. This letter reported that three peoplewere threatening families of landless workers in the Anapu region. Amongst the threeallegedly threatening the families, two of them, Vitalmiro Bastos De Moura (known as“Bida”) and Amair Feijoli da Cunha (known as “Tato”), now stand accused of beinginvolved in her own murder.120

On the same day that she handed the letter to Police Chief Fernandes, Sister Dorothytook part in a public hearing in Belém, in which the National Program for the Protec-tion of Human Rights Defenders was launched. At this meeting were present thenSpecial Secretary for Human Rights Nilmário Miranda, the incumbent Governor ofPará, Secretary for Civil Defense in Pará Manoel Santino, representatives from theOffice of the State Public Prosecutor, and other officials such as senators and federaland state representatives. Darci Frigo, founder and Executive Director of Terra de Direi-tos, representing civil society organizations in the coordination of the National Program,revealed that in addition to Sister Dorothy, four other people in the region were receivingdeath threats and that large landowners and loggers had invaded an area of Anapu. Hespecifically denounced the invasion of the worker Luiz Moraes de Brito’s house byarmed gunmen. This case was then reported to the police.

120 “Freira denunciou três pessoas em carta à polícia”, O Globo, 16 February 2005, p. A13.

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These events show that there has been complete negligence by the public authorities,that did not adopt effective measures in a timely fashion to prevent the continual andsystematic violation of human rights widely reported that culminated in the murder ofSister Dorothy Stang on the morning of 12 February 2005.121

During a mission to Anapu, teams from Justiça Global and Terra de Direitos receivedinformation from Father Amaro, a close friend and neighbor of Dorothy Stang, that theday before her death, 11 February 2005, she went to the Anapu Police Station askingfor protection from the police chief, Marcelo Luz, before heading to the PDS Esperan-ça. She wanted security in order to enter PDS Esperança and was told by Police ChiefLuz that there were no police cars or police officers available to escort her; he also toldher to “handle it yourself ” (“se vire” (sic) was the expression supposedly used by thepolice chief ).122

According to information released by the federal police, Sister Dorothy’s murderwas allegedly ordered by a group of landowners and loggers who were feeling hard-hitby the denunciations that she had been making over the last few years and by theimplementation of the PDS.123 For many years, Sister Dorothy had confronted grileirosand timber merchants in the region, denouncing the illegal occupation of areas recognizedas belonging to the government. One of the landowners accused by Sister Dorothy wasthe previously mentioned Délio Fernandes. In evidence to the federal police in November2002, Sister Dorothy categorically stated that Délio was present on the Bacajá Estate,occupying plots 56 and 58 irregularly.

Another landowner, Luis Ungaratti, was also denounced numerous times by SisterDorothy, including for the expulsion in 2001 of 34 families from an area set aside for aPDS. He used heavily armed gunmen to intimidate the families, threatening them withdeath if they returned to the land. He ordered grass seed to be planted in the cultivatedareas, preventing other crops from growing, and permitting the grazing of cattle in thearea. This was a way of “guaranteeing or keeping the ownership” of the land in hishands.124

121 Despite then Special Secretary Nilmário Miranda’s reaction, demanding the punishment of those responsible forSister Dorothy Stang’s murder, his discourse is representative of the governmental practice of not adopting preventativemeasures against violence. He met the sister a few days before, and was aware of the death threats she had beenreceiving, but claimed, “We reported the case to the police, but never did we think that these criminals would dare tomurder a Sister, someone representative of the struggle in the area” (statement given to Folha de São Paulo, 12 February2005, available at Folha online).122 This murder had a substantial impact on national public opinion, so much so that the Senate created the ‘ExternalCommission to Follow the Investigations Into the Murder of Sister Dorothy Stang.” This was put into place throughAct No. 8 of 2005.123 “Consórcio de assassinos,” Istoé online, retrieved on 6 April 2005. Available at: http://www.terra. com.br/istoe/1851/brasil/1851_consorcio_de_assassinos.htm.124 Testimony by Dorothy Stang to the Federal Police in Belém, 28 November 2002.


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As a result of the mass felling of trees in 2000, plots 54, 55, and 57 were alsotargets of Sister Dorothy’s denunciations. This time those accused of being responsiblewere the landowners, Marcos Oliveira and Regivaldo Pereira Galvão (the latter knownas “Taradão”), who were involved in the embezzlement of sums of money fromSUDAM.125 In May 2004, Taradão cut down new large areas of the aforementionedlots. Even though he had been warned by IBAMA, Taradão continued to systematicallyfell trees. In a letter delivered to the Office of the Federal Prosecutor on 16 June 2004,126

Sister Dorothy denounced the illegal deforestation practiced by Taradão and VitalmiroBastos de Moura (known as “Bida”).

Bida filed a lawsuit for the reintegration of ownership (Ação de Reintegração dePosse), alleging that “his” land (plot 55) was being invaded by people who were clearingtrees for pasture. Then Judge of the Agrarian Court in Altamira, Danielle Buhrnheim,granted a Preliminary Decision of Reintegration in November 2004 based upon the“proof” presented by Bida (Case number 067/2004-AC).

In July 2004, when the aforementioned lawsuit was brought to court, the PDSswere already in the process of being implemented in Anapu. Judge Buhrnheim, a supposedauthority on the matter, should have questioned the petitioner’s right to the land, giventhat they the land in question was an area understood to belong to the federal govern-ment. However, the judge did not request a report from INCRA or IBAMA to verifythe contested ownership.127

Despite the partnership formed among landowners in the region (including DélioFernandes, Luis Ungaratti, and Yoaquim Petrola), according to the police investigationBida and Taradão were the main instigators of the plan, which had as its objective themurder of Sister Dorothy Stang. After her murder, the federal police carried out asearch on Vitalmiro Bastos’ farm (he is accused of ordering the crime) and found a notethat referred to financial assistance provided by Luis Ungaratti to the chief of the localpolice, Marcelo Luz. Luz supposedly provided support to Ungaratti in conflicts withthe rural workers. This is yet another indication of the involvement of Ungaratti in thepartnership of landowners and the murder of the missionary.

The Office of the Pará State Public Prosecutor accused in court five people involvedin the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang. According to Prosecutor Lauro de Freitas, Jr.,who signed the indictment, the accused will respond to a charge of intentional homicide.Based on federal and civil police inquiries, the prosecutor accused Rayfan das NevesSales (known as “Fogoió”) and Clodoaldo Carlos Batista (known as “Eduardo”) of being

125 “Grito dos Posseiros de Anapu”, ,manifesto from the STR of Anapu, September 2004.126 A copy of this letter was sent to Justiça Global by the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor for Pará on 2 March2005.127 On 22 February 2005, 20 days after Sister Dorothy Stang’s death, then Judge of the Agrarian Court, FranciscoCoimbra, revoked this Preliminary Decision of Reintegration of Ownership (Decisão Liminar de Reintegração dePosse) due to the fact that they were dealing with public land.

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the assassins; Amair Feijoli da Cunha (known as “Tato”) of being the middleman; andVitlamiro Bastos de Moura (“Bida”) and Regivaldo Pereira Galvão (“Taradão”) ofmasterminding and paying for the crime.128

The State Court of Pará gave notice that the session of the Trial Court Jury, whichwould sentence Rayfran and Clodoaldo, would take place in October 2005. By mid-November 2005 the decision on the request for the transfer of competence of this trialwas still pending, and only at the end of that month a decision was taken. The jury meton 9 and 10 December, but no date has yet been set for the trial of the masterminds ofthe crime.129

Sister Dorothy Stang, assassinated on 12 February 2005. Photo by João Laet.

128 Case n°. 200520002470, Municipality of Marabá, available at: http://www.tj.pa.gov.br.129 Rayfran das Neves Sales was sentenced to 27 years in prison; Clodoaldo Carlos Batista to 17 years.


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5. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, IMPUNITY AND FEDERALIZATION

Fearing that once again impunity would be the rule, civil society organizationsrequested that then Chief Attorney General (Procurador Geral da República) CláudioFonteles apply for the federalization130 of the Dorothy Stang case in the Brazilian Supe-rior Court of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça, STJ).131 The struggle for the treatmentof human rights crimes at the federal level is old and the debate is central on the agendasof human rights defenders.

The basic necessary requirement for the transfer of legal competency is the graveviolation of human rights combined with the failure of the court in one of the Federationstates. Federalization aims to guarantee the fulfillment of obligations resulting frominternational human rights treaties to which Brazil is a signatory. This requirement wasincluded in the documentation on impunity with relation to cases of agrarian conflictin the state of Pará.

On 7 April 2005, lawyers from Terra de Direitos and the CPT in Pará requested toassist the Attorney General’s call for the federalization of the case. The request wasmade in the name of David Joseph Stang, brother of Dorothy. The objective was toreinforce the need to transfer legal competency to the federal courts, given the historyof the inefficiency of the judicial system in Pará in sentencing and punishing thoseresponsible for similar crimes before and after the aforementioned crime.

Contrary to what the Office of the State Public Prosecutor in Pará alleged, therequest, formulated by the above-mentioned organizations, was in

...complete agreement with the constitutional system in place, which holds as sacred the prin-cipal of human dignity, itself a fundamental principle of a Democratic State of Law. Besidesthis, if the Constitutional Law of 1998 allows the acute hypothesis of federal interventionwhen human rights are threatened (Arts. 34, VII, b), in the interest of the preservation ofjustice, there is no reason to obstruct the possibility of the transferal of competency.132

However, the STJ did not consider the request for the treatment of Sister Dorothy’scase at a federal level to be appropriate, arguing that the Pará state justice system had

130 Constitutional Amendment No. 45 which added to paragraph no. 5 of Article 109 of the Federal Constitution thefollowing provision: “In the event of a grave violation of human rights, the Chief Federal Prosecutor, with the intentionof ensuring the fulfillment of obligations resulting from international treaties (of which Brazil is a signatory) onhuman rights, may request, before the High Court for Justice, at any point in the inquiry or case, the transfer ofcompetence to the Federal Courts.” (free translation)131 “Pedido de federalização,” Estadão online, retrieved on 12 July 2005. Available at: http://conjur.estadao.com.br/static/text/33722,1.132 From a petition sent to the STJ by Terra de Direitos and the CPT (7 April 2005) as assistants in the request for thefederalization of the proceeding that would pronounce judgement on the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang.

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undertaken rapid actions and in a short space of time was able to investigate the caseand arrest the accused.133

There was exceptional speed in the civil police investigation into this case as aresult of the parallel federal police investigation and pressure from national and interna-tional organizations, in view of the major repercussions of this crime. Aside from thespeed of the investigation and the measures by Pará’s judiciary, it is known that Bida,who ordered the murder, received help at Laudelino Fernandes’ (“Délio”) farm. It issuspected that other landowners who received profits in the millions from SUDAM’spublic funds formed a partnership to intimidate and persecute workers and humanrights defenders.

After Sister Dorothy’s death, a meeting took place on 16 February at INCRAheadquarters in Belém to discuss “Operation Peace in Pará.”134 The objective of thisoperation was to speed up actions in municipalities in which the highest number ofagrarian conflicts had been identified. Five teams, made up of representatives from thefederal government, INCRA, IBAMA, the regional headquarters for employment, thefederal police, the transport police, and the armed forces, were sent to Anapu.

In the week following the meeting, the teams sent to Anapu remained responsiblefor the inspection of 25 areas, totaling 75,000 of the municipality. These inspectionsserved to declare illegally owned land as areas of social interest for agrarian reform.According to information from the Ministry for Agrarian Development (MDA), INCRAwould also send teams with topographers and agricultural experts to geographicallymap out all of the land formations and begin the regularization of plots of land up to100 hectares in the municipality.

In another meeting, which took place in Anapu on 25 February 2005, Ministerfor Agrarian Development Miguel Rosseto announced the following proposals for theregion, which were to be completed within 30 days: the geographical mapping of 22plots of land in the PDSs; begin a stage of the expropriation of land; and a joint inspectionwith IBAMA and the Regional Headquarters for Employment. The experts from INCRA,in turn, should immediately notify and carry out an inspection of these plots of land,accompanied by IBAMA staff who would issue fines for unlawful environmental damage.Minister Rosseto promised to carry out another inspection by MDA in March 2005.

On 13 June 2005, a meeting took place between the organizations that made upthe social movement in Anapu to evaluate the situation on the land of PDS Esperança,PDS Virola Jatobá, and the Manduacari Estate, as well as the degree of fulfillment of thefederal government’s promises. It was established that plot 55, where Sister Dorothy

133 The application was considered on 8 June 2005 at a session of the High Court of Justice (STF). The request wasdenied unanimously by the Magistrates present at the 3rd Session.134 “Operation Peace in Pará” was the name given to the federal government plan of action to be implemented in Pará,aimed at reducing agrarian conflicts. Information available at http://www.ces.fgvsp.br/index.cfm?fuseaction=noticia&IDnoticia=18059&IDidioma=1.


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died, had been expropriated, and until that moment neither the topography nor theopening of the side road had been carried out. This made the rural workers’ activitiesimpossible. Aside from this, of the 22 plots that should have been inspected, only eight(52, 54, 60, 53, 57, 59, 14, and 18) had been inspected and up until the day of thismeeting the report on the inspections had not been produced. Only four plots are fairlyregularized (plots 3, 16, 20, and 22), but despite all of the denunciations, Délio Fernan-des remained on plots 56 and 58.135

Months after Minister Rosseto’s visit to Anapu, the promises have not been fulfilledby the federal government. Negligence and carelessness are once again reflected in thegovernment’s inertia towards bringing about agrarian reform. The rural workers need aswift and efficient resolution from the authorities responsible as regards the decision overownership in the aforementioned plots of land, given that these plots were fraudulentlyseized by people known to be criminals.

6. CRIMINALIZING WORKERS AND ACTIVISTS

Despite the many denunciations to relevant state and federal authorities, therespective governments no effective action was taken by the authorities. Of the 12police proceedings related to land conflicts set up in Anapu and Altamira between 2003and 2005, eight are against workers accused of “invading private property.” This isnonsense, given that in that region the land belongs to the government (terras da União).

The rural workers in Anapu are victims of countless human rights violations, notonly on the part of landowners and loggers, but also local authorities, which continue tocriminalize the claims and actions of the region’s social movements. The rural workersare treated as criminals and the “grileiros as innocent landowners,” threatened by “dan-gerous invaders,” as happened on the Manduacari Estate.

The Manduacari Estate is located on the road neighboring Três Barracas and isknown to be federal government land. It was subject to the concession contracts (CATPs)in the 1970s that were never fulfilled. In December 2002, part of the estate was occupiedby 300 families and 500 plots were demarcated. The families occupied plots 4-7, whichaccording to INCRA were already classified as large unproductive areas. However, thesettlement project was abandoned due to the strong presence of grileiros in the regionand lack of presence of the Pará Land Institute (Instituto de Terras do Pará, or ITERPA).

Forty days after the establishment of the encampment, Yoaquim Petrola arrivedand presented himself as the “owner” of the Cospel Farm, which includes five of theManduacari plots. His arrival was extremely violent and he relied upon the help of themilitary police to expel the families. Many people were arrested and homes (with all thefamilies’ possessions, including private documents) were destroyed and burnt. The families

135 Information gathered by the team from Terra de Direitos, present at the meeting on 13 June 2005.

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were placed in a lorry and dumped in the town of Anapu. In this episode, the policetook six rural workers to the police station in Altamira, accusing them of forming agang, of muggings, and of illegally carrying weapons (in fact, they did not even own ahunting rifle). They remained imprisoned for four months and two days, finally beingreleased in May 2003.

In October 2003, part of the group (153 families) entered the land again. Fourdays later, Benedito, the manager of the Cospel Farm, returned to the area accompaniedby a policeman and threatened and insulted the families. Both of them were armed.The landless workers camping in the Farm then reacted and seized their guns. Themanager registered the incident with the police, falsely accusing the families of assaultand theft. Following this, INCRA registered these 153 families and legitimized theirstaying on the estate (plots 4-7).

In November 2003 the families were surprised by the presence of a gunman at theentrance to the farm, the road blocked by a chain, and 16 people armed with pistols, guns,and rifles. This road had existed for more than 15 years permitting the free passage ofpeople and vehicles. The blockade obstructed transit in an area of 12 km, starting in plot3 and continuing to the end of plot 7. The members of this militia were identified asemployees of the security firm Marca Vigilância and they did not permit the families topass. They also said they had orders from the owner to clear the land for Yoaquim Petrola.

The police chief at the Civil Police Superintendency in Altamira, Pedro Monteiro,eased Marca Vigilância’s arrival in Anapu. On 13 November 2003, the military policewere carrying out a blockade of the Transamazonian Highway, close to the town, whena vehicle transporting employees from Marca Vigilância passed by. When the Corporalapproached the vehicle, Monteiro interrupted the Corporal’s action and allowed the carto pass freely through the blockade. These events were witnessed by dozens of people.

In December 2003, some men, saying they were acting in the name of MarcaVigilância, attacked the landless workers’ huts, destroying supplies, pots, crockery, andother belongings. The following day, there was another action taken by the company,including the discharge of gunfire. On this occasion a landless worker was seriouslyinjured by four shots. On 28 December, Yoaquim Petrola arrived in the area with 33armed men to prevent the landless workers from entering the plots of land; he surroundedthe area and gave the order to kill whoever dared to enter.

In another instance, in June 2004, Sister Dorothy Stang was accused of supplyingarms and hiding a group of four people who allegedly murdered a worker on the CospelFarm. She responded to this accusation in the police inquiry and gave evidence incourt. As a result of this incident, four workers were randomly accused and then arrestedby the military police, without any type of proof of their involvement in the murder.They remained imprisoned for more than six months despite pressure from humanrights organizations.

During the 48 hours after the murder of Sister Dorothy, two rural workers(Adalberto Xavier Leal, known as “Cabeludo” and Cláudio Dantas Muniz, known as


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“Matogrosso”) were murdered in the Anapu region. Ever since the beginning of theinvestigation into the murder of the missionary, it was clear that the police, led bypolice chief Marcelo Ferreira de Souza Luz, intended to impede the progress of theinvestigations, thus benefiting the accused landowners.

In Cabeludo’s case, the police immediately accused the workers linked to SisterDorothy as being responsible for the crime. Since then, all the efforts of the policeinvestigation have been focused on criminalizing the landless workers. At the conclusionof the police inquest, Chief of the Civil Police Marcelo Ferreira de Souza Luz requestedthe preventive detainment of Geraldo Magela de Almeida Filho (one of the witnesses inthe case of Sister Dorothy), José Rodrigues da Silva, “Luiz de Tal,” “Mundão de Tal,”“Cláudio de Tal,” and “Félix de Tal.” The request was obeyed by the judge of Pacajáwho issued an arrest warrant for these individuals, including the ones who were notidentified by name.

Utilizing the arrest warrant issued against “Luiz de Tal,” (one of the forms of a“John Doe”), the police arrested Luis Morais de Brito, one of the leaders of PDS Espe-rança. It turns out that de Brito had been a victim of Amair Feijoli da Cunha (knownas “Tato”), who had burned his (de Brito’s) house in order to kick de Brito out of thearea. De Brito sought out the local police, who refused to take any measures.

This fact was denounced in a public hearing that took place in Belém. De Britodescribed the violence he had suffered through the omission and connivance of Chiefof Police Marcelo Ferreira Luz to the authorities present at the hearing, among themSecretary for Social Defense Manoel Santino and then Minister of the Special Secretariaton Human Rights Nilmário Miranda.

With the objective of justifying the arrest of Luis Morais de Brito, the Chief ofPolice forged an recognition statement that was supposedly made by one of the allegedwitnesses in the assassination of Cabeludo, Mr. Vicente Paulo Soeiro. The Chief ofPolice presented several photographs of Mr. Soeiro, among them the identificationcard of Luis Morais de Brito, and thereby demonstrated that he had noted downMorais de Brito as being “Luiz de Tal.” The Chief of Police registered this in theforged statement.

During the judicial hearing on 10 June 2005 in the Forum of Pacajá, Soeiro exposedthe farce developed by the Chief of Police. According to the witness, the Chief ofPolice showed a photograph of de Brito to the witness, asking if the witness knew him. The witness confirmed that he knew de Brito as one of those who lived on PDS Espe-rança. Nonetheless, at no time did the police authority question if de Brito was thesupposed “Luiz de Tal.” The witness was surprised to know that de Brito was imprisonedbecause of that accusation.

The worker Luiz Morais was unjustly detained for 40 days. This is yet anothercase of an egregious human rights violation of rural workers and the total irresponsibilityof the Pará justice system, that goes to the surreal situation of authorizing arrests for“Luizes de Tais” (“Johns Does”).

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According to Geraldo Magela, one of the witnesses in Sister Dorothy’s case, Rayfran,one of the gunmen accused, was schooled by police officers from Anapu when arested.Geraldo, who was present at the moment of the arrest, allegedly heard them direct thegunman to incriminate Francisco de Assis dos Santos Sousa, president of the RuralWorkers’ Union, known as “Chiquinho do PT.” Rayfran did in fact state in his testimonythat Chiquinho do PT was responsible for Sister Dorothy’s death. The information wasdisclosed to the national press in an attempt to cajole society into believing that themurder was a result of internal disputes within the PDSs. However, upon giving evidenceto the federal police inquiry, Rayfran denied the accusation, making the manipulationcarried out by the civil police evident.

The same police chief, Marcelo Luz, was denounced by a note found at Bida’sFarm, confirming that he received 10,000 Reais from Bida to protect the land belongingto the landowners in the region against possible occupation. The police chief was relievedof his duty and according to information divulged by the press, he is subject toadministrative proceedings within the civil police.

