Hundreds of people, including conspirators, intermediaries and gunmen, are involved in murder cases in the Brazilian state of Pará. In a city like Xinguara, with 76 rural workers murdered in the last thirty years, there has yet to be a single crime brought to justice. This represents a rate of impunity of 100%. The city of São Geraldo do Araguaia, with 49 murders in the same period, has an identical rate of impunity. This occurs in São Félix do Xingu as well, with 37 murders, and in Marabá, with 35 murders. Among the 40 municipalities that compose south and southeastern Pará, only two, Rio Maria and Eldorado do Carajás, do not have a rate of impunity of 100% in relation to murders of agricultural workers in the last thirty years.

Violence and Impunity: Permanent Reality
in the state of Pará

José Batista Gonçalves Afonso*

If the pattern of violence in the southern and southeastern regions of Pará is impressive, the impunity shocks us even more. The agrarian conflicts have resulted, in the past 18 years, in innumerable slaughters in which the complicity of public officials with organized crime in the countryside has been unequivocal. Conspirators and murderers are not arrested or even brought to trial, arrest warrants are not carried through, and gunmen act in conjunction with police.

We remember here a few examples of brutal crimes against rural workers and regional leaders whose assassins and enemies have never been punished.

Slaughter at Dois Irmãos / Xinguara / June 1985 / six workers dead
Slaughter at Ingá / Conceição do Araguaia / May 1985 / thirteen workers dead
Slaughter at Surubim / Xinguara / June 1985 / seventeen workers dead
Slaughter at Ubá Farm / São João do Araguaia 06/13/198506/18/1985 / eight workers murdered
Slaughter at Princesa Marabá Farm / 09/28/1985 / five workers murdered
Slaughter at Paraúnas / São Geraldo do Araguaia / 06/101986 / ten workers murdered
Slaughter at Goianésia / Goianésia do Pará / 10/281987 / two workers and a minor murdered
Slaughter at Pastorisa Farm / São João do Araguaia / 08/061995 / three workers murdered
Massacre at Eldorado do Carajás / Eldorado do Carajás / 04/171996 / nineteen workers murdered
Slaughter at São Francisco Farm / Eldorado do Carajás / 08/21199601/041997 / five workers murdered
Slaughter at Santa Clara Farm / Ourilândia do Norte / 01/13/1997 / three workers murdered
Slaughter at Morada Nova / 07/10/2001 / two workers murdered, one less than 15 years old

We also cite the murders of important leaders in the region, who risked themselves in the intransigent defense of the rights of agricultural workers: Gabriel Pimenta, attorney (06/05/1982), Sister Adelaide Molinari, Catholic nun (05/02/1985), João Canuto, union leader (12/18/1985), Expedito Ribeiro, union leader (02/02/91), Arnaldo Delcídio Ferreira, union leader (05/02/1993), Antônio Teles, union leader and wife, Alcina Gomes (10/12/1994), Onalício Araújo Barros and Valentim Serra, MST leaders (03/26/1998), Francisco Euclides de Paula, union leader (05/201999), José Dutra da Costa, union leader (11/22/2000), and José Pinheiro Lima, union leader (07/09/2001).

The above-mentioned crimes and slaughters are just a few of the hundreds of murders that have occurred in the region in the past thirty years and that continue unpunished even today.

Although we recognize the exceptional importance of the conviction of landowner Jerônimo Alves do Amorim (06/06/2000) for the death of Expedito Ribeiro, and the conviction of Adilson Carvalho Laranjeiras and Vantuir de Paula (05/29/2003) for the death of João Canuto, it should be acknowledged that these were the first and only conspirators against rural workers to be brought to trial for their actions. It stands to mention, however, that the landowner Jerônimo Amorim faces house arrest and the other two landowners are awaiting their appeal in freedom. Thus, even after being convicted, it is unlikely they will complete their sentences behind bars because of their political influence.