While the civil police in Pará acted in a swift and focused way to hunt down therural workers, looking to favor those involved in the murder of Sister Dorothy, the ruleof law on the PDS continued to be determined by the most powerful. Dominguinhos,one of the most powerful grileiros in Anapu, continues to threaten rural workers in thearea, despite widespread denunciations by the press.

Father José Amaro Lopes de Sousa has lived for 15 years in Anapu and was aneighbor and close friend to Sister Dorothy. For seven years he has been a Catholicpriest in the municipality. Since his arrival, he has become involved with the socialmovements alongside Sister Dorothy. According to Father Amaro, from 1999 onwards,the grileiros of public lands began to threaten the rural workers so that they would leavethe land. The motive was the already cited Amazonian Investment Fund created bySUDAM, which attracted grileiros to the region and established a climate of tension.136

In his report to the federal police, Father Amaro confirms that rural workers areconstantly threatened by landowners and that he himself had already suffered countlessdeath threats. He noted that in 2004, he began an education project together withfamilies that occupied the Manduacari Estate. The work consisted of explaining to thepeople that the land belonged to the nation and that therefore they should not leave theplace like the Gambira family (grileiros in the region) wanted. Leomar Gambira threatenedthe priest overtly at a meeting with Elias Sousa, president of the Association of Farmersin Manduacari (Associação Agropecuarista dos Colonos de Manduacari, or AACM). Gambirasaid to Elias: “I’m going to silence that Father Amaro, whatever it takes. ...His days arenumbered.”

136 Information extracted from Father Amaro’s testimony to the federal police. A team from Justiça Global and theFederal Prosecutor for Pará, Félicio Pontes, were present during the testimony on 10 March 2005, Anapu, Pará.


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Father Amaro was invited to be part of the Federal Government Witness Protecti-on Program (PROVITA). He rejected this protection, explaining that his leaving themunicipality would not resolve the agrarian conflicts. On the contrary, he declared thatit is fundamental that an effective investigation into the denunciations and violenceagainst rural workers and the murder of Sister Dorothy take place, punishing all thoseresponsible, without the workers or their leaders abandoning the land, as their assailantswould like.

The threats continued on 28 August 2005 when three policemen accompanied byfive unidentified men arrived at plot number 53 of the PDS Esperança. They used awhite Toyota belonging to Luiz Ungaratti, the aforementioned landowner and logger.137

The policemen arrested two rural workers, Francisco Valentino Santos and MiguelValentino Santos, and declared that they were going to proceed in clearing the area“belonging to Luiz Ungaratti.” They did not present any form of court order for thereintegration of ownership. As usual, the police invaded the workers’ homes and destroyedall of their belongings, leaving their wives and children in the street. After they arrestedFrancisco and Miguel, they went to other homes on the PDS, threatening them to leavethe area within 15 days. They declared that after this date they would return to set fireto all remaining huts.

This type of action, as well as arbitrary imprisonment, have been occurringsystematically in Anapu, showing that the local police are closely engaged in the interestsof the large landowners, grileiros, and loggers. Up until the present moment, the measu-res taken by INCRA and MDA have not been nearly enough to reduce the violence inthe region. The state’s negligence in Anapu makes it directly responsible for the humanrights violations against rural workers taking place in the region.

CONCLUSION

The process of demarcation of plots of land, proposed by the Ministry of AgrarianDevelopment in February 2005, continues. It was announced by INCRA that, theprocess would be ending during the second half of October 2005, and those peoplewho were occupying the land and using it productively would be guaranteed to havepossession of it. In addition, according to Marcos Kowarick, director of INCRA’s Ter-ritorial Mapping, grileiros and settlers who were using violence to kick out other settlersand rural workers from the area, would be removed from those lands. In the PDS

137 Plot 53 of the PDS Esperança is an area under judicial dispute, with an area of 3,000 hectares having been thesubject of a CATP. INCRA established the non-fulfilment of the CATP agreement clauses during an inspection. Thearea was defined as a large unproductive estate, according to INCRA’s document 7471/75. INCRA filled a judicialprocedure before the Federal Court in Marabá with the intent of recovering the dominium of that area.

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Esperança and PDS Virola-Jatobá, the families who are slated to receive demarcatedland would be benefited by the receipt of credit from INCRA to build houses, roads,and provide energy and water.138

However, it was impossible to perceive, at the time this present report went topress, real commitment of the authorities to guarantee safety of the rural workers. Thearbitrary and violent actions of the civil police in Anapu continue to promote nonsensesituations such as that described in the section over the criminalization of rural workersand human rights defenders. The influence of the large landowners (latifundiários),although a bit weakened due to the national and international repercussions resultingfrom Sister Dorothy Stang’s death, can still be seen in the acts of local authorities. Unless rapid and efficacious actions are implemented soon, Anapu will continue beinga portrait of impunity and the prevalence of the right to property above the humanrights of rural workers and the liberty of the social movements.

138 “Demarcação de terras em Anapu deve ser concluída em uma semana”, Folha Online, on 5 October 2005, available at:http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u73014.shtml.

Brasilia: religious leaders conduct a mess in front of theFederal Supreme Court (STF) in protest for the

assassination of American missionary Dorothy Stang inPará. Photo by Hermínio Oliveira/ABr.

Press conference of the Pastoral LandCommission’s National Coordinator, Dom

Thomaz Balduíno. Photo by José Cruz/ABr.


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“The plans for development never considered the preservation of natural resources or thecultural traditions of the region’s people. The processes of occupation and exploration tore bothnature and man in the Amazon to pieces. The political and commercial groups that wereresponsible for the pockets of development shut their eyes in the face of the shameful pockets ofpoverty that proliferated around the developed area.”Jax Nildo Aragão Pinto

1. LOCATION AND CONTEXT

The region known as Terra do Meio covers the area between the south of the sourceof the Amazon River and the border with the state of Mato Grasso, and to the west

of the Tapajós River and east of the Tocantins and Agraguaia Rivers. The regionencompasses all the land in the center of the state of Pará, where the municipality ofAnapu is located. This municipality (like the municipality of Porto de Moz) is located atthe mouth of the Transamazonian Highway, between the highway and the Amazon,Xingu, and Curuáuna Rivers.

According to a Greenpeace report,139

...Terra do Meio is an area of Amazonian tropical rainforest that is relatively intact. It extendsover 8.3 million hectares between the Xingu and Tapajós Rivers in the state of Pará. Terra doMeio borders on the north with the indigenous territories of Arara, Kararaô, and CachoeiraSeca do Iriri; to the west with the Cuiabá-Santarém Highway; to the east with the XinguRiver; and to the south with the Kayapô indigenous land. At least two indigenous areas (Xipaiaand Curuá) are within this area, but they have still not been demarcated or formally recognizedby the Brazilian government.

Chapter V

TERRA DO MEIO:THE FINAL FRONTIER OF FEAR

139 Press release, October 2001, denouncing the violence in the Tera do Meio region.


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The majority of the indigenous land in Pará is situated in this region. These areareas that have already been recognized and demarcated or are in the process of beingidentified, all of which began in the 1970s and 1980s. However, this land is ofteninvaded by loggers searching for Amazonian ‘green gold’ (mahogany). This is one of thesources of conflict in Terra do Meio.

Three cities are considered as gateways to Terra do Meio: São Felix do Xingu(southeast), Itaituba (northeast), and Novo Progresso (southwest). However, the majorityof this land belongs to another municipality (Altamira) that is cut in half by the Transa-mazonian Highway (BR-230), infamous for the high level of agrarian violence in thesurrounding area.

Terra do Meio

Indigenousareas andconservationareas

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Terra do Meio is influenced by a network of roads that link Santarém to Cuiabá(BR-163) and the Transamazonian Highway (BR-230), both federal highways. There isalso the main state road PA-279 linking the south of Pará with São Felix do Xingu,located on the banks of the Xingu River. Other roads have also opened (for example,the Canapus Road) which made the invasion and exploitation of the forest possible.These roads criss-cross the region, propelling the advance of the frontiers of agricultureand lumber exploitation through the illegal appropriation of land, illegal logging, anddeforestation. These predatory activities, as well as the expansion of cattle breeding,frequently use slave labor.

The area around Terra do Meio is typical of the Amazon, characterized by vastmineral and natural resource wealth.140 While this region is one of the most fertile inthe Amazon, it is also characterized by land occupation, agrarian conflicts, and violenceagainst rural laborers.

The Terra do Meio region is not hugely different from others in the Amazon interms of its geographical characteristics and diverse social groups that live there. Thereare indigenous peoples, settlers, caudillos, landowners, loggers, and grileiros, to mentionbut a few. This region is also home to organized crime, drug trafficking, illegal logging,illegal appropriation of land (grilagem da terra), and invasions of indigenous land.

This is an example of how the “development model” adopted in the Amazon israpidly destroying the region’s forest and biodiversity. It particularly affects social relationsas traditional riverine families are expelled and pushed towards the peripheries of citieslike Altamira and São Félix do Xingu. These are social and economic consequences ofthe current model of development which relies upon the lack of presence and collusionwith or even incentives given by the federal and state governments to the perpetratorsof these crimes.

The advance of economic interests on the frontier of Terra do Meio has gonehand-in-hand with a period of increased cattle raising141 in the direction of São Félix doXingu since 1990. An area south of Pará (Redenção, Santa Maria das Barreiras, etc.)was opened up for the exclusive cultivation of soy in 1997. The technical reason givenfor this was to permit the land to “rest” (lie fallow) and recover after the depletion of itssoil as a result of its use for grazing during the last 20 years.

Over the last few years, the increasing growth in the number of cattle in São Felixdo Xingu and their decline in surrounding municipalities is representative of the strategythat is being used for the occupation of state public land with the approval of the stateagrarian regulatory body. Meanwhile, the exploration of logging is still expanding and

140 Characteristic of a humid climate with mainly damp forest vegetation. The area’s diverse topography ranges fromriver plains to river banks of large rivers, to smooth and accentuated undulating land, to mountain ranges.141 The cattle rearing cycle has strengthened and expanded alongside the crimes of illegal appropriation of publiclands, use of slave labor, and illegal deforestation, leading to the expelling of traditional populations and destruction ofthe forest on the banks of the Xingu River and its tributaries.


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is a key source of conflict in Terra do Meio.142 On the other hand, the federal gover-nment’s promise to surface the roads and set in motion the construction of the BeloMonte hydroelectric plant caused a sudden increase in the value of land and furtherraised tempers.

Terra do Meio is a strategic region from a conservation perspective, as it is locatedbetween large conservation areas (an extractive reserve and National Forests (FlorestasNacionais, Flonas) and indigenous lands. The control of the process of sustainableoccupation in this region is vital for maintaining the areas that have already been setaside for conservation purposes, something that is not being carried out by the govern-mental bodies in charge.

2. ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION AND VIOLENCE IN TERRA DO MEIO

Apart from the main highways, the neighboring roads are important in regionaloccupation, such as for example the Canopus Road, constructed between 1981-85 at alength of approximately 150km between the Xingu and Iriri Rivers. The headquartersof the construction company responsible for building the Canopus Road was situated40 km from the Iriri River and the company mined tin-ore. The opening of the roadmade the arrival of loggers and gold and tin miners into the area possible. The squatters,rural laborers, and small farmers began arriving in 1986, encouraged and organized bythe Rural Worker’s Union or by ITERPA programs.

The Canopus region, until the mid 1970s, was only inhabited by traditional com-munities in the region. Their lifestyle revolved around a more harmonious relationshipwith nature. This population was made up of riverine communities (fisherfolk andsmall-scale farmers working in activities linked to farming, particularly fields of manioc,and fishing in regional rivers); extractivists (gatherers of chestnuts, copaíba balsam, rubber,and andiroba); and indigenous peoples (dependent on hunting, fishing, and farmingfor their livelihood).143 It was a region still characterized by its typical Amazonian com-munities, as at the time the land was still free.144

142 According to data from the External Senate Commission, “wood is a valuable commodity, second only to mining inits financial value. In 2004, Pará exported US$530 million in timber products. The US and Europe are the two mainmarkets for these exports.”143 These are endangered populations, impoverished for decades, who have received no protection from the Brazilianstate. The state is often present through bodies such as the Military Police which serve to protect the grileiros and theircrimes.144 Free land is land without fences and with no traditional judicial model rooted in agrarian jurisprudence, whichcharacterized the occupation of the Amazon in the post-1970 period.

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Beginning in the 1990s, landowners and grileiros (of large properties) arrived andsettled in the region, following the cycles of mineral (gold and tin-ore) and wood(mahogany) exploration. It was precisely from this period onwards that the CPT beganregistering the increasing number of conflicts resulting from land possession, deforesta-tion,145 slave labor, and criminal activities in the region.

According to information from the final report from the External Commission ofthe Federal Senate, Pará is responsible for a third of the deforestation in the Amazon,especially in the region under examination in this report. “According to remote satellitemonitoring, in 2003, the majority of illegal deforestation occurred in the Terra do Meioregion, near Anapu.” As we saw in the previous chapter, Sister Dorothy Stang repeatedlyand strongly denounced this process of environmental destruction by landowners andgrileiros in the region.

Currently, the Canopus and surrounding roads are mainly occupied and used bylarge landowners. Small and medium farmers are restricted to small pockets, mainlyalong the main road, close to São Félix do Xingu. The rural laborers’ families are beingpushed in the direction of the Iriri River, towards the Igarapé Bala. However, this regionlies within the Terra do Meio Ecologic Station which was created on 18 February 2005,six days after the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang.

The survey, carried out in January 2005 along the Xingu River, between the mouthof the Iriri River and the Canopus Road, registered the 43 riverine families remainingthere.146 Unfortunately, Terra do Meio suffers from more than just environmental des-truction. Families living there who were interviewed reported cases of physical violenceand threats from groups of grileiros claiming to be the owners of the land traditionallyused by these families.

Anthropologist Stephan Schwartzman summarized the way in which the riverinefamilies live in the Xingu region:147

The riverine communities living in the central Xingu area, in the Terra do Meio region, arebeing expelled from their homes and land, threatened by hired gunmen and police, intimidated,humiliated, and cornered. They are at the mercy of invading grileiros who behave like feudalbarons in the face of the complete absence of the state.

145 According to estimates made with data from Prodes (INPE, 2004), the deforestation began to be more pronouncedat the end of the 1990s, rising to 347 km2, and in 1997 to 2,318km2 and in 2003 next to São Félix do Xingu/Iriri(which also covers part of the municipality of Altamira). This represents an area almost seven times larger than the areacleared in 1997.146 This survey (in loco visit to the region) was carried out by the following groups: the Pastoral Land Commission(CPT), Brazilian Institute for Natural Renewable Resources (IBAMA), through their National Center for TraditionalCommunities and Sustainable Development (CNPT), WWF-Brazil (responsible for the filming of the expedition),and Environmental Defense (ED).147 Schwartzman, Stephan. Grilagem e expulsão dos ribeirinhos no médio Xingo, article published on 17 January 2005.


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In some of these cases, the families were given deadlines to leave their homes. Forexample, Anastácio da Silva Avelino (76 years old) and his family: their house wasattacked in August 2003 by an armed group that machine gunned and killed all of hispets and resulted in one of his nephews getting hit by a bullet. The event was dulyregistered at the Civil Police Station in São Félix do Xingu.

It is said that João Kleber, an infamous grileiro in the São Félix do Xingu region,was behind the attack. The objective of Kleber’s plan was to seize the riverside communityareas and sell them to landowners in the south of Pará and the central-west of Brazil.Today Anastácio da Silva Avelino lives hidden on an island, fearing reprisals. Where hishouse was located, there is now a large farm owned by Zé Ferro, a landowner from thesouth of Pará.

The interviews, carried out by the report team during a survey of the Iriri area,point out and describe the threats and violence that the riverine communities suffer.According to Schwartzman,

The violence of the grileiros in São Félix is public and notorious in the region. Mr. HCS [aresident of Terra do Meio] recounts that on 23 August 2004, in a place called Antônio Pedro,he was clearing the cacao grove that had been planted by his deceased father, when he heard amotorboat arrive. When he went to look, there were three armed men. One of them identifiedhimself as Cícero, and said that from then onwards the land was theirs; he pulled out a 12calibre shotgun, shoved it in his [HCS’s] face, and said that he had five minutes while he wentup top and if he was still there when he returned, he’d kill him. Mr. HCS had already beenprevented from gathering chestnuts by Zé Inácio [a grileiro in the region] and felt obliged totry and survive in Altamira.

Besides the Contracts for the Lease of Public Land (Contratos de Alienação de TerrasPúblicas, CATPs), research carried out by the CPT in Xingu reveals that there are aseries of fraudulent documents, originating from the system of concessions granted torubber tappers. These contracts were duly registered at the county registry offices inAltamira and São Félix do Xingu, thereby legitimizing the illegal appropriation of publiclands and forest.

For example, the rubber tappers in Caxinguba (an area of 151,721 hectares), ForteVeneza (96,558 hectares), Humaitá (133,329 hectares), Mossoró (456,864 hectares),and Belo Horizonte (279,375 hectares) were illegally transferred by the Registry officein Altamira (Cartório do 1. Ofício de Notas e Registro Imobiliário de Altamira), to theEmpresa Rondon Projetos Ecológicos (Rondon Ecological Projects Firm), linked to thecivil construction entrepreneur Cecílio Rego de Almeida (see chapter I).148

148 This registry office is under investigation following numerous cases of illegal property transferring and the issuingof irregular land titles, including numerous irregular contracts for INCENXIL and publicly owned forest areas toprivate individuals.

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According to the report by the Parliamentary Commission on Inquiry (CPI) fromthe Pará Legislative Assembly, these and other rubber tapping areas were incorporatedillegally, forming the “Fazenda Rio Curuá,” with a total area of more than 5.6 millionhectares.149 After analyzing the deeds and documents, the CPI’s final report considered“the claim to ownership of the land known as the Fazenda Rio Curuá, by the companyIndústria, Comércio, Exportação e Navegação do Xingu Ltda (ICENXIL) illegitimate.”

This entrepreneurial group has already been denounced to the federal courts morethan once by the Federal Public Ministry (Ministério Público Federal, MPF) in Pará. Ina proceeding tendered to the federal court in Santarém in April 2005, the MPF revealedthe existence of a scam on land located by the Iriri River in Terra do Meio. According tothis lawsuit,

It is noted ...that a Criminal Action (Lawsuit no. 2003.39.02.000197-2) is being processed bythis Federal Judge in which the following appear as defendants: ROBERTO BELTRÃO DEALMEIDA [son of Cecílio Rego de Almeida], JOSÉ RODOLFO DE MORAIS, CARLOSALBERTO MELO DE OLIVEIRA, HUMBERTO ESTEVES MELO DE OLIVEIRA,SEBASTIÃO LÚCIO DE OLIVEIRA, EUGÊNIA SILVA DE FREITAS, and SEBASTIÃOLIMA DA SILVA — holders of INCENXIL and employees of the Registry office in Altamiraand involved in the falsification of documents — so that they may be sentenced for forgery ofdocuments which gave rise to the ‘grilagem’ of the aforementioned federal/public land. Copiesof the aforementioned penal action (doc 17) are included, thus highlighting the importanceof the original accusations in order to gain a complete understanding of the case.

The work of this entrepreneurial group CRAlmeida in the region along the IririRiver gained a strange reputation. Without the effective presence of the state, ICENXILbegan to control the region, making use of state bodies such as IBAMA and the militaryand civil police in Pará. A type of war began to be waged against the other grileiros as away to curb illegal logging and clearing of large areas of forest for the purposes ofcreating pastureland.

In 2003 and 2004, it was the “company” (that is how the local population refers tothe INCENXIL group) that financed the presence of the state in the area, in order toguarantee the firm’s maintaining possession of an area of 4.7 million hectares of forestand land that had been illegally appropriated. The headquarters in this area, known asEntre Rios, (“Between Rivers”) was used by IBAMA and the military and civil police astheir official offices for months. This clearly demonstrates that these governmental bo-dies were financed by the company and were in Terra do Meio at their beck and call.

149 The CPI certifies the existence of numerous documents about this farm, which covers an area of between 4.7 and5.6 million hectares. This farm is subject to an Action to Annul and Cancel Registration, Transcription, and Contractsat the Property Registry Office in Altamira, petitioned by ITERPA in 1996.


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Another exemplary case of illegal land appropriation in Terra do Meio is an operationby Leandro Freitas Pereira, who was fined more than 2 million Reais by IBAMA(R$2,326,935, or US$1 million) for various illegal environmental operations in theIriri region. Freitas began being accompanied by a private Pará military police escort.The fine issued by IBAMA is used by Mr. Freitas Pereira as proof of ownership andjustification for continuing to occupy an area of 1,551,29 hectares150 cleared illegally.

In January 2005, Freitas threatened and intimidated a group of researchers whowere carrying out socio-environmental and economic studies in the Extractive Reserve“Riozinho do Anfrisio” (created on 8 December 2004). In front of the two researchers hedeliberately showed off and demonstrated how to use his 12 calibre machine gun, aweapon that is used exclusively by the police. He was accompanied by uniformedmembers of the 16th Battalion of the Military Police of the state of Pará (Batalhão Xinguda Cidade de Altamira).

Despite all the intimidation, persecution, and threats, the rural laborers’ movementcontinues fighting not only for access to land, but also to implement new forms ofproduction and approaches to the environment in the Terra do Meio region. This struggleresulted in the development of the proposal for Sustainable Development Projects (PDS)championed by Sister Dorothy Stang.

3. STATE PRESENCE IN THE REGION

As we have seen above, the state’s presence in Terra do Meio is marked by a mixtureof negligence and collaboration with the governmental bodies and local authorities.There is a clear symbiotic relationship between public bodies and landowners, grileiros,illegal loggers, and other powerful groups in the region.

Historically, the state has been at the beck and call of the region’s wealthy andpowerful interests. Often, the state has had to put enormous effort into preserving thesystem of grilagem when various groups of grileiros disputed among themselves over theappropriation of large areas of public land and forests. However, social pressures, especiallyin the form of agrarian conflicts, force the state and federal governments into action,sometimes even in a timely fashion.

In 2001, for example, the federal government carried out an inspection of thePlans for Forestry Management (Planos de Manejo Florestal, or PMF) that should havea reserve of mahogany and came across numerous fraudulent documents, including theabsence of mahogany in areas covered by the PMFs. The clandestine mahogany industryincreased the value of wood logged outside of the management plan, using fraudulent

150 Infractions 370169 to 37072, issued on 11 November 2004, IBAMA/Altamira.

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documents to conceal the true origin of the wood. The federal government was obligedto take restrictive measures on the illegal logging of mahogany on Brazilian soil; howe-ver, there is little regulation and thus illegal logging and clearing of land continue.

With regard to the illegal appropriation of land and forest, ITERPA is unable —or has no real interest — in maintaining at the very least a public lands registry. Itsregistration system is archaic. ITERPA and other governmental entities responsible forland-related issues are continuously weakened by corruption, preventing the state fromacting more effectively.

Shortly after the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang on 12 February 2005, theBrazilian government began to demarcate conservation areas that had been requestedsince the 1990s by organized social movements along the Transamazonian Highway.On 18 February, the Serra do Pardo National Park (447,7333,18 hectares) and theTerra do Meio Ecological Station (a total area of 3.375.399,39 hectares) were announced.Unfortunately, the measures to prevent the advance of the destruction of the forestsremain on paper. When the park was proclaimed, landowners and grileiros formed militiasand armed with rafts and boats tried to destroy the new national park.

The conservation areas were the result of studies commissioned by the Ministryfor the Environment in 2002 which in turn responded to the request by more than 114groups that formed the Movement for the Development of the Area Around the Tran-samazonian Highway and Xingu (Movimento pelo Desenvolvimento da Tarnsamazônica eXingu, MDTX) for the organization of territory and sustainable development in theregion. Since the 1990s, the social movements in the region have shown themselves tobe just as concerned about the area north and south of the Transamazonian Highway.

The order to make the conservation areas unviable was given to the landownersand grileiros in São Félix do Xingu, while they tried to overturn the presidential decreewith a judicial order (mandato de segurança). According to Herculano Costa, a residentof the region, the orders for the mass felling of trees (clearing of land) were sent throughan amateur radio system that functioned without restrictions in the region. “Even beforeIBAMA arrived in Tucumã, on the way to São Félix do Xingu, all the farms had alreadybeen warned. So then everyone hides and hides the intermediates,” says Piauí, aninhabitant of Terra do Meio.151

Public policy has a particularly strong impact in Brazil’s frontier regions, especiallydue to a certain particular “sensitivity” to these regions. Any public measures taken in alawless region make a noticeable difference, either beneficially or harmfully (such as themoratorium on mahogany logging; colonization policies; surfacing of roads; etc.).

151 Piauí has already been a victim of slave labor. Freed from the Fazenda Sudoeste by the Mobile Surveillance Teamfrom the Ministry of Labor, he lives in hiding in the region, fearful of reprisals.


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On the other hand, the official creation and implementation of SDPs in Anapuhas not solved land conflicts because such federal actions are still basic and inadequate.The grileiros’ reaction was immediate and was not confronted by the state governmentalbodies such as the police, thereby further exposing rural workers and human rightsdefenders to violence.

In fact, the creation of SDPs (or even a mosaic of Natural Conservation Areas)without firm measures for actions to repossess estates (imissão de posse), removal ofgrileiros, environmental impact studies, etc. has served to further compound the conflict.There were strong confrontations between the federal and state government bodies andsectors that illegally appropriated land (grilagem) and logged wood. In this scheme, theimpoverished communities are once again at the mercy of the violence meted out bylocal power barons. The murder of Sister Dorothy Stang is simply the most well-knownof these conflicts, but in no way unique. However, it is vital that effective and continualmeasures are carried out by the federal and local governments to guarantee thepreservation of the environment and defense of human rights of the rural workers andnumerous human rights defenders in Terra do Meio.

The Senate’s External Commission of 2005 concluded: “Sister Dorothy’s murderand other contemporary violent acts in the state clearly result from the sectors linked tothe illegal appropriation of land and illegal deforestation and their reactions to publicpolicy that was beginning to be implemented in the region.”

Governmental services, when and where they exist, are precarious. For example,the inhabitants of the Iriri region received a visit for the first time in July 2005 from amedical team, a judge, a prosecutor, a registrar, civil police, and a representative fromthe Regional Labor Office. This time, the presence of state services was not at therequest of grileiros, but at the request of IBAMA/CNPT in their investigation of thecreation of two extractive reserves along the Xingu and Iriri Rivers.

CONCLUSION

Within this context, the Brazilian government must urgently make its presencefelt in the Terra do Meio region, not just in superficial form, but strongly and publicly,implementing concrete measures for sustainable development and the defense of hu-man rights, principally in order to provide security to the area’s traditional communitiesand the conditions for them to sustain themselves in the forest areas through collectiveuse of the natural resource base.

Many families that were expelled by grileiros are living in peripheral areas of Altamiraand São Félix do Xingu and have expressed the desire to return to their land. If theBrazilian government could provide for these families’ safety, health, and educationneeds, as well as funding for extractive activities to sustain themselves and improve theirlivelihoods, many families originally from this area would leave the periphery and begin

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to live in the conservation areas in a sustainable fashion, contributing to the area’sconservation and wise stewardship of its natural resources.

The region surrounding the Canopus Road, for instance, requires urgentintervention from the Pará state government to halt the massive deforestation. The Parástate government should be called to account and condemned for having allowed thegreatest environmental disaster imaginable to take place within its borders. This envi-ronmental destruction puts the lives of the region’s laborers at risk when they are broughtinto a system of slavery or semi-slavery for the purposes of mass land clearing in theregion. The Pará state government is neglecting its responsibility by allowing the des-truction of huge areas of forest to take place without implementing an equitable agrarianreform that would guarantee a just form of development, both for human inhabitantsas well as the environment itself.

The State, understood as public authorities as a whole, cannot free itself from itsresponsibilities and continue standing by and watching the environmental destructioncontinue to proceed unchecked. This devastation is progressively reducing the chancesof traditional communities to continue to live in areas their people have inhabited forcenturies. The rising level of deforestation brings with it the use of slave labor, the mostperverse form of human degradation and destruction of human dignity.

Cattle raising in Terra do Meio. Photo by João Laet.


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“We are here in the middle of the world, here and far from resources, Brasília, the capital, isfar away. The people have to look at this situation, and help humanity. We are human. Andthere has to be someone on our side.”Aloísio Pereira da Silva, 71 years old, a landless worker, on theBartolomeu Morais da Silva encampment.

Castelo dos Sonhos,152 a district of Altamira, is located on the banks of the CuruáRiver (the principal tributary of the Iriri River, in the Xingu basin), 153 kilometers

to the south of the Novo Progresso municipality, in what is called the Jamanxim Valley.A typical border town with around 12,000 residents, Castelo dos Sonhos exists in com-plete isolation as it is part of the Altamira municipality, the seat of which is located1,100 km away.

The Curuá River divides the BR-163 (Cuiabá-Santarém) which was designed andconstructed during the period of military rule at the crossing point between the Xinguand Tapajós Rivers. This highway’s construction began in 1973, as part of the Programof National Integration (Programa de Integração Nacional, PIN) which aimed not onlyto accelerate the completion of pathways to economic integration, but also consolidateterritorial control in geopolitical terms.

In this region many hidden private roads were still open for gold mining andlogging exploration. The legal production of timber exceeds 200,000 m3 per year, butillegal extraction is much greater. It is characterized by the expansion of the illegalappropriation of public lands, deforestation of areas adjacent to the highways, and violentland conflicts with an alarming level of violence against rural workers, the unemployed,and those without the means to sustain themselves.

Chapter VI

SITUATION OF COMPLETE ABANDONMENT:THE CASE OF CASTELO DOS SONHOS

152 According to statements given by older residents, the name Castelo dos Sonhos (“Castle of Dreams”) is attributedto two goldminers who, on the banks of the Curuá River (where it crosses BR-163), awaited a group of friends whowere upriver mining. While they waited they listened on a battery operated record player to a song named “In theCastle of Dreams, You are the Queen” (No Castelo dos sonhos você é a rainha), written by Adelino Nascimento, a formergoldminer who searched for gold on the banks of the Tocantins River.


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Poor families who came to the region in search of land to work ended up havingtwo options: either return to where they came from or work in the goldmines. Nowadays,the majority of these goldmines are out of service, and sawmills have been installed intheir place.

Castelo dos Sonhos’ history is filled with cases of murders occurring in plain publicview, in large plantations, or in areas where illegal logging takes place. According toresidents, the wave of terror was assuaged only after the presence of federal policemen153

in the city of Novo Progresso.154 “The federal police’s helicopter landed and all of thehired gunmen ran,” said one of the inhabitants of the area.

1. HISTORY OF THE REGION’S OCCUPATION

The process of occupation of the region of BR-163, where the district of Castelodos Sonhos is located, resulted from a series of public and private Amazonian colonizationprojects. It can be said, however, that the principal reason for settling the southern Paráborder with the BR-163 was to expand the occupation of North Mato Grosso. This is asettlement frontier, which is characterized by the illegal appropriation of public lands(grilagem) and other illegal activities, such as the opening of goldmines (in decline butwhich still continue in some areas), predatory logging, and more recently, the advanceof agribusiness.

In the beginning of the 1970s, Castelo dos Sonhos’ principal economic activitywas gold mining. According to a resident (who did not wish to be identified), “when thegoldmines arrived, more people came. This gave way to serious confusion. Because ofthe goldmines, everyone wanted to take land from each other.”

With the decline of gold mining, logging took over more space in the region,becoming significantly influential in the settling of Castelo dos Sonhos. With thedepletion of raw materials in the region of Sinop, the North Matogrossan regionalcenter, many loggers moved (and continue to do so) to the Pará stretch of BR-163, withprominence being given to the Novo Progresso municipality and the towns of Castelodos Sonhos and Moraes de Almeida.

More recently a new “territorial order” is being developed in the state of Pará withan influx of migrants from the north of Mato Grosso and the partial transfer of thisregion’s economic activities to Southeastern Pará. The illicit exploitation of timber con-

153 Emergency Measures taken by the Federal Government in the first semester of 2005, after the first stage of publicmeetings for the creation of the Regional Sustainable Development Plan for the area around the BR-163 Highway,between Cuiabá and Santarém.154 Novo Progresso is located 160 km from Castelo dos Sonhos. In the dry season, this distance is crossed in aroundfour hours by car; however, during the Amazonian winter, the same area requires 12 more hours, or an entire day, tocover.

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tinues to support sawmills which principally supply the national market via Mato Gros-so. A small part is exported through Santarém.155

According to a worker’s testimony,

Gold mining stopped, and logging and sawing started, and more people came to work in logging.The same thing as in the time of the goldmine, until that ran out. The first logger was “PicaPau.” “Quico” had a small sawmill. “Chico,” too. The Trevisan family also had an even smallersawmill. All to build small houses. When Castelo [dos Sonhos] was founded, the small sawmillsweren’t able to saw enough wood for houses. Only when the planks were made did timber startbeing sent out. There are so many sawmills! Currently there are 33 or 34 sawmills. In themahogany era, they sawed a lot of mahogany, they sold everything abroad. After that, theyalmost couldn’t find any more mahogany; they went after different woods: Rose cedar, Champagne,Marupá, Jatobá, Ipê, Itaúba, which were taken even all the way to Rio Grande do Sul. They havealready paid up to R$1,300 (US$577) per cubic meter. Here it was sold for R$300 (US$133).They paid next-to-nothing here. There were shipments and more shipments with fake bills andinvoices. I always thought: one day all of this here is going to pop. The government isn’t evenaware that the timber is leaving the area and everything is being exported.

As the logical consequence of the economic model, focused on the interests ofagribusiness, the logging process transformed vast forested areas into pastures, bringingabout the process of cattle-ranching. According to a resident: “afterwards, the cattle-raising began. There is a lot of cattle here. Harvesting is difficult. Only the smallest[farms] harvest.”

With large areas available without any state control, many cattle ranchers from thecountry’s southern region and from the state of Mato Grosso started to invest in landand forest property. The availability of timber with commercial value grew and this wasthe principal financial source to guarantee the implementation of large pasture areas.The ease of putting out cattle and the prosperity to be gained from meat and its by-products through the existence of a network of cold storage rooms in Mato Grosso werefurther incentives for the expansion of cattle ranching in the region.

2. ILLEGAL LAND APPROPRIATION AND

CONCENTRATION IN CASTELO DOS SONHOS

Economic activity in the region revolves around cattle raising carried out in largeareas and the unsustainable extraction of timber. Along the BR-163 highway, largeestates have been set up. Settlement projects and the presence of peasants is almost non-

155 According to data from the Regional Sustainable Development Plan for the Area Around Highway BR-163, fromCuiabá to Santarém, Interministerial Working Group, Decree of 15 March 2004.


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existent. The entire region is characterized by the presence of large estates, mainlycomposed of illegally-held public lands (terras griladas), the illegal possession of which isprotected by armed militias (hired gunmen) who are contracted to maintain “security.”According to workers’ testimonies,156 few properties in the region can be classified assmall or medium sizes (10-42 hectares and 200-300 hectares, respectively). The size ofmost estates averages around 25,000 hectares; owners of areas smaller than 2,500 hec-tares are considered small landowners.

The availability of large areas of forested land, without any state control, allowedfor many large land-owners already present in the region to set up sawmill plants andillegally take control of federal government land through grilagem. This is done throughthe use of falsified documents or documents relating to nonexistent land, to encouragethe creation of forest management projects by the federal government’s environmentalregulation agency. The frenzied exploitation of forests contributed to continued defo-restation, with the investment of logging profits in cattle-raising. As soon as the varietieswith the highest market value, such as mahogany, were extracted, forest areas wereconverted into large pastures.

The BR-163 Highway Sustainable Plan identifies the following as principal factorsfavoring the illegal appropriation of land:

...[R]ecognition of deforestation, including that occurring on public lands, as being animprovement in the estates subject to land regularization; the weaknesses of demarcationprocesses, and of the verification of property titles’ legitimacy; lack of supervision of the propertyregistry offices; the low cost of land and high rate of return from predatory economic practices;political interests offering incentives for land occupation by landholders; speculation relatedto expectations of expropriation and/or the installation of infrastructure.

The process of land concentration has as an essential component the grilagem ofpublic land, in addition to the super-exploitation of labor and natural resources (whichpermit the possibility for accumulation and concentration of profits). According to theRegional Development Plan, “frequently the illegal land appropriation is related toother illicit acts, such as slave labor and other violations of human and workers’ rights,tax evasion, illegal logging, and money laundering from drug trafficking.”

In the region of BR-163’s reach, illegal land appropriation is the rule. “From whomdo they buy the lands?” asks one resident (who also asked not to be identified, for fear ofreprisals) who lost his land to one of the present landowners in Castelo dos Sonhos. Thelarge concentration of land and the expected asphalting of the highway have exacerbatedthe rate of conflict and violence in the countryside.

156 All the testimonies mentioned in this chapter were given by residents of Castelo dos Sonhos to research teams fromTerra de Direitos and the Pastoral Land Commission during an in situ mission on June 24 and 25, 2005.

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The oldest residents say that the land in Castelo dos Sonhos was once divided intothe right and left sides of BR-163. All the lands to the right of the highway from Cuiabáto Santarém, “belonged” to Léo Reck. He still lives in Castelo dos Sonhos and refers tohimself as the registered landowner of almost all of these lands. He sold land to familieswho arrived from various parts of the country in search of work, including those seekinggold. Having control over the land meant, and still means, controlling the exploitationof gold and other regional riches. According to a resident’s testimony, Reck controlledalmost all the goldmines:

The Esperança [goldmines] I, II, III, IV, V, VI ,VII ...he said those goldmines were his. Thegold miners paid a percentage, everyone paid. He sold gold mining lands for gold, they wouldcost so many grams of gold. Until today this still happens, like in the Arraia Hill [Serra doArraia], with the lands of the president of the gold miners association, João Reck, who is Léo’sson; [those] who want a little piece of land have to pay a percentage. This happens even today,no one enters for free. There in the hill there is a small village, I never went there, but it is saidto be very pretty there. Everything was arranged for and agreed with Léo Reck.

Even the urban part of Castelo dos Sonhos was held as property by Léo Reck.According to a resident, “Everyone knows the right side of the BR belonged to Léo.”Another resident who does not wish to be identified noted that

...[I]n order for Castelo [dos Sonhos] to form a city, from the start, he gave away a few plots,others [plots] could be paid for in installments. Even today, there are people who haven’t paidanything, because the land wasn’t his [Léo’s], because he acquired it illegally. Today we purchase[land] using contracts of buy-and-sell. Now there is nothing official, nothing registered in thenotary’s office; at least I only have two contracts for two plots here, and they’re only buy-and-selltypes. I don’t know if one day this will be mine. The plots here in Castelo [dos Sonhos] weresupposed to be his [Léo Reck’s]. The lots here in Castelo were his. And there in São Francisco,people arrived there and took the land illegally, because no one had any documents.

The land to the left side of the BR-163 was illegally appropriated by other largelandowners who arrived in the same period. “On this [left] side of the BR [163, Cuiabá-Santarém] the large landowners came and claimed the land illegally. Just like [Mr.]Maneco, and various others, they also took lands illegally.” These testimonies demonstratethe degree to which the irregular appropriation of public lands occurred and the totalinformality — and consequent illegality — of the lands’ occupation, which also generatesinsecurity in the current landholders.


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3. CASTELO DOS SONHOS: ABSENCE, OMISSION,AND COLLUSION OF PUBLIC AUTHORITIES WITH LOCAL ELITES

The principle demands of workers and settlers encompass the absence, omission,and even partiality of public authorities. This absence and omission is obvious in thesmall district of Castelo dos Sonhos, which has only one advanced post of the militarypolice with four policemen. The police rotate every 24 hours between internal servicesand patrolling the city. There are no public hospitals, only one infirmary with a singledoctor.

As a district of Altamira, Castelo dos Sonhos only has a proxy town hall. There aretwo state-run schools, one being a regular primary school and the other a very basicsecondary school, both taught by teachers from Altamira. As far as the healthcare systemgoes, one resident from the Bartolomeu Morais da Silva camp said that “when you getsick you have to leave because there is no hospital. That is, if you have the money youcan stay, otherwise you have to leave.”

Sick of their isolation and the absence of public authorities in regard to agrarianreform and social inclusion, residents emotionally gave their testimony to the researchteam. According to João Tenório: “This region is very different from all the other regionsof Brazil. This region seems not to exist. If you were to know of the situation in whichwe’ve been living for six-and-a-half years in Castelo [dos Sonhos] ...My sons couldn’tstand to stay in Castelo [dos Sonhos] any longer, afraid because when we first arrivedtwo or three people were killed every day.”

When the public authorities are not absent, there are many complaints of theircollusion with the region’s large estate owners and loggers. The police force, for exam-ple, according to workers, is maintained by the “community.” This is the name given toa group of businessmen, large landowners, and loggers who provide everything fromfood to fuel for the only police car in the region. They pay for repairs and parts for thisvehicle, obtaining in exchange control over police actions.

An emblematic case demonstrating this control is the assassination of young CledsonBrange, which occurred in February 2003. The prime suspect in Cledson’s death wasthe son of the region’s largest cattle-breeder, Florindo Minosso. He financed the militarypolice battalion’s diet, providing one ox per month for the policemen. The investigationwas so convoluted that the police, aside from refusing to search for the body, arrangedfor the funeral of the young man to take place quickly. The dead body showed clearsigns of cruelty, according to the family, who located Cledson’s body on their own.

There have also been complaints of the involvement between the military policeand private militias which are contracted by the region’s large landowners. One episodeoccurred in April 2003 and involved the owner of the Tigre Ranch, known as “Nilo.”This is a good example of the collusion and even support given to private militias.According to information provided by Fátima, a resident of Castelo dos Sonhos whowas threatened for having knowledge of this facts,

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One day four settlers came, they came and passed the headquarters of the ranch, they werethirsty and went to ask for water. Then a sergeant thought that they were Nilo’s hired gunmen,but they were some people who were settling. Then the sergeant said: ‘I forgot to send amessage there to Mr. Nilo that I could not send the bullets, because the lieutenant, the lieutenantis new ...but will you do me a favor? Will you go there, there is another sergeant there in thepolice station, call the sergeant hidden from the lieutenant and talk to him about the bullets.’Then the kids, faking that they were hired gunmen, went to the delegacy, called the sergeantand gave him the message. Then the sergeant said this: ‘I have to send this there now.’ Thesergeant called the policeman and said: ‘you go to the headquarters [of Nilo’s ranch] and sendthe cartridges.’ Then they came, still following the police to the Zelândia post, but they wereafraid that the police would discover they were not the gunmen and kill them. A few dayslater, they discovered the kids were not gunmen, because the kids had talked to me, to Toninhoand to other people who must have told the police. And then Paulista, Toninho, and me werethreatened [“condemned”] with death.

According to Fátima and Toninho, a woman told them to be careful, because theypromised to kill them:

There was a woman, from the cabaret on the bank of the river, there were 15 hired gunmentaking a shower and another 72 in the water. They said this: ‘one of these days we are going tohave to have a party here in Castelo. The first that we are going to rub out are the Sister ofBrasília, Toninho from the fruit stand, and Paulista.’ Then she [the owner of the cabaret]came and said that we needed to be careful, because Nilo wanted to kill us. I left immediatelyfor Brasília, Toninho remained locked inside his house, and Paulista escaped.

Another resident (who also asked not to be identified, fearing for her life) complainedthat the police were starting to send citizens to kill and hide the bodies of people whowere caught stealing in residences. “They came into one woman’s house here during thenight, robbed some things, the television. And the police spoke in this manner: “Wecannot do anything because the majority are minors, and if we grab one of them we’llgo to jail. So as you were robbed, go and get them, kill them and then hide the bodies.”

The residents interviewed were unanimous in their testimony regarding the per-formance of the local police, even believing the police should be removed from Castelodos Sonhos altogether. According to them, it would be one less problem, one less fear todeal with. “We should put together a petition to remove the military police from here.If you had a bunch of hired gunmen on one side, if Fernandinho Beira-Mar [a famousdrug lord from Rio de Janeiro] were here and the military police were here, then Iwould go to Fernandinho Beira-Mar’s side, because the police are shameful.”

It is in this context that Castelo dos Sonhos is isolated, marked by the absence ofpublic authorities and by the partiality and involvement of institutions such as the localmilitary police with large estate owners and loggers.


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4. POLICIES TO COMBAT DEFORESTATION

One of the main debates in the region around Highway BR-163, where Castelodos Sonhos is situated, revolves around the emergency actions adopted by the federalgovernment to curb the illegal deforestation of the region’s Amazonian forest. Since thebeginning of the debate on the creation of the Regional Sustainable Development Planfor the highway area, it became clear that it was urgent for the government to adoptmeasures aimed at immediately ending the predatory exploitation of timber, which isreaching alarming rates in the highway region.

The Sustainable Amazonian Plan (Plano Amazônia Sustentável, PAS) was formulatedby the federal government and the state governments of the Northern region and presentsfive principal points: 1) sustainable production with innovation and competition; 2)social inclusion and citizenship; 3) environmental management and territorial organi-zation; 4) infrastructure for development; and 5) a new financing framework. Accor-ding to the government, PAS’ guidelines are incorporated into regional developmentpolicies, and, departing from the national standard, are based on the identification ofsub-regions for which a specific plan will be formulated in the context of the moregeneral principles of sustainable development.

In relation to the Plan of Action for the Prevention and Control of Deforestationin the Legal Amazon, the federal government states that the general objective is to“promote the reduction of the rate of Amazonian deforestation by way of joint integratedactions in the areas of territorial and agrarian organization, through monitoring andcontrol, and by fomenting activities of sustainable production and strategic plans forinfrastructure projects.”157

The process of creating the Regional Sustainable Development Plan (whichencompasses the Sustainability Plan for BR-163) was led by social movements andhuman rights organizations. For a long time these groups have asked for the implemen-tation of public policies which follow the principles of sustainability and promote, defend,and guarantee economic, social, and environmental rights.

On 18 Februrary 2005, as a form of response to popular pressure which explodedfollowing the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silvaissued the Provisional Measure (Medida Provisória, MP) no. 239. This MPadministratively froze all of the activities related to logging exploitation and forest andother native vegetation in a total area of 8.2 million hectares for six months with apossible extension for another six.

Castelo dos Sonhos lives a very precarious and uncommon situation. Without thenoise from sawmills, smoke in the chimneys, and shipments of lumber coming andgoing, the impression is that a plague has hit “almost empty village.” Groups of men

157 Regional Sustainable Development Plan for the Area Around Highway BR-163, Interministerial Working Group,Decree of 15 March 2004.

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sitting on the corners talk about the government’s freeze, of the absence of publicauthorities, and principally, of their desire to have a piece of land. This ProvisionalMeasure, however, did not reach cattle-raising lands which were already more devastatedand only prohibited new deforestation.158

Aside from this interdiction, another action that should be mentioned is therealization of “Operation Curupira” by the federal police. This initiative, which culminatedin the imprisonment of various agents and directors of IBAMA, investigated and removedfrom the market Authorizations for the Transport of Forest Products (ATPF), whichhad been obtained illegally by loggers working in conjunction with specialists fromenvironmental organs. The obstacle created in the illegal market of ATPFs, added to theadministrative interdiction of clear-cutting activities in the forest, ended up compromisingthe illegal and predatory activities of the loggers, which in turn affected Castelo dosSonhos’ sawmills.159

The emergency actions adopted by the federal government aimed at ending theillegal and predatory deforestation in the region. These measures were considered morethan necessary and consist of an attempt to stop the continuation of illegal exploitationof lumber at the time that deforestation in the Amazon is reaching absurd levels.

The impact of the policies of combating deforestation was felt by local communi-ties. It happens that, as already mentioned, most families who arrived in the regionhoping to realize their dreams of having some land encountered a scene marked byagrarian chaos resulting from the illegal appropriation of public lands by large estateowners and loggers. Far from the perspective of an agrarian reform policy and as victimsof violence by armed militias, the majority of families was obligated to seek theirsustenance in the sawmills and large plantations (fazendas) in the region.

As the majority of the actions carried out by loggers in the region were, in one wayor another, illegal, the large part of the sawmills were obligated to freeze their activities.This left a large number of landholders, workers, families of low income, and those whowere denied rights to the land, unemployed and without the means to sustain themselves.

158 This MP was converted into Law 11.132 on 4 July, 2005, adding article 22-A to Law 9985/2000, which regulatesart. 225, § 1º, insertions I, II, III and VII of the Federal Constitution and instituted the National System of Units forthe Conservation of the Environment. The text of the article is: “Public authorities will be able to, excluding cattleraising activities and other current economic activities and licensed public works, through legal means, decree provisionaladministrative limitations to the effective exercise of activities and explorations or potential causes of environmentaldamage, for the purpose of studies with a view to the creation of Conservation Units, when, according to criteria fromthe competent environmental agency, there is risk of serious damage to natural resources of the area.” (free translation)159 “Logging activities were not frozen only by the interdiction. They were frozen principally by Operation Curupira(illegal commerce of transport authorization) and by the unavailability of new ATPFs. After the imprisonment ofIBAMA’s director, the representatives of IBAMA who had placed the ATPFs in the market no longer wished to releasethem. As a consequence, there were no more ATPFs on the market in order to permit the illegal extraction of timber.Today you have legal activity frozen and illegal activity compromised.” (Interview with Adriana Ramos from theSocio-environmental Institute — ISA, on 18 August 2005.)


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The measures adopted by the federal government to curb illegal deforestation inthe region cannot be analyzed negatively. On the contrary, social movements, localcommunities, and environmental entities have demanded for many years the adoptionof energetic measures toward the end of illegal logging.

Thus on the one hand, the government produces a package of measures intendedto combat deforestation; on the other hand, however, it does not balance these effortsby seriously confrontating the dangerous agrarian situation. This is a situation that haseven been identified by the government’s own Interministerial Working Group, mandatedto draft the Sustainable Regional Development Plan for BR-163.

In order to promote economic, social, and environmental rights, it is necessary toconfront this agrarian problem, along with developing a new plan for development,adjusted to the socio-environmental characteristics of the region. The claim made bysocial movements includes the need for dialogue between the Ministers of theEnvironment and Agrarian Development regarding the adoption of public policiesfocused on the implementation of agrarian reform that guarantee the preservation ofthe environment through sustainable use.

5. THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND: THE BARTOLOMEU MORAIS DA SILVA ENCAMPMENT

This context characterized by the concentration of land, illegal landholding, violence,unemployment, hunger, and the absence of public authorities led about 400 families tostart, at the edges of BR-163, 15 km from the urban area of that district, a camp namedBartolomeu Morais da Silva.160 Dozens of families joined the camp daily, demandingthe right to the land, work, food, adequate housing, health, and education. The workers,mostly unemployed and victims of historic agrarian concentration, have tried to get thestate to pay attention to their misery and social exclusion.

The testimony of landless worker Aloisio Pereira da Silva perfectly illustrates theprecarious situation in which they live:

I think I am one of the newest ones in the area. Today I turned 71 years old. My heart can’ttake it any more. I saw a lot of fathers suffering, wanting a piece of land to work. I also have nohouse in which to live. The lands here all belong to large landowners. And now all of themovements stopped, and the people don’t have a place to go to. This is how these poor fathersof families are going to live. The city of Castelo [dos Sonhos] is a small one, conditions arepoor, there are no resources. We are here in the middle of the world, here and far from resour-ces, Brasília [the capital] is far away. The people have to look at this situation, and help

160 Name given in homage to STR member Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, known as “Brasilia,” who was assassinated inCastelo dos Sonhos in 2002, as a result of land conflicts.

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humanity. We are human. And there has to be someone on our side. ...It’s been a while sinceI’ve been living here, I don’t know for how long, but I never could find a piece of land to work,I live only by working for others; sometimes I receive, and other times I don’t.

The situation of these families is alarming and requires urgent steps by the federal,state, and local authorities. During one visit to the camp, our team accompanied thedistribution of the last basic food basket at the Trade Union Post of Castelo dos Sonhos.For the most part the quality of this food was poor, with expiration dates already pastand some food was rotten. Even so, the baskets were accepted by the families, as theywere the only source of available sustenance at that time. According to Maria de LourdesMorais, 56 years old,

There is one thing we have to say to you. We accept these basic food baskets because we needthem. We are ashamed to take these basic baskets, seeing as we are healthy enough to work, itis only that we don’t have a piece of land to plant anything, because if you come across a pieceof land here in six months you have something to eat. But if we don’t have a piece of land whatare we going to do. There is no service in the street. I have been in Castelo dos Sonhos for 14years. No one supports us. I have three sons, but they are with their father, because if theywere here, they would all be dying of hunger or robbing, because there isn’t anything else forpeople to do here.

Since the lands are totally destined for the large cattle industry, small plots andareas of local family production are virtually non-existent. The production of basic dietproducts is also compromised. Even flour, an essential product in the basic diet of thisregion, is brought from Santarém, more than 1,000 kilometers from Castelo dos Sonhos.

The workers, for the most part, arrived in Castelo dos Sonhos in search of a pieceof land, but were forced to work in goldmines, logging, or at fazendas in the region.With the decline of gold mining activity and the freeze on illegal sawmills, the poorestworkers have no place to work and no way to support their families. Thus, they live ina drastic situation of hunger and misery.

Although many have lost their jobs in the sawmills, workers demand agrarianreform and do not want to return to lumber exploitation in the region. According tothem, this exploitation and the process of raising cattle are causes of serious environ-mental damage, violence, and misery in the region. According to one landless worker,“Here the hope is only this: land to work. We hope the authorities will take care of thepopulation. Everyone needs a piece of land, here everyone is unemployed. Everyone isgoing hungry.”

The families plan to remain in camps on the sides of BR-163 until the federal gover-nment takes the appropriate actions directed at legitimizing their settlement. They demandpolicies focused on the protection of human rights, agrarian reform, housing, labor,sustenance, health and education, as well as policies to combat deforestation and violence.


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6. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS:THE CONTEXT OF PLANNED AND ANNOUNCED VIOLENCE

Castelo dos Sonhos is known for its sad history of violence and impunity, havingbeen the site of veritable slaughters, which took place especially during the gold miningperiod. Until today the population lives in fear, in a context of threats and murders byhired gunmen, who parade unworriedly through the city called by the residents “lawlessland.”

The causes of grave human rights violations in the Castelo dos Sonhos area are theabsence of a territorial occupation plan (which resulted in a highly concentrated agrarian-based structure) and the disorganized proliferation of the gold mines. These werereinforced by the illegal exploitation of lumber and, more recently, the advance ofagribusiness. The absence, omissions, and, in many cases, collaboration between thepublic authorities and local elites, compound the current disrespect for human rights inthe region.

On asking how many murders occur in Castelo dos Sonhos in the context of ruralconflicts, the answer is always the same: they are innumerable. Also innumerable arethe stories of bodies buried in clandestine cemeteries, located in the center of urbanCastelo dos Sonhos or in the fazendas. Many of the bodies were thrown into the CuruáRiver, which divides the region. “Hiding a body in the fazendas is customary here,”confirms one director in Castelo dos Sonhos’ Trade Union Post. The population isgenerally aware of the majority of these cases, and they possess detailed informationabout who was killed, when and why a person was killed, where the body was buried,etc. Even then, impunity is the law, and only the law of the strongest rules in the region.

Fátima, Brasília’s sister, reports that between 1990 and 1991, “there was a timewhen they killed half of the people there in the [gold mine] Esperança IV. They evenkilled an airplane pilot. They had a battle, too. This plane pilot had people who wentout to the people asking where he had been buried. His family was on [TV program]Linha Direta. They said that he was buried there, but he was buried on the bank of theCuruá River, only that no one knew where. Nine people were machine-gunned on thatday.”161

161 One of the remarkable stories in Castelo dos Sonhos is that of the life and death of Marcio Martins, known as“Brazilian Rambo.” Marcio was a young mechanic who turned into a type of “justice-seeker” for some, gunman forothers, when he decided to dispute the control of the gold mines, occupying the cargohold of hidden flights with hisarmed group, buying guns and laundering money coming from narcotics trafficking with gold in the region. In thedispute over land, for the control over gold mines and narcotics trafficking, Rambo was executed by a special group ofPará state military police, under the order of the governor of the state at that time, Jader Barbalho. Barbalho sentaround 50 men who searched for four days before invading the place where Rambo was hidden. Inside of his house hewas shot multiple times.

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The violence against these workers is constant and occurs in different forms. Asidefrom murder, there are cases of slave labor, expulsion of peasants from their land, physicaland moral aggression, persecution of leaders, death threats, etc. Even today there arecomplaints by workers submitted to slavery conditions and murders in Castelo dosSonhos. According to various testimonies, it is common that large landowners, insteadof paying their workers, order their deaths. According to one worker’s testimony:

There is a story in Mr. Ze Inacio’s fazenda, that he had the boats of the gold miners who wentthere. ....[N]ow he was already dead, but at that time he was a large landowner, he was theowner of the boats in the Curuá River, in Jamanxim. And then so as not to have to pay theunfortunates they killed them instead of having to pay them. All of this happened. And eventoday it still happens in Castelo dos Sonhos. The killers here are Bil from Figuara, AlexandreManoel Trevisan, Florindo Minosso, Lituíno, old Robson, Panquinha, who is one of Ralf ’speople, and all of these large landowners kill and at times pay to kill. They put people to work.This son of Mr. Julião, he went to work, they forced him to work, he was shot, then went tothe hospital. They said to Mr. Julião, who is disabled with an amputated leg ...look, Mr.Julião, with his son shot, that Panquinha ordered him to be shot in order not to pay him, thatthe name of this boy was Julio, they also said to Mr. Julião: look here Mr. Julião, if you don’tfile a report in the police station, we will pay your hospital bill. Panquinha ordered that he bekilled, sending someone from Ralf ’s group, only what happened was the bullet hit him likethis and went out the other side of his face, so he ended up with a deformed face. Afterward,Ralf forced him to work off his debt in the fazenda.

Another case that attracted attention was the murder of Felix Faustino Goncalves,known as “Paraguay,” which occurred on 2 December 1999. Paraguay was murderedbecause he charged Florindo Minosso, a large landowner from Castelo dos Sonhos, apayment for the construction of a bridge, from a contract divided between the landow-ners and the Altamira city council. According to his wife, Paraguay left on 1 Decemberof that year to work cutting timber for a man known as Nelson da Laminadora. She saidthat da Laminadora, in fact, had agreed to participate in an ambush planned for Paraguay.

The following day, da Laminadora’s boss, known as “Bil,” appeared in Paraguay’shome saying that he [Paraguay] had suffered an accident; that a log had fallen on hishead. On going to look for the body, family members could tell that Paraguay had beenbeaten to death with some instrument, as there were various signs of aggression (he hadsustained no other injury typical of a work-related accident). According to his wife’stestimony:

Arriving there — my son told me afterward — he [Paraguay] was far from the woods. Thewoods were quite far away, a saw was at his [Paraguay’s] side, the cover was open, and hisstomach was facing up and there was a piece of wood in his hand, everyone who went saw this.The most annoying thing was that he said he was underneath some wood and arriving there


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...there wasn’t any ...and [instead he had] a piece of wood in his hand, dirty with blood, hiseyes completely purple. ...And his head was not bruised, his head was cut in a “V” from twowhacks from a machete on his back.

As there were no doctors in Castelo dos Sonhos, the family asked the pharmacist toexamine the body. Not one forensic expert examination was carried out. The pharmacistconfirmed the suspicion that he had been murdered: “And Jeová came... [H]e said: yourhusband was really murdered.”

There is also suspicion of other landowners’ involvement in the drama of thismurder. According to the wife, aside from Florindo Minosso, Léo Reck and others wereinvolved. The reasons leading her to this conclusion are, aside from money that Paraguaywas supposed to receive for the construction of the bridge, the effort that they made sothat he was buried without forensic examination. They tried to prevent people fromseeing the wound on his head, and even expected the widow to abandon the housewhere she lives. Again according to the widow,

Old Léo arrived and said what he needed, I said he needed to order that the casket be preparedto mourn the body. Then he went and bought these things of ...bandage, he bought thosethings there, and carried them in order to bandage his head. For no one to see. They put himin a bed there, that in the photo, and he put a gunman there. Only his hand showed, [and]after I visited, it was the same thing there. So that no one would come close.

Paraguay’s obituary states as his cause of death an accident while working. Thefamily and residents, in the meantime, denounced the murder, revolted by the lack ofeffort taken to clarify the facts and punish those responsible. After Paraguay’s death, thefamily has been threatened, but his widow continues her search for justice.

There are many complaints of people disappearing in Castelo dos Sonhos. Accor-ding to Fátima, “When Brasília died there was a list of 72 missing people here in Cas-telo dos Sonhos. It was written this way, disappeared. [Then] this list disappeared. I leftmy things in a room there in the Trade Union; I locked it with a padlock. They enteredthere, took this list, took the photographs of Brasilia with the people, robbed everything,as soon as he died.”

The criminalization of peasants has been a motif throughout Castelo dos Sonhos’history. The principal factor in the criminalization of victims has been the influenceexercised by estate owners over the local police. The principal case of criminalizationwas the episode of the imprisonment of 19 landless workers who were occupying apublic plot of land. There are suspicions that the prisoners were chosen by a landownerwho claimed to be the owner of the lands. Of the imprisoned workers, 12 of them werenot even able to enter the area, having been caught when they were on BR-163.

According to testimonies from workers who were arrested on this occasion (whoasked not to be identified for fear of reprisals),

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First a representative of INCRA from Miritituba came and said that this area belonged to thefederal government. Then we resolved to go there and try to get a piece of land. And when wearrived there, there were seven inside who were grabbed first and 12 who were grabbed in thestreet. The police went there to look, but first there were two guaxebas from the fazenda to seewhere the camp was and then afterward the same guaxebas162 took the police there and thosepolice apprehended the first seven who were there inside. And then I don’t know from whomhe knew that 12 more were going to enter [the estate]. Jose Almiro Bil claimed to be theowner of the area. I don’t know how what size this area was, we’d heard it was 62,000 acres.

The workers say that they were detained in the bathroom of the house where themilitary police battalion operated. Only afterward were they transferred from Castelodos Sonhos, and they never had the right to talk to their relatives, or any other person.According to some workers who were arrested,

“ ...It was an ambush. They grabbed us with the clothing we had there in the forest, broughtus here, without letting us tell any relatives or anyone, we had no right to communicate. ...Mywife, she knew that I was there in the forest, she only found out that I was imprisoned eightdays later, because the way they grabbed us there, they entered the road from below and wentto the police station. They brought us there to the jail, we stayed there inside a bathroom,because that is not a cell, it is rather a bathroom, we were 23 people inside a bathroom.”

The workers were humiliated and threatened by the police who promised to killthem if they did not “behave” themselves. “And the threats that we suffered after Itaitubaonward. ...They said that if you don’t want to behave yourselves, we are going to dowith you what we did with the 19 in Carajá, and we really were 19 as well. And then wewere scared.”

The case of violence against human rights defenders, which led Castelo dos So-nhos to be known internationally, was the murder of the labor leader known as “Brasília.”After his murder, his sister Fátima chose to dedicate her life to accompanying the inves-tigations and the process, as well as the fight of the rural workers. Better known by hernickname “Saint,” she is always in the region and already has suffered innumerablethreats. Many workers already have sought her out to warn her that her life is underthreat, as there are many large landowners inconvenienced by the work she is doing.According to her story,

I traveled in the trunk of the car, hidden in the car. That’s how I got around when Brasíliadied, even a year after it was this way that I got around here in Castelo dos Sonhos. In order toleave the city I had to do this or otherwise go by foot, 40 km on the side of the road, more

162 Guaxeba is an expression used to designate guards or gunmen hired by large landowners to protect their propertyand fazendas.


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toward the forest than the road, and the police would not help me. And for me to ask thepolice to kill me, I wouldn’t! And another thing, when a crime happened that they thoughtyou were going to report, they sabotaged the telephones, you’d be a whole week withoutcontact with anyone. When Brasilia died this exact thing happened. For eight days we wereunable to get through to Altamira, to anyone, even inside the city we were without telephone.

Fátima also said that she has already been followed by Márcio Cascavel, a well-known hired gunman in the region. In addition to this, she knew from Andre Tavares(from Sinop who works as a wood-cutter in the region), that the large landownerscommented that the landowner Manoel Alexandre Trevisan, know as “Maneco,” hadsaid: “When I get her [Fátima], first I am going to cut out her tongue and only afterwardswill I kill her.” On the night of 10 November of that year one of Manoel’s driverslingered outside the house where she was staying. The lorry stayed outside the house,with the three gunmen rotating shifts until 5 a.m. the following day.

The aforementioned cases are but a few of the many examples of violence againsthuman rights defenders in Castelo dos Sonhos. The lack of state commitment to preventingthese human rights violations has allowed impunity to become the rule and a major factorin the perpetuation of these crimes. Policies for the protection of human rights defenders,such as their inclusion in the program for the protection of victims and witnesses, are notadequate enough to permit them to live in Castelo dos Sonhos. As of this writing, nosurveys or studies have been officially dedicated to human rights defenders.

7. AN EXEMPLARY CASE OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION: THE DEATH OF BRASÍLIA

Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, known as “Brasília,” was a labor unionist and memberof the Workers’ Party (PT) and the most important popular leader in Castelo dos So-nhos. He defended human rights as a type of “lawyer” of the poor. On 21 July 2002, hewas brutally murdered by eight bullets. His body was found on the side of BR-163,near Castelo dos Sonhos. The Office of the Public Prosecutor in the state of Pará openedthe criminal process to determine the crime. This case is still pending before the statecourt in Altamira.

Mr. Arlindo de Sousa (known as “Gaucho”) an eyewitness to the crime, is missing.He stated in his police testimony163 that on the day in question, he was in an area eightkm from the Jamanxin River, looking for gold when at about 9 p.m. he saw a greenish-grey Toyota Bandeirante approaching. It stopped and the driver, the large landownerManeco, and a passenger, Brasília, got out. Then Márcio Cascavel and Parazinho cameout of the forest. The witness hid and saw that the four people continued to talk in front

163 Taken from Arlindo de Souza’s statement. Criminal case n.º 2002700740-5, pp. 185/186.

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of the car (which had its headlights on). Brasília was gesturing with his hands as if hewere explaining something.

At a certain point, Márcio Cascavel and Parazinho grabbed their guns (whichappeared to be a pistol and a revolver) and four shots were fired at Brasília. He fell to theground, and the two shooters immediately loaded the body in the boot of the Toyota,while Maneco watched. They left the scene with the body.

This witness also said that the victim, on the day of the crime, was wearingstonewashed blue jeans and a light checkered shirt. This description matches the civilpolice’s report.164 “Bartolomeu always said he was being threatened by the large lando-wners, like Manoel, Nilton Braga, Nilo, because of a problem with the federal lands,those which the men took illegally and then sold,” elaborated Judas Tadeu de Moraes,the victim’s brother, who was with him the morning on which he was murdered.165

Raimundo Dionisio dos Santos, owner of a plot in Gleba Gorotire, stated that on23 July 2002, after returning from Brasília’s funeral, Zé Brabo, an employee of ManoelAlexandre Trevisan, said: “I asked for Maneco not to do this, that he was going to ruinhis life, because things were already stabilized, but he ended up doing it.”166 He alsosaid that, on the same day that he gave his deposition (25 July 2002), he was warned bya woman not to return to Gorotire. She said she had reliable information that thegunmen were in that area under orders from Nilton Braga, ready to kill him.167

More recently, on 25 May 2005, witness José Ferreira dos Santos gave histestimony,168 revealing that he was offered a proposal by large landowner Nilton Bragato kill Brasília. The witness stated that at the time this murder occurred, Brasília wasconstantly being threatened by Nilton Braga, Nilo, and Alexandre. In his testimony,José Ferreira dos Santos denounced all of the plans carried out by the large landownersin order to expel landholders from Gleba Gorotire. They had had meetings to planBrasília’s execution, proving the existence of a consortium among the landownersinterested in his death. Furthermore, José Ferreira dos Santos stated:

...The victim, at this time, was being threatened by Nilton Braga, Nilo, and Alexandre Trevisan

...he worked for Nilton Braga from March 15, 1995 until February 25, 2002. Nilton Bragawanted to contract the deponent to assassinate him [Brasilia]; that for the death [he] would

164 In his testimony, Arlindo de Souza added that he saw Marcio Cascavel assassinate a person known as ‘Grande’ atdaylight in Castelo dos Sonhos.165 Taken from Judas Tadeu de Moraes’ statement. Criminal case nº 2002.700740-5.166 Raimundo Dionísio dos Santos’ declaration. Criminal case n.º 2002700740-5, p. 43.167 Raimundo Dionísio dos Santos stated that it had been two years since 18 people had been assassinated and burnedby Maneco’s order.168 Taken from José Ferreira dos Santos’ statement, in the Criminal case n.º 2003700176-8, lodged by the State ofPará’s Office of the Public Prosecutor against Marcio Antonio Sartor, Manoel Alexandre Trevisan, Juvenal Oliveira daRocha, for the homicide of Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, before the 3rd Criminal Jurisdiction of the Municipality ofAltamira, in Pará.


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pay R$45,000. And this amount would be paid by Nilton Braga and Nilo; that a meeting washeld, where the witness, Nilo, Nilton Braga, and Manoel [Trevisan] were present, and at thismeeting they decided that the witness would bring guns from the fazenda in which he workedfor Mr. Nilo, that the fazenda in which he worked was Nilton Braga’s and at this meeting theyalso decided that Alexandre Trevisan would be responsible for executing the victim Bartolomeu;therefore, the witness did not accept the proposal ...That following the meeting, aside fromthe witness, officer Willian, Active Lieutenant, some businessmen and large landowners fromthe area were present; among the landowners were Alexandre Trevisan’s two brothers, Mr. Bil,Florindo Minoso, Liduino, Ivo Parente; that the death of the victim was because of the landconflicts in the region; that with the victim’s death the conflicts in question would go away;that the aforementioned meetings occurred in Recreation Club in Curuá.

Manoel Alexandre Trevisan (“Maneco”), Marcio Antonio Sartor (“Marcio Casca-vel”), and Juvenal Oliveira da Rocha (“Parazinho”), accused of murdering Brasília, arein jail and shall be brought to trial. It is important to point out that this is one of theonly cases of a rural worker’s assassination in the state of Pará which has resulted in theimprisonment of an estate owner (Manoel Alexandre Trevisan). The investigation andimprisonment of those involved only took place after massive popular pressure andpublic clamor. On the other hand, there are indications that there are other large lando-wners in Castelo dos Sonhos who were involved in the assassination of Brasília andother crimes who are not being investigated.

Despite putting herself in a risky situation, Fátima and the rural workers in Caste-lo dos Sonhos have fought ceaselessly so that Brasilia’s death is not forgotten and goesunpunished, as has occurred in so many other cases of violence against human rightsdefenders in Pará.

Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, known as “Brasilia”,assassinated on 21 July 2002.

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The municipality of Porto de Moz is located at the mouth of the Xingu River, in aregion known as Lower Xingu (Baixo Xingu), between the Transamazonian Highway

road network and the Amazon River. It is one of the oldest riverine communities alongthe Xingu and received its name in homage to a Portuguese city. Fifteen percent of themunicipality’s land is made up of floodplains and the remaining land is solid ground.

Similar to other villages founded in the 16th and 17th Centuries in the Amazon,Porto de Moz began as a settlement run by a missionary from the Companhia de Jesus(the “Company of Jesus” of the Catholic Church). At first, the region was inhabited bythe indigenous tribe Maturu, which occupied both the floodplains as well as the solidground. Following the Portuguese expansion into the area accompanied by theproselytising work of the Jesuit missionaries, the Maturu were used as guides or even aslaborers to gather forest products which were then sold in Belém.

In 1639, the Jesuit priests formed the Maturu Settlement, today the name of thecity’s oldest quarter. A group of smaller village settlements, located along the tributariesof the Xingu (the region where the Amazon River meets the Xingu was an area ofexpansion for the Ge, Tupi, and Karib groups) were part of the priests’ missionary workin the region.169

In 1758, the Maturu settlement achieved the status of a small town and came to beknown as Vila de Porto de Moz. In the same year, the Companhia de Jesus was expelledfrom Brazil (a decision made by the Portuguese Marquis de Pombal) and their missionarywork, especially the protection of indigenous tribes in the Lower Xingu region, faded.In 1890 the small town became a municipality.

As a result of the rubber boom, Porto de Moz turned into a large productioncenter. Families linked to the government began to obtain large areas of land for rubberexploitation. They used indigenous and black laborers and those indigenous groupsthat resisted were violently expelled from their land.

Chapter VII

THE STRUGGLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PRESERVATION:THE CASE OF PORTO DE MOZ

169 In the 1970s, the former Service for the Protection of Indians carried out a series of forced transfers of indigenousgroups that wandered in the region, for example the Arara do Pará (to the Penetecaua region), the Kayapó-Kararaô (theJaraucu region), and the Asurini do Trocará (the Pacajá region).


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Currently, the population of Porto de Moz consists primarily of traditional riverinecommunities (descendants of indigenous groups, black communities, and people fromthe northeast). The majority of the population lives in rural areas. The economy isbased on subsistence family farming (small fields planted with manioc, rice, corn, beans,greens, bananas, coconut, and coffee); harvesting of lumber and other forest productsfor local consumption and small businesses; and fishing.170 Natural resource preservationis a critical issue for the survival of these communities. More recently, buffalo farminghas become one of the riverine communities’ livelihood activities, aided by the fact thatthe floodplain remains flooded for half of the year.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics’s (IGBE) 2000 census registered23,545 inhabitants in the municipality of Porto de Moz, of whom 56.6% live in ruralareas and 43.5% in the cities. According to IBGE projections, the municipality willhave an estimated population of 28,023 in 2005.

Due to its location, Porto de Moz was not directly affected by the opening of BR-232 (the Transamazonian Highway) in the 1970s. While its forested areas remainedintact until the mid-1990s, the socio-environmental threats came instead from thepredatory fishing by the large trawlers equipped with freezers to store vast quantities offish. Faced with the dearth of fish in the Amazon River, these trawlers began to searchfor schools of fish in the lakes, rivers, and igarapés (narrow river banks between twoislands) in this region, causing conflicts with the local communities that rely on thedaily protein provided by fishing for their survival.

170 Moreira, Edma Silva. Tradição em tempos de modernidade: reprodução social numa comunidade varzeira do Rio Xingu/PA. Belém, EDUFPA, 2004, p. 84.

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1. THE LAND OWNERSHIP ISSUE

It is not uncommon to hear the riverside communities making references to JoséJulio de Andrade, better known as Colonel Zé Julio. Sometimes they are not even directreferences to him, but to his legacy, as Vivaldo Ferreira Barbosa explains.171 His fatherwas employed by Michel de Mello e Silva on the Fazenda (Farm) Aquiqui.

At the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, Colonel Zé Julioshared the political and financial command of the area with José Porfírio de Miranda,Jr. This resulted from the appropriation of large areas of land in the region.172 Accor-ding to Moreira, until the mid 1970s, they were the “bosses,” establishing a socialrelationship which was dominated by “tyranny” (p. 66). The “bosses” used and abusedthe power they possessed, coercing tenants and suppressing riverine communities andtheir leaders. The power resulting from the possession of land permeated every aspect ofdaily life.

With the appearance of new economic activities, such as the illegal exploitation oftimber, the new “bosses,” claiming to be heirs of those caudillos, sought to reaffirm theirpower in the region. They seized property from the large expanses of land in Porto deMoz, with the intention of exploiting its greatest resource, the wood (timber). Accor-ding to Moreira,

Since the 1980s ...the penetration of the forest by timber companies, displaced from theisland region where they had exhausted the highest quality wood, has increased. This invasionencouraged the creation of lumber mills and the trade in timber by local businessmen.Apparently, the communities did not feel threatened as they had with the large fishing trawlers.This is probably due to the fact that these loggers, unlike the fishermen, did not invade theirland directly (p. 94).

The current process of land appropriation and seizure, which until the middle ofthe 20th Century was encouraged by rubber tappers, is carried out largely by loggers. Asa rule, the illegal appropriation of land is carried out through grilagem of public lands orthe violent seizure of land from squatters. Grilagem is very common in Porto de Moz, amunicipality marked by a lack of agrarian organization, ineffectiveness of public bodi-es, and confusion over the responsibilities of the various entities that exert jurisdictionover federal and state lands and pieces of land belonging to the navy.

According to Moreira, the illegal appropriation of land is facilitated on the onehand by “the failure to define the original chain of ownership of the land and on the

171 The statements in this chapter were taken by a team from Justiça Global on 14 May 2005, on the occasion of a visitto the municipality of Porto de Moz.172 Letrizia Fróes Duarte, Secretary of the Rural Workers Sindicate, met Maria Eduarda Do Amaral, who told stories ofrubber tapping from when he and his wife were employed by Col. Zé Julio. He told of the work of the hired gunmenon the farm who took away the riverside dwellers’ goods. Many people were “disappeared” in this period and o Jarí wasthe arrival point to kill people or castrate those who displeased Col. Zé Julio. They could not ask anything of thecaudillo or disagree with his orders as they would be physically punished with ox letter whips.


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other hand, the fact that the floodplains are under the Brazilian Navy’s jurisdiction. Inthis case, the Pará Land Institute (ITERPA) is responsible for solid ground and theNavy for the floodplains. In fact, the situation is made worse because in daily communitylife the two areas form one single unit (p. 139).” In addition to this, the insufficientmeasures and lack of inspection and regulation by governmental entities allows grilagemof public land and forests to continue.

One form of illegal appropriation of land in the region is the “system of rentingland.” The grileiro gains access to the land through a “lease agreement” (generally infor-mal, without any form of documentation) and after a short period of time has transpired,he goes to the registry office and publicly registers the property as if he were the rightfulowner. The scam becomes clear when the original chain of ownership is traced, andevidence is found demonstrating that the area of land was never formally removed fromthe public domain. Thus, a deed of ownership is issued and registered as if it were, infact, private land. In possession of one of these registry documents, the supposed ownerbegins to expel, through legal and/or violent means, the traditional inhabitants (settlers)from the area.

Based simply upon this type of registration, the current “owners/heirs of the caudillos”of Fazenda Aquiqui are leasing out the land therein. This is creating great conflict, asthere were already settlers in the area before Michel de Melo e Silva obtained the registrydocumentation. These long-term residents have worked for decades on the land, first as“herdsmen” on the farm, and later remaining after its demise, developing their riverinelifestyle and livelihoods.

Another example of the uncertainty surrounding the original chain of ownershipis what occurred in the case of Vivaldo Ferreira Barbosa. Barbosa’s land was seized byFernando Fernandes de Neto (known as “Fernandão”). Barbosa, married to OsvaldinaBraga Duarte, has 14 children and lives in the community of Conceição, on the QuantiRiver, in the same place where his father lived for approximately 40 years. Barbosa’sstory is similar to many others in the region: a rubber tapper who struggled through therubber busts (1910-1920 and after the World War II) and then settled on land abandonedby its owners. They took to extractivism for survival based on fishing, hunting, andwood extraction.

In 1999, Fernandão, in possession of documents registered at the Registry office,filed an Action for Reintegration of Possession, demanding that the land be vacated. Heaffirmed in court that he had bought the area from Álvaro Soares de Sousa in 1998. Theproperty, however, was then found to be registered under the name of Michel de Meloe Silva and Cléia Bentes de Melo e Silva. There are no references to the land havingbeen divided, an inventory having been made, or a title granting ownership havingbeen made to Sandro Luiz de Melo e Silva173 with whom the contract for the buyingand selling of the land was made.

173 Information contained in the Lawsuit for the Reintegration of Ownership no. 028/99 and the Final Allegations byVivalvo Ferreira Barbosa and others, received on 19 January 2004 at the registry office in Porto de Moz.

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As a floodplain, this land is under water for a period of time each year, belongs tothe Navy, and cannot be registered as private property in any case. Only the use of theland can be granted by the Regional Manager of Federal Lands (Gerência Regional doPatrimônio da União, GRPU). There is no record of a request for use of the land madein the name of Michel or Cléia, in whose name the area was first registered with theProperty Registry Office in the municipality of Gurupá.

This conflict between the riverine communities and grileiros manifested itself ontwo occasions. Before the lawsuit for the Reintegration of Ownership was filed, therewas distress on the riverside dweller’s plot due to the introduction of animals into thearea by Álvaro Soares de Sousa, in an attempt to evict the family from the area. On 14October 1999, Barbosa, represented by Idalino Nunes de Assis of the Rural Workers’Union (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais, STR) in Porto de Moz, notified the Office ofthe Public Prosecutor in that municipality of these events.

De Sousa, former manager of the Fazenda Aquiqui, allegedly bought the landfrom Sandro Luiz de Melo e Silva (who claims to be the heir of Michel de Melo e Silva,the alleged original owner of the farm) and later sold it to Fernandão. In 1972, INCRAregistered all the property, amounting to a total of 57,058 hectares,174 in the name ofMichel and Alfredo de Melo e Silva.

Unfortunately, these are not the only cases of grilagem and conflicts over thepossession of land and forest in the municipality. The STR and the Porto de Moz parishdescribed the “system of land leasing” and grilagem by loggers, giving numerous concreteexamples, in a document entitled: “The Agrarian Question in the Municipality of Por-to de Moz.”175 This dossier describes in detail the stages of the grilagem process, such as:“the truck driver is the person who does the deal for the buying and selling of the woodwith the settlers. However, the logger has often already cleverly included the settler’splot of land in the invoice, which then gives him the means to gain the deeds for thepublic registry of the land.”

According to this document, the truck driver arrives to open a road in the middleof the forest and begins extracting timber. He calls himself the “owner” of the plot andremoves all the trees found in the area without any form of agreement with or consentfrom the settlers. After forcibly taking control of the area, the logger forbids the riverinecommunities from hunting, fishing, and extracting wood from their plots of land. Theriverine community dweller ends up accepting the proposal and sells or abandons theland so that he will not lose everything and therefore receives no compensationwhatsoever. There are examples where the members of riverine communities becomes

174 Hebette, Jean and Moreira, Edma Silva. Estudo Sócio Econômico com vista à criação da Reserva Extrativista “Verdepara Sempre” no município de Porto de Moz, estado do Pará, in Administrative Procedure 02001.007795/01-91, creatingthe Extractive Reserve (RESEX) “Verde para Sempre,” 2003, p. 20.175 This document was drafted and sent to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry looking into the grilagem of landin the Amazon.


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“wood peons,” watching over the area and preventing other loggers from entering thearea, in other words, in the employ of the land grabbers. Most frequently the “woodpeons” look for another area to settle down in or leave the countryside towards theurban centers.

According to a passage from the dossier:

The logger buys land from the settlers with or without INCRA registration, generally plots ofabout 100 hectares in size. The final objective is to use the area as a port and gain authorizationfor exploitation from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural RenewableResources (IBAMA) in the future. Grileiros are contracted to demarcate the land beyond theplot, with trails. A topographer subsequently works on the development of topographic groundplants, planning maps or sketches of the land that is not within their possession. With areceipt for the buying and selling of the plot of land, the logger is able to obtain the deeds forarea from the property registry. Somehow the logger ends up with the documents for thewhole area (the land in their possession and the land that has been appropriated illegally)which are required by IBAMA for the licensing of exploration.176

Even before gaining complete ownership (via registry documents and/or the evictionof the settler), the logger begins to exploit the forest’s riches. According to a descriptionfrom the aforementioned dossier:

The [timber] company carries out the first survey of the area from the air; someone is contractedas a tracker (rastreador) to identify the species from the top of the trees. Equipped with GPStechnology, he takes the bearings of the land and upon terminating the work, has the boundariesof the area of interest. With the boundary coordinates, the topographer demarcates the areaby putting up signs and placing guards on the land. The company goes to the property registryoffice and registers the property. It is common practice to neither name the area, nor identifyfrom whom it was acquired or the current owner.

During the illegal appropriation of public land (grilagem), the logger or landowner,beyond just falsifying land titles, also uses violence to evict riverine communities fromareas that they traditionally occupy. The presence of gunmen in these communities iscommon, forcing community members to leave their land under threat that their homeswill be burned and/or destroyed, that they and their families will be beaten up or evenkilled, etc. There are numerous testimonies confirming this practice throughout theregion.

176 According to the same document, “the plots of 100 hectares possessed by settlers are bought by the loggers. TheseINCRA documents serve as an opening for the process of deforestation or management by IBAMA. Nevertheless, thearea begins to be exploited annually and often beyond the original 100 hectares. It is possible that INCRA andIBAMA employees take part in the process.”

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One of the riverine community dwellers who has faced the greatest number ofthreats is Odair Matos de Lima and his family. They have lived in the area calledFazendinha for 57 years. This is an area of 200 hectares, where Odair was born, grewup, married, and brought up his children and nephews. The area originally belonged tohis mother and was always occupied in a calm and peaceful manner without any formof opposition. Five years later, he was surprised to find that the land had been boughtby the former mayor Gerson Campos and his wife Dilcilene Tenório.177 He had nevertransferred his ownership of the land to anyone. He continued to live in the area withno danger of losing his plot of land until 1999, when things changed.

Those who had “acquired” the land ordered the widespread clearing and plantingof 452 hectares, an area that included land belonging to 11 families. Virtually the wholeof Odair’s plot was affected by the felling of trees, burning of wood, and planting offodder for grazing.178 The grass seed was sown from an airplane, from which couldclearly be seen the extent of the felling of trees and environmental destruction that wasreported to IBAMA. The planting of grass means that nothing else can grow on theland, thereby making Odair and his family’s subsistence farming unviable. After theplanting of the grass, the “buyers” let loose a herd of 100 cattle which encroached on allof Odair’s land. They trampled on and destroyed the flour mill as well as one of his son’sfields. Subsequently those who had “acquired” the land ordered that it be fenced, strippingOdair and his family of his land tenure.

These actions consisted of the dispossession of the settlers’ possession of the land.As a result, Odair and his family were unable to work on their own land. They nolonger had any land to cultivate to feed their family. As a person uncomfortable withconflict and faced with the intensity of the violence, Odair did not seek out judicialauthorities, but instead began to cultivate land at the edges of the plots of land belongingto his neighbors.

From the moment when the criminal attacks on Odair’s land began, the mainculprit was Antilho Marcelino Leite (known as “João Leite”), who made constant threatsto the squatter’s family. João Leite’s very presence (he is always armed with a revolverand rifle) constituted a threat as he was known as a gunman in the region. He was a“confidant” of the “buyers,” ensuring that work was carried out without any resistance.In the past five years, Odair and his family have suffered every type of humiliation ontheir own land at the hands of João Leite and his men with the aim of expelling hisfamily from the area.

177 A particularly important example of the illegal appropriation of land, according to accounts in the aforementioneddossier, is that of Dilcelene Campos (mother of Gerson Campos, former mayor of Porto de Moz, 1996-2003) who hasthree estates, each covering an area of more than 2,900 hectares. According to the property registry (the Gurupáregistry office and surveying by a registrar from ITERPA), these properties were “donated” by the government to thestate of Pará.178 In Odair’s case, the felling of the trees destroyed 40 cacao beans, 12 orange trees, 15 tangerine trees, 12 mango trees,10 avocado trees, 10 palm tree fruit (pupunha), 300 pineapple grove, 1,500 trees of açaí, two hectares of ripe manioc,and 1 hectare of unripe manioc.


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This dispute ended tragically: Odair Matos de Lima, acting in self defense, killedAntilho Marcelino Leite, when Leite threatened him with a large knife. Odair and hiswife were arrested, only gaining bail after three months in prison.

After five years of suffering through the plundering of his land, persecution, threats,insults, humiliation, the loss of cultivated land, having his plots of land invaded bycattle, and nearly losing his life, Odair, his wife, and his son ended up being involved inthe death of a hired gunman. They were arrested and prosecuted and when freed, wereunable to lead normal lives as other employees of the “buyers” continued threateningand intimidating them, disregarding Odair’s rights as an owner, without being punished.

On 27 October 2004, the house of Odair’s son, Adamir Castro de Lima, located inMungumbal, close to Fazendinha, was burnt down. On 30 October, Odair’s kiln andstables were set on fire. Other than this, the foundation for a house that Odair was inthe process of building was virtually destroyed. It is still not certain who ordered thefires set, but they were criminal acts and there were reports of the presence of the hiredassassins of the “buyers” in the area on the day of the incidents.

According to Odair’s statement, on another occasion, threats were made in thepresence of and with the collaboration of soldiers from the military police:179

At about 8 or 9 a.m., Antonio Cabeça Branca and four policemen were seen heading in thedirection of the cowshed where they met two more policemen. More than an hour afterleaving the cowshed, they arrived at the flour mill which they set alight and they demolisheda brand new house with an axe. They destroyed the cowshed that they had tried, but failed, toset alight. The house belonging to Jota, son of Ada, which was nearly finished was destroyedwith an axe. At about 4 p.m., the police returned to Porto de Moz. Two gunmen remained inthe cowshed. Another day the gang leader, Zé Maria, made a call to the mayor, Gerson Cam-pos, and said “I need to speak to Gerson Campos urgently.” Following this, Gerson came onthe radio and asked what Zé Maria wanted. And Zé said: “Listen Gerson, I want you to sendme without fail a box of 12-calibre cartridges because I’ve got a frightened man, with a bunchof people complaining that’ll hunt me down.” The following day, Zé Maria Pereira [anotherZé Maria] arrived on a speedboat together with Antonio Cabeça Branca.

According to Odair’s account, his family was not evicted from the land on that daybecause many locals began to arrive in the area after having been told by a neighbor’swife. About 40 neighbors kept vigil the entire day, thereby preventing any form ofviolence to be perpetrated against the family from the riverine community.

All these cases and threats are typical and reflect a recurring ages-old practice in theregion: first, there is the process of buying and selling land with a supposed owner,ignoring the rights of the traditional inhabitants. Then violence is used to evict the

179 Accounts given in statements to the Justiça Global team by Odair Matos de Lima, Francisca Castro de Roes, andAdamir Castro de Lima on 13 May 2005.

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settler(s) without any compensation provided to them. Their links with that piece ofland where they lived their whole lives are disregarded along with their rights, while theperpetrators go unpunished. It is thus that from within the registry itself that the majorityof the fraudulent land documents originate.

2. LOGGING EXPLOITATION IN THE REGION

According to the aforementioned dossier, between 1974-1982 in the Porto deMoz region, “[T]he main business was based on bartering, although some smallproprietors did appear such as Foad (a buyer), Vieira (a buyer, representative of Amazô-nia Company), and Varejão (a buyer).”

The wood was extracted by laborers contracted daily and then handed over to thebuyers as a form of payment for debts incurred for food, clothes, fuel, and tools (a typeof exchange known as escambo). Those who bought the wood also provided the workerswith basic survival products. These laborers had no other choice but to fell the wood inorder to pay off their debts. They bought the basic products they needed to survive,only to then enter into a life of slavery.

This exploitation took place on river banks, as the abundance of plant speciesmade the grabbing up of the forest economically unattractive.180 According to theaforementioned dossier, “[A]t first the work of the small lumber mills predominated:Foad, Varejão, and Vieira.” When high quality wood began to be scarce on the riverbanks, it became necessary to penetrate the forest.

The period 1982-1990 is known as the second stage of wood exploitation in Portode Moz. During this period, “the medium scale loggers, with additional resources, broughtin to the forest heavy machinery, lorries, rafts/ferries, tugs, and motor-saws. They beganto fell wood up to five km inside the forest.” The arrival of these medium scale loggershad negative consequences for both the riverine communities as well as the environment.This predatory exploitation of timber, beyond the obvious environmental damage, spedup the rate at which the illegal appropriation of land took place and affected the riverinecommunities’ way of life (formerly based on extractivism).

Wood exploitation was also a strategy used to exploit other natural resources andcontrol large areas of land. This process increased from 1982 on. The riverine commu-nities in Porto de Moz then began to be threatened by the loggers that arrived from theBreves region.

According to Hebette and Morreira, one of the main logging companies, Madenorte,“began its work in the region some 30 years ago, in the rich forested area in the Brevesregion, which has today been transformed into grazing land (p. 30).” Currently, 90% of

180 The main types of wood found in this period were sucuruba, esponja, parapará, marupá, virola, cedar, freijó, sucupira,ucuuba, macacauba, moratinga, sumauma, and assacuzeiro.


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the timber (veneer and production) is destined for export.181 The migration of loggersto Porto de Moz is one of the consequences of the diminution of wood stocks in thelarge production centers, such as in the municipalities of Breves, Portel, Paragominas,and Tailândia.

As previously stated, the process of illegal timber exploitation was based on theappropriation of land using false registry documents, formation of criminal gangs, anduse of armed militias and gunmen to guard the land. This process made the loggersmore powerful so that they then went on to control the political administration of themunicipality. This allowed the occupation of thousands of hectares of forest, resultingin predatory exploitation that is both environmentally and socially unsustainable. Themajority of the plans for exploitation and management approved by IBAMA were locatedin the riverine communities’ and settlers’ areas of community use, especially in areasunder public land tenure.

This type of illegal appropriation can be verified through any form of inspection.This happened recently in an INCRA inspection, in which the following was reported:“Wagner Rogério Lazarine: AUTEX (authorization for exploration) 1502200220062,valid between 10 September 2002 and 10 September 2003; however, it was suspendedon 24 October 2003 due to suspected fraudulent documents (from the Gurupá registry).We seized the land with an area of 1,976,525 cubic meters, totalling 723 differentspecies of logs.”182 At the closure of this report, not one of the people responsible forthe illegal exploitation had been punished effectively. However, when inspections dotake place and fines are imposed, they are never paid.

According to the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (IMAZON),the majority of the holders of PMFs do not respect the legislation and many of them arelocated in areas of the forest which are in fact public land. According to an initialevaluation by IBAMA in 2003, about 80% of the PMFs in Pará were authorized in animproper way on public land. Consequently, even though the wood coming from theseprojects is authorized by the governmental body responsible, it is still technically illegal.183

According to information from IBAMA, in the municipality of Porto de Mozalone, 34 companies controlled about 105,893.66 hectares and in 2003 they applied toIBAMA for authorization to extract more than 1.2 million cubic meters of wood fromthe forest. All the companies extracting wood in the municipality show some level ofirregularity or fraud in their agrarian documents.

181 The Madenorte area in Porto de Moz is ‘reserved for the reserve,’ 20 November 2003 — Porto de Moz (PA), http://www.greenpeace.org.br/amazonia/.182 Data from a report on a trip made by José Geraldo Brandão, Environmental Analyst from IBAMA in Santarém,dated 2 July 2003.183 The report: “Pará — Estado de Conflito, uma investigação sobre grileiros, madeireiros e fronteiras sem lei do estado doPará, na Amazônia,” available at http://www.greepeace.org.br, accessed on 13 July 2005.

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3. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

At the very time when Minister of the Environment Marina Silva was travellingwith her entourage in toward the place where the first meeting of the inhabitants of theExtractive Reserve Verde para Sempre would be held, Sister Dorothy Stang was murderedby two men in the municipality of Anapu. Aproximately 250 km separated Sister Dorothyfrom Minister Silva, who was meeting with leaders and riverine communities in theComunidade dos Carmelinos, in Rio Jaurucu, Porto de Moz.

Since the 1980s, the riverine communities in Porto de Moz have protested againstand denounced the arrival of large trawlers that come from Belém and Macapá to fishon a large scale in the region. Then, with the arrival of the loggers, the land and forestsused by the communities started to be threatened by predatory exploitation. The variousattempts to make these community areas official by legalizing them, thus preventingloggers from accessing them, have thus far been fruitless.

For a long time, the fight to preserve natural resources has been taken on by theriverine communities themselves, mainly as a question of survival. There have been anumber of important events and manifestations of this struggle. The creation of the“Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve was a victory for the preservation of theirtraditional way of life, resulting in a bold type of mobilization, the blockading of theJaurucu River.

According to a report by the president of STR in Porto de Moz, Idalino Nunes deAssis, IBAMA’s inefficiency at investigating the numerous denunciations made by riverinecommunity members and leaders led the inhabitants to protest on a large scale. Theobjective was to draw the attention of national and international authorities to theenvironmental destruction in the municipality. However, they opted for the blockadingof the Jaurucu River, the main exit point for the region’s timber.

Approximately 600 people from the riverine communities created a blockade withtheir small vessels for three days, preventing the passage of ferries and rafts transportingwood. This act culminated in the retention of two boats laden with illegally extractedlogs, which had been registered with IBAMA. Idalino Nunes, president of the RuralWorkers in Porto de Moz, explains that the protest served “to show the world that they[the communities] were telling the truth and that it was the government, throughIBAMA, that was lying. They decided to close the river and not let any loggers orgrileiros go past.”184

Another leader, Father Adernei Guemaque Leal, confirms that the carrying out ofthis blockade was important to draw society’s attention to the illegal exploitation of

184 Statement given by Idalino Nunes to the Justiça Global team on 18 May 2005, in Belém, Pará.


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wood. It was also important in that it mobilized the riverine communities that deman-ded their right to “live their lives as riverine community members, as people who liveoff of the river, forest, or land.”185 He further claims that the

...blockade was a reaffirmation of our identity as a riverine community, of the right to live onthe banks of the rivers, of our way of life, and of our way of relating to the forest. The riverinedweller has always respected the natural environment; he has always respected the river; hecares for the forest. The water and the forest are part of the riverine dweller’s identity. Itrepresents our original identity in this relationship with the land, water, and forest.

According to Nunes, the blockade began on 19 September 2002 at dawn and theonly person who broke through the blockade was Rivaldo Campos.186 On the afternoonof 20 September, two ferries approached the blockade with one captained by AndréCampos, the brother of Rivaldo and Gerson Campos.

In the early morning of 20 September and into the 21st, the ferry-boats were letloose, threatening more than 600 people in more than 80 boats taking part in theblockade. It was a moment of tension and desperation, due to the presence of women,old people, and children. The force of the boats was so strong that it broke the sterns onsome of them. The riverine community members and those supporting them woke upin time to prevent a tragedy and a Greenpeace launch was able to keep back the boats.

In Porto de Moz there was a small group of loggers and city councilmen whoincited the villagers against those taking part in the blockade of the river, includingencouraging the use of violence. As time has gone by the number of people followingthe loggers and policies contrary to those of the extractive reserve has increased to suchan extent that they began to use a local radio station to call upon the people to opposethe blockade. As 22 September drew to a close, they grouped themselves together at theentrance to the city awaiting the return of the leaders and others who had participatedin the blockade.

Upon arrival at the quayside, Claudio Wilson Soares Barbosa, then coordinator ofthe Group for Sustainable Development in Porto de Moz, was physically attacked andnearly killed. He was pulled from the STR boat, which was then wrecked and set onfire. Later, the crowd regrouped in the port when they caught sight of the parish’s boat,and began shouting at the priest. Meanwhile, for security reasons, the priest had returnedin another launch and anchored in a different place than usual, hiding out at a friend’shouse.

185 Statement given by Father Adernei Guemaque from the CPT in Xingu to the Justiça Global team on 18 May 2005,in Belém.186 Rivaldo Campos is the current president of the Town Council in Porto de Moz and the brother of the former mayor,Gerson Campos, a member of the Grupo Campos.

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At the airport, a journalist from the Rede Record channel in São Paulo was attacked;his equipment and all of the photos he had taken over the three days of protest were alsodestroyed. Witnesses confirm that then mayor Gerson Campos was present andencouraged the assault. The majority of the leaders who took part in the blockade(many of whom had already been threatened) did not return to the city.

All the group leaders who took part in the blockade were criminally prosecuted bythe State Public Ministry in the District of Porto de Moz.187 The case particulars havealready been prepared and it is in the final stages of prosecution. The captain of the boatthat made an attempt on the lives of riverine community members was also prosecutedfor attempted murder, but the sentence has still not been handed down. The blockadeled to other proceedings such as the Circumstantial Term of Occurrence and Action ofIndemnification (Termo Circunstanciado de Ocorrência e Ação de Indenização) for physicaland psychological damage resulting from the fire set on the STR launch, but no legalprocess has yet been concluded.

IBAMA officials, upon arriving in Santarém during the blockade, reported thatthe wood was illegal. André Campos claimed that it had been extracted through theBiancardi Loggers, whose Management Project did not, in fact, exist. The wood wasseized (more than 100 logs) and taken to the city. Meanwhile, with no inspection orregulation undertaken, the wood was chopped up and sold without any form ofpunishment being meted out. According to Moreira, the popular organizations’ actions188

“are popular responses to the mechanisms that threaten their permanence in the area inbetter living conditions.” They fought for the creation of the “Forever Green” ExtractiveReserve as a way to encourage the sustainable use of natural resources in the region andprevent the destruction of the Amazon forest.

The blockading of the Jaruruco River was a daring step with huge repercussionsin the historical struggle of the communities of Porto de Moz. The creation of theextractive reserve, guaranteeing the sustainable use of natural resources and preventingthe plundering carried out by loggers, was the climax of the long historic struggle forthe land.

187 They were framed under Article 261 of the Penal Code, which deals with an “attack on sea, river, or air transport,”and outlines a punishment of between two and five years of imprisonment.188 The struggle for the preservation of the natural resource base is organized by the of Rural Workers Union (STR),the committee for the sustainable development in Porto de Moz, Pastoral Land Commission, Association ofFishermen, Colony of Fishermen in Porto de Moz, Association of Women in the County and City, and RuralCommunity Association.


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4. THE CREATION OF THE “VERDE PARA SEMPRE” EXTRACTIVE RESERVE

The “Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve (Reserva Extrativista, RESEX)189 wascreated by decree on 8 December 2004 and is located in the municipality of Porto deMoz. Today it is the largest extractive reserve in the country, encompassing an area ofmore than 1.3 million hectares. From the beginning of the administrative process todevelop the reserve190 to the publication of the Decree approximately three years elapsed,but the fight for its establishment is actually much longer than that.

The public bodies’ negligence and collaboration with the grileiros forced the com-munities to organize themselves and adopt their own methods to defend their land,such as demarcation. According to Maria Creusa Gama Ribeiro,191 one of the coordi-nators of the group for sustainable development in Porto de Moz, “ ...[N]ine communalareas decided upon and demarcated by the communities themselves appeared. Theyformed groups to administer the area.”192 These areas are not recognized by the state,and they came about and continue to exist as a result of the communities’ ability tomobilize and organize themselves. These communities sought a guarantee of permanencein the area and the ability to preserve their extractivist way of life.

In 1994, the first Seminar on Natural Resources took place which had participationfrom representatives of the STR, the parish, Association of Industrial Fishermen, andWorkers’ Party (PT). As a result of contact between numerous social movements andhuman rights groups during the seminar, the Group for Natural Resources was created.The objective of this group was to articulate the representation of the riverine commu-nities’ rights by the numerous social movements and groups.193

While these seminars were taking place, the idea emerged for the creation of anextractive reserve as an alternative to slow down the process of environmental degradation,grilagem, and forced eviction of traditional communities from their lands. It was, howe-ver, the social movements that after a long process of study, discussion, and awarenessraising, suggested the creation of the “Verde para Sempre” RESEX.

At the hearing on 12 February 2005 (attended by Environment Minister MarinaSilva) the federal government presented the people with guidelines and characteristics

189 The creation of extractive reserves is outlined in law 9,985, of 28 July 2000, which regulates Article 225, para. 1, I,II, III and IV of the Constitution. Decree 4,340, of 22 August 2002 regulates Articles 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 33, 36,41, 42, 47, 48, and 55 of the law 9,985, as well as articles 15, 17, 18, and 20 with respect to the councils of theconservation units.190 Administrative procedure 02001.007795/01-91, on 31 October 2001.191 Information gathered by Justiça Global researchers on 13 May 2005, at the Committee for Sustainable Develop-ment in Porto de Moz.192 The so-called ”communal areas” are decided upon and demarcated by the communities themselves.193 This committee subsequently acquired judicial characteristics and became known as the Committee for SustainableDevelopment in Porto de Moz, conformed by all resident associations, fishing communities, church parishes, STR,youth groups, and other groups.

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specific to extractive reserves. The local landowners and loggers attempted to demobilizethe community. Despite this manoeuvre, the population stuck with its decision to createthe extractive reserve and the implementation process began.

The first step was the creation of a Provisional Commission (comissão provisória),comprised of representatives from the community, with the goal of creating the reservewithin one year. At this meeting promises and motions were made by Minister Silva,including the following in particular:

a) The so-called “cleaning up” operation of the land, consisting of taking away landfrom landowners, loggers, and grileiros, the cancellation of registration obtainedillegally, and the expropriation of land with legal titles.

b) The registration of land in riverine communities.

c) The demarcation of land for the reserve.

d)�The freeing up of R$22,000,000 (US$10 million) through the National Programof Family Agriculture (Programa Nacional de Agricultura Familiar, or PRONAF),to be distributed among settled families, with the objective of subsidising theconstruction of housing and funding the first harvest.

e) The construction of a joint federal police and IBAMA station in the municipality.

f) The carrying out of a series of social measures by a team from the Sala doCidadão, a project within INCRA responsible for issuing documents to riverinecommunity laborers.

By the end of June, very few measures had been adopted and put into action aspromised by the plans. The registration of the families was not even carried out. Evenso, the creation of the extractive reserve is an important victory for the preservation ofthe environment in the Amazon.

According to the terms of Law 9985 of 2000, extractive reserves are areas used “bytraditional extractivist people, whose survival is grounded in extractivism together withsubsistence farming and the rearing of small animals. The basic objective [of establishingextractive reserves] is to protect their way of life, the culture of these communities, andguarantee the sustainable use of natural resources in the area.”

It is important to emphasise that extractive reserves are public lands and only theuse of the land has been granted to the traditional communities — not the land itself.According to the law (Article 18), the “commercial exploitation of timber will only beallowed in sustainable areas or in special situations and those that compliment the manyactivities being developed in the extractive reserves, according to the guidelines and themanagement plans for each unit of land.”

Faced with this new situation, the laborers in Porto de Moz began demanding theimplementation of public policies which would not only guarantee the preservation of


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the environment, but also those aimed at agrarian regularization, allowing the traditionalcommunities in the region to stay on their land.

However, the workers’ main worries are linked to the continued illegal deforestati-on and violence committed against settlers, with the intention of intimidating themand expelling them from their land. The loggers and grileiros continue criticizing thecreation of extractive reserves, announcing publicly that they will do their best to reversethe process of implementing them.

On 8 March 2005, a Mandamus was registered in the Supreme Federal Court byDavi Resende Soares and others against the President of the Republic, seeking to suspendthe creation of the extractive reserve. On 7 July 2005, a decision which would favor thelandowners and loggers who were opposing the establishment of the reserve wasrefused.194

The creation of the “Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve arose as an alternativeproject for sustainable development in the region. The transformation of the area intoan extractive reserve was the riverine communities’ way of trying to curb illegal landappropriation, although the legislation determines that the ownership of land comprisingan extractive reserve remains under public control, as well as bringing the predatoryexploration of wood to an end — in the face of the ban on the commercial exploitationof wood.

5. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS: FIGHTS AND THREATS

The struggles, advances, and conquests made by the communities and leaders inPorto de Moz are significant in the consolidation of the riverine communities’ rightsand are directly opposed to the interests of large commercial groups. The resistance bythe communities is becoming an obstacle to the realization of the commercial groups’projects for predatory and unsustainable exploitation of the natural resources.

This leads the landowners and loggers to react and they do not hesitate to useviolent means to halt the popular struggle and protect their own interests. In this dispu-te over natural resources, there is state omission, inefficiency, and even collusion withcommercial interests, thus leaving the communities and their leaders dependent onthemselves with no state support. They remain at risk from measures taken by loggersand even from public bodies such as the police that are oftentimes used as instrumentsof violence.

An illustrative example is the aforementioned Criminal Lawsuit (Ação Penal), setin motion by the Pará Public Ministry against 12 leaders who took part in the blockadeof the Jaurucu River. The Public Ministry’s efforts in this case were channelled into the

194 Federal Supreme Court, 15 July 2005, decision available at http://www.stf.gov.br/.

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criminalization of the struggle by the community organizations. (The Public Ministry’sconstitutional role is to defend society and preserve the environment.) The attempt tocarry out what is in fact the government’s role — to guarantee an ecologically balancedenvironment for current and future generations (Federal Constitution, Article 225) —was transformed in a crime.

Human rights defenders struggle daily against violence and environmentaldegradation perpetrated by groups of grileiros and loggers in Porto de Moz. The defenders’work to help sustain the riverine dwellers’ way of life exposes human rights defenders toall forms of reprisals and human rights violations. They are often victims of physicalviolence and threats. The leaders and riverine laborers often receive threats and arecoerced in different ways. Aside from these conflicts noted above, death threats,intimidation, and direct assaults on important local leaders all occur.

The president of the STR in Porto de Moz, Idalino Nunes de Assis, has receivedseveral phone calls with death threats because of his work as a union leader. Once helearned about an offer of R$10,000 (US$ 4,000) to have him killed. The offer wasmade to José Orlando da Silva. Upon receiving this information, Idalino left the townfor a few days. Letrízia Fróes Duarte, STR’s secretary, has also received death threats.

On 21 September 2002, Claudio Wilson Barbosa, coordinator of the Committeefor Sustainable Development in Porto de Moz, was violently attacked and beaten up by14 people.195 Aside from being beaten up on the final day of the blockade of the RiverJarancu, he has also received numerous death threats.196

Father Aderney Guemaque Leal,197 a member of the Xingu Parish branch of theCPT, was also threatened with lynching on the occasion of the river blockade andremained in town heavily protected by local inhabitants.

CONCLUSION

Until now, the laws and the guarantee of the implementation of policies inconservation areas have not been established by the federal government. Neither themanagement plan or the plan for the use of the “Forever Green” Extractive Reserve laidout in Brazilian legislation have yet been implemented.

195 Some of these people were: Maria Varejão, Haroldo Santana, Valdo Tenório (councilman), Fátima Nogueira(councilwoman) and her son Fernando, Helena Varejão, Braz Duarte (employee at the City Hall), Babal, Berg Campos(nephew of Mayor Gerson Campos), Faraday Varejão, Edinaldo Tenório, Nildo Pontes, Ivair Pontes and RivaldoCampos (councilman).196 A letter dated 27 September 2003 on behalf of the groups that helped create the “Verde para Sempre” ExtractiveReserve, and statements from the lawsuit for compensation for physical and psychological injury (No. 001/2003),lawsuits lodged by the STR and Mr. Cláudio Wilson Barbosa.197 Statement by Father Adernei (CPT in Xingu) to Justiça Global researchers on 18 May 2005 in Belém.


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Other communities outside of this extractive reserve and have become targets forillegal logging. These communities continue to have no protection from the federal orstate governments, which have simply abandoned these communities and left them tofend for themselves.

The fines issued in cases where environmental crimes and the measures to recoverthe forest which should have been paid, and implemented, by the those charged withenvironmental crimes have still not been fulfilled. This results once again in impunityand the “cohabitation” of governmental entities with private interests producing theenvironmental devastation in the first place. This impunity is decades old and stillreigns in the region. Faced by this very difficult and dangerous situation even today, theriverine communities, even after commemorating the victory of the creation of theextractive reserve, continue to resist the encroachment of the illegal ranchers and loggersand struggle to preserve the environment and guarantee human rights in the region.

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This report is more than just a description of the significant events in the life andstruggles of the workers and human right defenders in Pará. It is not merely an

analysis of events, but goes beyond, to the responsibilities of the governmental authoritiesmandated with developing and implementing policies of reparation, protection, andpromotion of human rights. This is without losing sight of public and private actorswho also systematically violate the economic, social, cultural, and environmnetal rightsof the Amazonian population.

The purpose of this list of recommendations is to set out in a transparent fashionthe responsibilities so that organizations, social entities and movements can establishmechanisms for ongoing monitoring and evaluation. The objective is to confront theproblems of rural workers and search for ways to strengthen the respect for humanrights, thereby building an active and involved citizenry.

This report will serve as a compendium wherein we detail the responsibilities ofeach governmental body so that each can be held accountable. Hence, we tackle thelack of commitment of those who make promises and do not implement them, layingout the actors involved in those issues and where the bottlenecks are in the implemen-tation of public policies.

1. RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMBAT VIOLENCE AND IMPUNITY

� Considering the huge number of assassinations, “disappeared people,” clandestinecemeteries, and that virtually all of the cases remain without resolution, the Fede-ral Police should carry out an investigation with the objective of verifying thedenunciations of human right violations contained in this report (Federal andState Public Ministries, Civil Police of Pará, Public Security Secretariat (Secretariade Segurança Pública, SESP), and Ministry of Justice/Federal Police).

� Execute immediately all of the arrest warrants that have been handed down

Chapter VIII

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE STATE OF PARÁ


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against hired gunmen and large landowners (judicial power; Public Ministry; CivilPolice of Pará; and Federal Police).

� Investigate all of the cases of threats, assassination attempts, and assassinations ofagricultural workers, union and religious leaders, and human rights defenders inPará (State Public Ministry and Civil Police of Pará), including the effective anddirect participation of the Public Ministry and Federal Police.

� Carry out efficient administrative and criminal investigations into all cases ofdenunciations of abuse of authority and torture carried out by agents of the statesuch as civil and military police officers.

� Speed up investigations of criminal actions already in progress into the murdersof rural workers and their leaders and carry out jury trials of those responsible forthese crimes (Public Ministry and the judicial power of Pará).

� Immediately remove the large landowners who have been denounced forembezzling SUDAM funds and who remain on lots designated for expropriationby the federal government for establishment of a Sustainable Development Projects(PDS). An example is found in Anapú, where, on 13 June 2005, Laudelino DélioFernandes remained in lots 56 and 58, irregardless of the many denunciations ofillegal land occupancy.

2. RECOMMENDATIONS ON SLAVE LABOR

� Approve immediately the Proposal for Constitutional Amendment 438/2001that would expropriate lands where slave labor has been found to exist.

� Approve immediately Draft Bill 2022/1996 that utilizes prohibitions to formali-ze the contracts with agencies and organs of the government and the participationin public auctions of the companies that, directly or indirectly, use slave labor inthe production of goods and services.

� Create Federal Prosecutor Offices and Federal Public Defender Offices in themunicipalities of São Félix do Xingu, Xinguara, Conceição do Araguaia, and Re-denção in the state of Pará.

� Increase the number of Labor Courts in Pará for the municipalities in the interi-or of the state, particularly in the cities of Santana do Araguaia, Xinguara, and SãoFélix do Xingu.

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� Organize, immediately, public exams for the fulfillment of the vacancy of judgein the County of Redenção.

� Set up federal police stations in the municipalities of São Félix do Xingu andTucuruí.

� Permanently allocate 60 federal police agents and 12 federal police chiefs tocombat slave labor in the municipalities in the interior of Pará.

� Approve the resolution of the National Monetary Council that prevents theconcession of funds to public or private financial institutions, privates companies,and large landowners employing slave labor, using as a reference the list developedfor by the Ministry of Labor and Employment.

� Implement a broad-based campaign for the dissemination of information on the“chain of production” of slave labor-produced foodstuffs and other items, alertingcompanies that directly or indirectly consume/use these products, threatening toexpose this fact publicly if they continue to employ slave labor in any part of thatchain of production.

3. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

� Formulate a protection policy that ensures the security of all human rightdefenders.

� Facilitate the access of defenders to mechanisms of public security, respecting thespecificity of each situation.

� Ensure that police security is carried out by federal police agents or by policeofficers from other regions or states.

� Immediately provide protection for the lives of human rights defenders in theregion of the “Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve, for the Rural Workers Unionof Rondon of Pará, pastoral agents, union leaders, social movement leaders, andadvisors of the workers of Anapu (State Steering Committee of the Human RightsDefenders Program of Pará, Steering Committee of the National Human RightsDefenders Program, police stations, Public Ministry, Special Secretariat for Hu-man Rights, and the federal police).

� Designate, in the National Plan of Agrarian Reform, specific and emergency


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actions to counter violence in the areas of agrarian conflicts (Ministry of AgrarianDevelopment, INCRA, National Agrarian Ombudsman and ITERPA).

4. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AGRARIAN REFORM

� Re-incorporate into the public domain all the public areas that have been illegallyappropriated, making them available for agrarian reform (INCRA, MDA andITERPA).

� Host seminars and public consultations with rural workers who are in landlessencampments, defining through that process the best areas for implementingagrarian reform settlements (INCRA and MDA).

� Earmark the necessary resources for reaching the goals set out in the II NationalPlan for Agrarian Reform, including supplementing the MDA budget in order toguarantee that the goals (aimed at tackling the irregular agrarian situation) arereached and the corresponding actions implemented.

� Legally title all estates covering up to 100 hectares in the state of Pará, allocatingappropriate funds for investment in and maintenance of the settlers (INCRA andMDA).

� Set up administrative mechanisms that allow for better joint action by INCRAand ITERPA regarding expropriation of lands, dispossession, and creation ofSettlement Projects (INCRA and ITERPA).

� Conclude the process of expropriation of unproductive properties that are claimedand/or occupied by more than 20,000 landless families in the state of Pará (INCRA;MDA; Attorney-General; and Federal Courts).

� Form a commission, led by INCRA’s Federal Prosecutor, to verify the situationand inquiry into the interruption of dozens of administrative procedures beforeINCRA’s Superintendency in Marabá (INCRA, MDA and NGOs).

4.1 Recommendations to Rondon do Pará, Castelo dos Sonhos and Anapu

� Improve the material conditions of the settlements in Rondon do Pará, particu-larly regarding road maintenance, construction of schools and health clinics, andprovision of technical assistance to the settled workers.

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� Speed up the administrative procedures of expropriation, by INCRA and MDA,of the plots of land occupied by landless workers in Rondon do Pará.

� Settle all the families registered with the Rural Workers Union and all those inencampments, particularly the families of landless workers camped by the BR-163Highway in the “Brasília Encampment” (Castelo dos Sonhos).

� Adopt urgent measures to inspect, and consequently expropriate, all the plotsof land that do not fulfill the “social function” of rural properties, be it for theirunproductive status or environmental or labor law violations within thoseproperties.

� Immediately implement the proposals announced during a meeting on 25 February2005 in Anapu by the Minister of Agrarian Development, Miguel Rosseto. Theseproposals include the geo-referencing of 22 plots located within Sustainable Deve-lopment Projects (PDS) and expropriation of those areas (IBAMA and the Ministryof Labor and Employment’s Regional Superintendency to carry out a joint inspectionoperation; INCRA and IBAMA technicians to inspect and immediately notify theproprietors of areas where environmental crimes are identified).

� Urgently analyze and decide upon the lawsuits filed by INCRA before the Fede-ral Courts, aimed at reverting the dominium of public areas that are in the possessionof grileiros, landowners, and loggers in the municipality of Anapu.

� Concede to INCRA the legal possession of plots 109, 111, 124, 126, 127, 128,131, 134, 135, 137, 177, and 179, all located within the PDS Virola Jatobá. Ac-cording to information provided by workers and rural technicians, these plotshave already been fully inspected by INCRA.

� Immediately settle all the registered families who are living in the ManduacariPlot (Gleba Manduacari), the PDS Esperança, and Virola Jatobá, in the municipalityof Anapu.

� Publicize the reports with the actions implemented by INCRA in the municipalityof Anapu.

5. RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMBAT GRILAGEM

� Immediately cancel the irregular registries of illegally appropriated land (INCRA,MDA and ITERPA).


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� Nullify all the property titles and property registries of rural properties withmore than 2,500 hectares which were acquired illegally (INCRA and MDA).

� Publicize the administrative procedures resulting from Portaria 558/99, inclu-ding which properties did not fulfill the requirements set forth in that Portaria(INCRA and MDA).

� Immediately implement the Public System of Land Registry, in which — accordingto Law 12,267 and Decree 4,449 — each request for a property registry should beaccompanied by a document describing the property, the geographical coordinatesthat define the boundaries of the rural property, geo-referenced by the BrazilianGeodesic System (INCRA and MDA).

� Immediately carry out a review and correction of wrongdoings in the Registrar’sOffice of Rondon do Pará (High Court of Pará’s Oversight Office).

� Adopt urgent measures aimed at geo-referencing to identify and inspect ruralproperties located in Castelo dos Sonhos, taking into consideration the denuncia-tions of grilagem of public land presented in this report.

� Cancel the registration in the federal and state governments’ funding programs,of the landowners involved in crimes against rural workers, environmental crimes,slave labor and illegal appropriation of land.

5.1 Specific recommendations to Anapu

� INCRA should file a Reintegration of Ownership Lawsuit and adopt othernecessary measures aimed at the expulsion of the grileiro who currently occupiesplot number 55.198

� Adopt the necessary measures to remove the grileiros from plot 108 in PDSVirola Jatobá — Gleba Belo Monte, plots 56, 58, 61 and 62 of PDS Esperança,plots 21, 23, 25, and 27 and other areas allocated of PDSs.

198 According to a report on actions carried out by INCRA on the PDS in Anapu after the assassination of SisterDorothy Stang, the Federal Court in Marabá authorized three actions of recovery of possession in INCRA’s favor.These were plots 108 and 129 on PDS Viroal Jatobá — Gleba Belo Monte and plot 55 on PDS Esperança — GlebaBacajá. However, workers in the region confirm that plot 108 in this PDS continues in the possession of a grileiroknown as Gilberto, despite the judicial decision mentioned above.

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� Investigate the denunciations of all persons involved in grilagem of public landsin the municipality of Anapu, bringing those responsible to justice and removingthem from their illegal possessions.199

� Publicize the results of the actions implemented by INCRA in the municipalityof Anapu.

5.2 Specific recommendations to Rondon do Pará

� INCRA or ITERPA should file lawsuits to recover public lands that had theirregistries cancelled, particularly the following farms: Serraria Jerusalém Ltda., San-ta Cruz, Bela Vista, Jucamarhe, Pantanal, Coração do Brasil, Garrafão, Futuro,and Graciosa.

� Speed up the administrative procedures of registry inspection of rural propertieslocated in Rondon do Pará.

6. RECOMMENDATIONS TO TACKLE THE PROBLEM OF DEFORESTATION

� Strengthen and re-structure the IBAMA offices in Pará, ensuring the efficiencyof their actions to monitor and combat illegal deforestation, and to implement theconservation units already created.

� IBAMA should deny new authorizations for Plans for Sustainable ForestManagement (PFMS) without in loco follow-up or without the proper certificationof the local companies applying for such licenses.

� Intensify the actions to apprehend the boats and illegally transported logs (IBAMAand MMA).

199 The main grileiros in Anapu are: 1) on PDS Esperança: Avelino Dedea (plot 29); Laudelino Délio Fernandes (plots52, 56, and 58); Dominguinhos Ricardo (plot 57); Luis Ungaratti (plot 53); Julio César, Empresa Brasil Central (plots59, 60, 61, and 62); Marcos (plot 54); 2) PDS Virola Jatobá: Gabriel Madeireiro (plots 135,136, 137, 138, 139, 158,and 159); Paulo Medeiros (plot 124); Paulo Ribeiro Andrade, Grupo Trindade; Luciano Fernandes (plot 126); LuisHenrique (plot 107); 3) Gleba Manduacari: Domingos Bibiano; Goianinho; Tranca Rua; Tota and sons; Cleildo andPereira.


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6.1 Recommendations to Porto de Moz, Castelo dos Sonhos and Anapu

� Adopt urgent and necessary measures to guarantee the implementation of the“Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve, such as allowing the free use of the land bythe traditional and extractivist communities and carry out the expropriation of theprivate rural properties located within the boundaries of the reserve, according toArticles 3 and 4 of Decree 8, of November 2004 (IBAMA).

� Promote and execute the expropriation for social interest of the rural propertiesand their developments identified in the “Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve.The justification for the recovery of possession should be the urgency required byDecree-Law 3,365, article 15.

� Promote, through IBAMA’s legal department, the appropriate administrativeand judicial measures aimed at canceling eventual property titles and their respectiveregistry certificates which are considered to be irregular and that impact on the“Verde para Sempre” Extractive Reserve.

� Take measures to guarantee efficient inspections by environmental organs, inclu-ding setting up, with the required infrastructure, an IBAMA advanced post in theregion (IBAMA and MMA).

� Take the necessary measures to inspect and fine those responsible for environ-mental crimes and remove their names from properties destined to PDS projects.200

� Publicize the results of the actions carried out by IBAMA in the municipality ofAnapu.

6.2 Recommendations to Terra do Meio

� Immediately start the procedures to implement Conservation Units already decreedthat remain to be physically demarcated, and the elaboration of management orusage plans (federal and state governments).

200 In a meeting that took place in Anapu on 25 February 2005, IBAMA technicians were to follow inspection activitiescarried out by INCRA in the region. According to information provided by workers, on 13 June 2005 very few areaswere effectively inspected by IBAMA. The situation of illegal exploitation of timber in areas destined to the PDSremains a serious problem.

167


� Immediately set aside the area around the Canopus Road as an Area for Environ-mental Preservation, according to a requirement by the Movement for the Develo-pment of the Transamazonic and Xingu Regions (Movimento pelo Desenvolvimentoda Transamazônica e Xingu, or MDTX), carrying out the micro-zoning and thenallocating the areas for family agriculture (Pará state government).

� Support legal actions against landowners who have destroyed forest areas withoutpermission from environmental organs, including the obligation for those landow-ners to pay the costs of the recovery of the destroyed areas.

7. RECOMMENDATIONS TO COMBAT CORRUPTION IN PUBLIC BODIES

� Start an inquiry within INCRA and ITERPA to investigate the members of theirstaffs who participated in the grilagem scheme in that region (Federal PublicMinistry; INCRA; and IBAMA).

� Set up procedures to investigate and punish the agents involved in the cases ofviolence against workers and environmental crimes denounced by this report (stateand federal Public Ministries).

� Immediately support and pass the Constitutional Amendment Proposals 304/2004 and 374/2005, which deal with the “provision of notary and registry servicesby public bodies” and the federalization of the registry offices.


168

169


Annexes


170

171


Annex I

LEADERS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND OTHER

ORGANIZATIONS MURDERED IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

MUNICIPALITY NAME DATE LEGAL PROCEDURE

01. São Geraldo Araguaia Raimundo Ferreira Lima – Trade Unionist 1980 Not brought to court

02. Marabá Gabriel Sales Pimenta – Lawyers 1982 Procedure ongoingfor 23 years

03. Tomé-Açu Benedito Alves Bandeira – Trade Unionist 08.07.1984 No information on the case

04. Eldorado do Carajás Sister Adelaide Molinari – Missionary 02.05.1985 Only the gunman was triedand then aquitted 19 yearsafter the crime

05. Rio Maria João Canuto de Oliveira – Trade Unionist 18.12.1985 Masterminds convicted andsentenced to 18 years,but still at large

06. Belém Paulo Fonteles de Lima – Lawyer and 1987former congressman

07. Rio Maria Expedito Ribeiro de Souza – 02.02.1991 Gunman convicted andTrade Unionist sentenced, but still at large.

The mastermind of the crimeconvicted and sentenced tohouse arrest

08. Eldorado do Carajás Arnaldo Delcídio Ferreira – 01.05.1993 Procedure ongoing forTrade Unionist 12 years

09. Eldorado do Carajás Antônio Telles – Trade Unionist 02.10.1994 Procedure ongoing for 7 years

10. Mãe do Rio Reijane Guimarães – Trade Unionist 1995 No information–Member of women’s movment

11. Parauapebas Onalício Barros e Valentim Serra – 26.03.98 Procedure ongoing for 8 yearsLeader of Landless Workers Movement

12. Parauapebas Euclides Francisco Paulo 26.09.1999 Only the gunman has beenconvicted and sentenced andis doing time

13. Rondon do Pará José Dutra da Costa (Dezinho) 21.11.2000 Procedure ongoing for– Trade Unionist 5 years

14. Marabá José Pinheiro Lima – Trade Unionist 09.07.2001 Procedure ongoing for 4 years

15. Altamira Ademir Alfeu Federicci (Dema) 30.08.2001 Procedure ongoing for 4 years– Trade Unionist

16. Altamira Bartolomeu Morais da Silva (Brasília) 21.07.2002 Procedure ongoing for 3 years– Trade Unionist

17. Afuá Osvaldino Viana de Almeida (Profeta) 20.10.2002 No information available– Trade Unionist

18. Santarém José Orlando de Souza – Trade Unionist 03.05.2003 No information available

19. Rondon do Pará Ribamar Francisco dos Santos 06.02.2004 Investigation not concluded– Trade Unionist

20. Anapu Sister Dorothy Mae Stang – Missionary 12.02.2005 Procedure ongoing

Source: Pastoral Land Commission in Pará.


172

173


Annex II

PEOPLE THREATENED WITH DEATH IN THE STATE OF PARÁ

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01. Riozinho

Settlement

02. Riozinho

Settlement

03. Riozinho

Settlement

04. Riozinho

Settlement

05. Boa Sorte /

Boa Vista Farm

06. Regional

FETAGRI

07. Bom Jardim

Farm

08. Bom Jardim

Farm

09. Bom Jardim

Farm

10. Bom Jardim

Farm

11. Bom Jardim

Farm

12. Regional

FETAGRI office

Raimundo Deumiro

de Lima dos Santos

Benedito Freire

Raimundo Pereira

do Nascimento

Dionísio Pereira

Ednalva Rodrigues

Araújo

Sebastião Alves de

Sousa.

José Agrício da

Silva

Filhos de José

Agrício

Raimundo Vicente

da Silva

Tereza Ferreira da

Silva

Gilson José da Silva

Francisco de Assis

Solidade da Costa

Leader of a riverine

community

Leader

Leader

Leader

Leader

FETAGRI’s

Secretary for

Agrarian Policy

Landless worker

Landless worker

Landless worker

Landless worker

Landless worker

Regional

coordenador

Altamira/ Bannach/

Ourilândia

Altamira/ Bannach/

Ourilândia

Altamira/ Bannach/

Ourilândia

Altamira/ Bannach/

Ourilândia

Parauapebas

Marabá

São Félix do Xingu





Marabá

Threatened after protesting

in favor of the creation of

the reserve.

As above.

As above.

As above.

Threatened by the landowner,

Valdemar Camilo, after leading

the occupation of the farm.

Coordinates the settlements

in the region and for

this reason is receiving

threats.

Threatened by the

landowners in the region,

due to heavy involvement

in the occupation of large

farms in the region.

Considered at risk.

LOCATION OR TYPE

OF CONFLICTVICTIM

MOVEMENT /

CATEGORYMUNICIPALITY SITUATION


174

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13. Gleba Curuá

14. Vale do

Jurupi/Colônia

Providência

15. Vale do Jurupi/

Colônia

Providência

16. Rural Workers

Union

17. Rural Workers

Union

18. Rural Workers

Union

19. Praia Alta

Piranheira Agro-

extractivist

Settlement Plan

20. Rural Workers

Union

Ivanilde Maria

Prestes Alves

Genival Soares

dos Santos

Raimundinho

Maria Joel Dias da

Costa

José Soares de

Brito

Antonio Gomes

Maria do Espírito

Santo

Cordiolino José de

Andrade

Rural worker

Leader

Leader

President of the

Rural workers

Union

President of the

Rural workers’

Union

President of the

Rural workers’

Union

President of the

Residents’

Association

Director of Rural

Workers Union

Novo Progresso

Paragominas

Paragominas

Rondon do Pará

Abel Figueiredo

Marabá

Nova Ipixuna

Rondon do Pará

Sister of Adilson Prestes,

murdered in Novo

Progresso for denouncing

grileiros and loggers in the

region. Has received

threats.

Widow of Trade Unionist

José Dutra da Costa,

murdered in 2000. Despite

being under police

protection continues to

receive threats.

Was subject to an attempted

kidnapping when he was a

Trade Unionist in Rondon

do Pará. Has rereceived

continual threats. Conside-

red at risk.

Has received death threats

as a result of heavy

involvement in landless

people settlements. Consi-

dered to be at risk.

Has received continual

death threats from

landowners and loggers in

the region. Considered at

risk.

Threatened by landowners

due to heavy involvement

in landless people

settlements.

LOCATION OR TYPE

OF CONFLICTVICTIM

MOVEMENT /


175


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21. Rural Workers

Union

22. Creation of

extractive reserves

in Terra do Meio

23. Rural Workers

Union

24. Rural Workers

Union

25. Sister of the

murdered trade

unionist Brasília

26. PDS

Esperança

27. PDS

Esperança

28. PDS

Esperança

29. PDS in Anapu

30. PDS in Anapu

Geraldo Soares

Fernandes

Tarcisio Feitosa da

Silva

Carmelita Felix da

Silva

Sandra Barbosa

Sena

Maria de Fátima

Moreira

Cícero Pinto da Cruz

Geraldo Margela de

Almeida Filho

J. L. S.

(53 years-old).

Francisco de Assis

dos Santos Souza

Gabriel de Moura

Director of Rural

Workers Union

Pastoral worker

Director of Rural

Settler

Sister of Victim

Witness to the

murder of Sister

Dorothy Stang

Agricultural

technician

Witness to the

murder of Sister

Dorothy Stang

President of the

Rural workers’

Union

Vice-President of

the Rural workers’

Union (STR)

Rondon do Pará

Altamira

Parauapebas

Parauapebas

Castelo dos sonhos

– Altamira

Anapu

Anapu

Anapu

Anapu

Anapu

Threatened by landowners

due to heavy involvement in

landless people settlements

in the region.

Devoted to the sttrugle for

the creation and

maintenance of forestal

reserves in the Altamira

region. Has received threats.

Threatened as a result of his

work alongisde rural

workers in the municipality.

She led the camping of

landless families in the

Tapete Verde Farm. Has

received threats.


threats due to her work

seeking justice for the as-

sassination of her brother.

Considered at risk.

Was included in the

PROVITA, witness protecti-

on program.

One of the witnesses to the

murder of Sister Dorothy

Stang. Considered to be at risk.

Witness to the murder of

Sister Dorothy Stang.

Under Police protection.

Threatened due to his

work ahead of the STR

and for his support to

farmers within the PDSs.

LOCATION OR TYPE

OF CONFLICTVICTIM

MOVEMENT /



176

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31. PDS

32. Verde para

Sempre Extractive

Reserve

33. Verde para

Sempre Extractive

Reserve

34. Murder of

trade unionist

Brasília

35. Conflicts in the

Mãe do Rio

municipality

36. Carajás

Encampment

37. Encampment

in the Santa

Mônica Farm

38. Viver e

Preservar

Movement

39. Verde para

Sempre Extractive

Reserve

Father Amaro Lopes

de Souza

Idalino Nunes Assis

Adenei Gemaque

Leal

Antonio Ferreira de

Almeida Silva

Raimundo Nonato

dos Santos, known

as “Índio”

Raimundo Nonato

Costa Silva, known

as “Italiano”

Manoel

Antonia Melo

da Silva

Claudio Wilson

Soares Barbosa

Agente de pastoral

President of the

Rural workers’

Union

CPT worker

Witness

Leader of the

Landless people

movement

Leader

Leader

Leader

Leader

Anapu

Porto de Moz

Porto de Moz

Castelo dos

Sonhos – Altamira

Castanhal

Parauapebas

Rondon do Pará

Altamira

Porto de Moz

Lives under constant threat. Did

not accept ostensive security

and demands security through

investigation of the threats.

One of the main leaders in the

sttrugle for the creation of the

Extractive Reserve Verde

para Sempre in Porto de

Moz. Has received continual

threats and is at risk.

Has received many threats in

2002 and 2003 due to his work

for the creation of the Extractive

Reserve. These threats cooled

down in the last two years.

Threatened because he is

one of the main witnesses in

the case of the assassination

of trade unionist Brasília.

Led the encampment in the

Pampulha Farm. Threated

by the landowners of the

región. Considered at risk.

Leader of the encampment.


threats. Considered at risk.

Has received threats due to

his work for the creation of

environmental reserves in

the Altamira region.

Has received heavy

threats in 2002; these

threats have cooled

down in the last two

years.

LOCATION OR TYPE

OF CONFLICTVICTIM

MOVEMENT /


177


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Source: Pastoral Land Commission in Pará.

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40. Praia Alta

Piranheira Agro-

extractivist

settlement

41. Conflict in

Gleba Mandaquari

42. Human

rights defender

43. Conflicts in

Anapu

44. Conflicts in

Anapu

45. Information

not available

46. Conflicts in the

Santa Clara Farm

47. Conflict in the

Cosme e Damião

Farm

48. 1º de março

Settlement

José Claudio

Ribeiro da Silva

Odino Ferreira da

Conceição

Frei Henri des

Reziers

Elias Pereira de

Sousa

Eloina Estevão de

Araujo (Maria)

Deurival Xavier

Santiago.

Raimundo Paulino

da Silva

Sebastião

Rodrigues de

Castro

Maria Gorete

Barradas

Leader

Landless worker

Missionary

Leader

Leader

Leader

Leader

Leader

Leader

Nova Ipixuna

Anapu

Xinguara

Anapu

Anapu

Pacajá

Tucumã –

Ourilandia

Marabá

São João do

Araguaia


threats from landowners and

loggers in that municipality,

who disagree with the Settle-

ment. Considered at risk.

Leader of the Landless

Workers Movement. Has

received threats.

Is under police protection.

Has been threatened for

several years by landowners

in the region.

Has received threats.

Receives minor protection

from the National Program for

the Protection of Human

Rights Defenders.





Rights Defenders.





Rights Defenders.

Receives police protection. Has

been threatened for

coordinating the processo f

land occupations in the region.

Threatened by gunmen

ordered by the landowner

who had interests in the

Farm. Considered at risk.

Has received threats from

groups linked to local

politicians who are against

agrarian reform.

LOCATION OR TYPE

OF CONFLICTVICTIM

MOVEMENT /



178

179


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Annex III

EMPLOYERS FINED FOR MAKING USE OF SLAVE LABOR INTHE STATE OF PARÁ (PORTARIA 540, 15 DE OCTOBER 2004)

Abdon Lustosa Neto

Adauto José Galli

Adenilson Rodrigues

da Silva

Afonso Vieira Simões

Agropal Agropecuária

Palmeiras Ltda.

Agropecuária Irmãos

Avelino Ltda.

Agropecuária São

Roberto S/A

Agropecuária

Umuarama Ltda.

Aldo Pedreschi

Alexandre Luiciano

Santos Prata

Alsoni José Malinsky

Altamir Soares da Costa

Aluísio Alves de Sousa

Alvany Dias Santana

191.608.011-15

026.396.888-04

469.607.241-04

031.108.776-00

04.995.650/0001-75

31.541.907/0003-53

46.991.295/0001-06

15.320.781/0001-79

015.279598-72

032.118.601-00

008.369.312-20

031.091.351-91

054.909.523-34

062.451.881-72

Fazenda Sossego, zona rural,

Vicinal Tuerê – Novo Repartimento

Fazenda Lago Azul – Rod PA 150,

km 250, zona rural – Sapucaia

Fazenda Santa Rosa do Pará, zona

rural – Cumaru do Norte

Fazenda Rancho Alegre, zona rural

– Ulianópolis

Fazenda Táxi Aéreo – Estrada Rio

Dourados, km 100, zona rural –

Santa Maria das Barreiras

Fazenda Santa Leonina – Estrada

Banach, km 25, zona rural – Rio

Maria

Fazenda São Roberto, zona rural –

Santana do Araguaia

Fazenda Santa Fé – Rod. PA-150,

s/n, zona rural – Parauapebas

Fazenda Três Rios

Fazenda Rancho da Prtata – BR

010 – Vila Ligação – Dom Eliseu

Fazenda Cajazeira, zona rural –

Município de São Félix do Xingu

Fazenda Macaúba – Estrada do

Rio Preto, km 152, Marabá

Fazenda N.Sa. Aparecida, zona

rural – Breu Branco

Fazenda 5 Estrelas – Gleba Café,

Projeto Tartaruga, zona rural –

Marabá

26

107

154

42

49

18

171

118

8

13

41

52

37

13

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2004

July/2005

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

July/2005

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

EMPLOYERNATIONAL IDENTIFICATION

NUMBER –(CNPJ/CPF/CEI)201PROPERTY & LOCATION

NUMBER OF

FREED WORKERS

MONTH /

YEAR

201 CNPJ = National Directory of Legal Entities Number (Cadastro Nacional de Pessoas Jurídicas); CPF = TaxpayerIdentification Number (Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas); CEI = Special Social Security Registry (Cadastro Especial no Insti-tuto Nacional de Previdência Social).


180

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Antônio Barbosa de Melo

Antônio Luiz Fuchtel

ATS Serviços LTDA

Azis Mutran Neto

Carlos Gilberto

de Oliveira Barreto

Carmo Guimarães Giffone

Constantino de Oliveira

Guimarães

Clemente Duarte Ferreira

Dalva Navarros

Delvar Amâncio de Araújo

Divino Andrade Vieira

Ediones Bannach

Eurélio Piazza

Eutímo Lippaus

Fernando Dellacqua e

José Roberto Dellacqua

112.050.246-20

138.445.129-34

01.646.204-0001-67

001.149.102-78

061.129.601-25

036.642.871-34

069.745.541-68

009.507.346-91

792.342.759-34

037678.766-04

167.833.442-15

257.411.529-53

107.517.509-72

117.813.007-04

035.973.507-04

243.973.507-04

Fazendas Alvorada – 30km Rod PA

279, entre Água Azul e Ourilândia do

Norte

Fazenda Araguari – Rod PA 150, Xin-

guara e Povoado de Gogó da Onça

Fazenda Rio da Prata – Santana do

Araguaia

Fazenda Pau Pelado – Estrada do

Rio Preto, km 248, zona rural –

Itupiranga

Fazenda Tuere – Folha 10, Quadra

11, Lote 25 – Nova Marabá

Fazenda Mutamba – Rod PA 150,

km 21, zona rural – Marabá

Fazenda Olivence – Rod PA 275, km

40 – Curionópolis

Fazenda Acapulco – Rod PA 270, km

49 – Xinguara

Fazenda Colorado – Rod PA 275, km

50, Curionópolis

Fazenda Esmeralda – Estrada

Bannach, km 50 – Bannach

Fazenda São Miguel – estrada Rio

Capim, km 100 – Paragominas

Fazenda Ponta da Serra – Estrada

do Rio Preto – km 131 – Marabá

Fazenda Santa Luzia Tuerê II –

Marabá

Fazenda 5 Irmãos – Bannach

Fazenda Diadema IV ou Fazenda

Surucucu – Gleba Marabá, zona ru-

ral – Água do Norte

Fazenda 1200 (Fazenda Boa Fé) –

Rod. PA 279, km 145 – Gleba

Luciana, zona rural – Ourilândia do

Norte

Fazenda Baunilha – Rodovia BR

222, km 8,5 – estrada do Jacuzinho,

km 48 – Rondon do Pará

20

169

16

127

48

12

62

17

16

1

32

52

77

18

36

16

June/

2004

June/

2004

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

July/2005

Decem-

ber/2004

June/

2004

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

November/

2003

July/2005

November/2003


NUMBER –(CNPJ/CPF/CEI)PROPERTY & LOCATION

NUMBER OF

FREED WORKERS

MONTH /

YEAR

181


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Fernando Luiz Quagliato

Francisco Donato Linhares

de Araújo Filho

Geraldo José Ribeiro

Haroldo Vieira Passarinho

Humbero Rubens

Cansanção Filho

Iolandes Bannach

Jairo Carlos Borges

Jairo de Andrade

Jesus Batista Ferreira

João Batista Lopes

João Pereira Rocha

José Braz da Silva

José Carlos dos Santos

José Cristino Souza

José Ribamar Oliveria

José Humberto de Oliveira

José Rodrigues Alves

013.401.828-15

142.680.863-15

036.908.651-15

090.656.952-49

164.968.094-53

108.353.429-72

003.552.755-20

152.415.306-06

069.135.201-15

048.978.032-68

099.639.526-15

034.895.906-00

862.707.961-72

04.863.478/0001-04

CPF 003.107.601-78

061.525.381-49

217.768.491-91

026.849.501-72

500.047.41578.8

Fazenda Rio Vermelho – Xinguara

Zona rural do município de São Félix

do Xingu

Fazenda Boa Esperança – São Félix

do Xingu

Agropecuária Maciel II – Tucumã

Fazenda Ouro Verde – Estrada

Sapucaia/Pontão, km 08, zona rural

– Xinguara

Fazenda 03, zona rural – Bannach

Fazenda Ouro Preto – Vicinal Tuerê,

km 32 – Novo Repartimento

Fazenda Ouro Preto – Vicinal Tuerê,

km 32 – Novo Repartimento

Fazenda Forkilha – Rod. Rdedenção/

Santana do Araguaia, km 80, mais

14 km à esquerda – Santa Maria das

Barreiras

Fazenda Franciscana – Água Azul do

Norte

Fazenda Lorena – Rod PA 150, km

35 – Marabá

Fazenda Rolimaq – Estrada Tupanci,

distante 25 km da PA 279 – Água

Azul do Norte

Fazenda Boa Esperança – ET VS

45,8 – Ent.44 – Canaã

Fazenda Bela Vista – Terra do Meio,

zona rural – Altamira

Agropecuária Mirandopolis S.A –

Fazenda Mirandopolis – Rod BR 158,

km 180, Sta Maria das Barreiras

Fazenda Consolação – Rod OP 03,

km 20 – Brejo Grande do Araguaia

Fazenda Palmar – Rod. PA 257, Km

16, zona rural – Curionópolis

Fazenda São Lourenço, zona rural

– Santa Maria das Barreiras

167

60

4

152

43

26

27

18

97

13

16

13

10

19

33

58

20

20

November/

2003

July/2005

June/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

June/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

June/2004

July/2005

Decem-

ber/2004

June/2004

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004



NUMBER OF

FREED WORKERS

MONTH /

YEAR

November/2003

November/2003


182

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José Silva Barros

José Vaz da Costa

Juliano Heringer Branco

Lázaro José Veloso

Lima Araújo Agropecuária

Ltda

Luiz Antônio Zapparoli

Sacarelli

Manoel Porfírio dos Santos

Manoel José de

Carvalho ME

Marcos Antônio Eleutério

Neto

Miguel Vieira Messias

Milton Alonso

Newton Cunha Lemos

& Outros

Olavio da Silva

Pecuária Rio Largo Ltda

Pedro Lopes Lima

Roberto Castanheira de

Oliveira Silva

Romar Divino Montes

095.339.582-00

017.670.891-04

958.964.303-53

007.941.806-63

41.183.740/0001-98

026.574.558-67

148.742.707-78

044.320.523-91

15.74955/0001-13

967.616.821-34

089.536.515-49

363.085.958-53

787.054.878-20

090.345.106-97

08.156.226/0005-11

018.614.921-20

619.715.706-30

242.084.931-00

Fazenda Vale do Rio Fresco, zona


Fazenda Nsa. Aparecida, zona

rural – Rio Maria

Fazenda Herança – Goainésia

Fazenda São Luiz, zona rural –

Parauapebas

Fazenda Estrela de Maceió, zona

rural – Piçarra

Fazenda Estrela de Maceió, zona

rural – Piçarra

Fazenda São Luiz – Ourilândia do

Norte

Fazenda Paraíso – Rod PA-150

Vicinal da Cikel – Goianésia

M.José Carvalho ME – Furo dos

Poros, s/n – Afuá

Fazenda Gurupá – Estrada da

União, Gleba Xincrim, Zona rural

de água Azul do Norte

Fazenda Boca Quente – Bannach

Fazenda Dona Francisca – Zona

rural do Município de São Félix

do Xingu

Fazenda Marajaí – Rod PA 150,

km 70 – Xinguara

Fazenda Selva de Pedra – Vicinal

do Gelado, km 21, Novo Reparti-

mento

Fazenda Rio Dourado, s/n, mar-

gem direita do Rio Fresco, zona


Fazenda Pai Eterno, zona rural –


Fazenda Ribeirão Bonito – Rod.

Transamazônica, km 105 – Novo

Repartimento

Fazenda Vale do Paraíso II, zona

rural – Curionópolis

261

90

6

3

59

60

14

15

19

15

13

25

64

6

54

77

23

15

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

July/2005

June/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

June/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

July/2005

June/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

June/2004

November/2003



NUMBER OF

FREED WORKERS

MONTH /

YEAR

183


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Fazenda Pau Pelado, Estrada do Rio

Preto, km 248, zona rural, Itupiran-

gaba

Fazenda Colorado, zona rural de

Xinguara

Fazenda Buriti II – Estrada da

Canopus, Gleba Rio Pardo, zona ru-

ral – Altamira

Fazenda Santa Ana, zona rural –

Cumaru do Norte

Fazenda Senor – Rod BR 222, km

21, zona rural – Dom Elizeu

Fazenda Santa Maria – Rodovia BR

158, Santa Maria das Barreiras

Rod PA 150, à direita, km 40 –

Xinguara

Fazenda Estância do Pontal – Estra-

da da Central, próximo a Pontalina

– São Félix do Xingu

Fazenda Califórnia Rod PA 150, km

142, zona rural – São Félix do Xingu

Fazenda Rio Lages – Estrada Ímpar,

km115, zona rural – Goianésia

Fazenda Pindará – Estrada

Marajoara, margem direita, km 08 –

Dom Elizeu

Fazenda Madrugada – Redenção

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

Decem-

ber/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

November/

2003

June/2004

Decem-

ber/2004

Ronaldo Ferreira Melo

Roque Quagliato

Sandra Nancy de

Souza Cunha

Santa Ana – Agropecuária

e Industrial S/A

Senor Ltda

Túlio Paiva Gomes

Vale Bonito Agropecuária S/A

Wanderlei Dias Vieria

Wilson Ferreira da Rocha

Wilson Moreira Torres

Yashuhide Watanabe

Z.G. Ferreira Agropecuária

667.240.312-49

013.402.128-20

243.997.411-15

05.157.428/0001-01

06.266.209/0003-40

096.009.811-91

50.004.42.008.82

01.794.428/0001-16

375.721.481-15

451.263.137-20

087.141.342-68

105.575.552-72

03.501.470/0001-27

42

81

27

99

153

11

88

11

26

27

42

74

Source: Ministry of Labor and Employment – Mobile Inspection Group (list updated on 15 September 2005)



NUMBER OF

FREED WORKERS

MONTH /

YEAR

human rights violations in the amazon c v s of parÁ · krautler, elcia betânia da silva nunes,...

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