The trial of two military police officers that carried out the massacre at Eldorado do Carajás on April 17, 1996 is yet another clear example of how the State and Judiciary Power creates impunity. The then-governor of the state (Almir Gabriel), the Secretary of Public Security, and the Commander General of the Military Police, responsible for the order to clear the obstruction of highway PA 150 "at any cost," were excluded from the trial. During the course of the proceedings, the State Judiciary Power behaved scandalously, clearly favoring the accused. The first hearing that took place on August 16, 1999, in which the officials that commanded the operation were absolved, was annulled due to the biased behavior of the presiding judge. During the second hearing (May 21, 2002), the stand taken by the judge clearly in favor of the accused was such that the social movements and the prosecuting attorneys left the hearing in protest. The result: only two commanders were convicted and are awaiting appeal in freedom. All the other officials and police, numbering 142 officers, have been absolved. Impunity has triumphed.

Impunity, sadly, has not received any attention, especially on the part of the State Judiciary Power of Pará that, by remaining completely permissive in practice, stubbornly shows itself ignorant of the intimate connection between continuing impunity and further murders in the region.

Hundreds of people, including conspirators, intermediaries, and gunmen, are involved in murder cases throughout the state of Pará. In spite of this fact, only five criminal convictions have been recorded - (1) Jerônimo Alves de Amorim (conspirator), (2) Francisco de Assis Ferreira (intermediary) and José Serafim Sales (gunman), (3) Ubiratan Ubirajara (gunman), (4) two military officials (Mário Pantoja and José M. Oliveira) that oversaw the Massacre at Eldorado and (5) Adilson Laranjeira and Vantuir Paula (conspirators).

The first three mentioned are involved in the murder of Expedito Ribeiro de Souza, president of the Agricultural Workers Union of Rio Maria, on 02/02/1991. The fourth on the list is involved in the murder of José Canuto and Paulo Canuto, directors of the Agricultural Workers Union of Rio Maria, on April 22, 1991.

Ubiratan Ubirajara, convicted to fifty years behind bars, remained imprisoned six months before escaping from the penitentiary in October of 1994. He was never again captured. José Serafim Sales, convicted to 25 years, completed eight years of his sentence before escaping prison on March 14, 2000. He was never captured.

Francisco de Assis Ferreira, convicted in 1994 to 21 years of prison, has been free since 1998.

Jerônimo Alves de Amorim, who gave the order for the killing of union leader Expedito Ribeiro in Rio Maria in February of 1991, is today under house arrest in Goiâna. All others found guilty await appeal against their convictions.

In the last few years, in light of irrefutable evidence, the Civil Police has arrested, with judicial authorization (by directives of preventative imprisonment), some landowners who have ordered assassinations, not definitively convicted judicially. One of these cases is the landowner Carlos Antônio da Costa, who ordered the murder of two MST organizers - Onalício Araújo Barros ("Fusquinha") and Valentin Serra ("Doctor") - in Parauapebas, in March of 1998. The other case involves the landowner Décio José Barroso Nunes, who ordered the murder of José Dutra da Costa ("Dezinho"), ex-president of the Agricultural Workers Union of Rondon do Pará, in November of 2000. Carlos Antônio da Costa remained imprisoned under suspicion for 22 days, Décio José Barroso Nunes for only 13 days. Both were let go by decision of the Justice Tribunal of the state of Pará. They are accused of committing violent crimes - murders - legally classified as hideous crimes.

Of the 1,207 cases of murdered rural workers in the period between 1985 and March of 2001, there were 85 definitive verdicts against those involved, resulting in an average of 93% of the total without final verdicts.

In south and southeastern Pará, during the same period (1985 to March 2001), 340 rural workers were murdered. Of all these crimes, only two were brought to trial with those responsible, resulting in an average of 99.41% of murders without any criminal judicial resolution - conviction or absolution.

In a city like Xinguara, with 76 rural workers murdered in the last thirty years, there has yet to be a single crime brought to justice. This represents a rate of impunity of 100%. In São Geraldo do Araguaia, with 49 murders during the same period, there is an identical rate of impunity. This occurs also in São Félix do Xingu, with 37 killings, and in Marabá, with 35 murders.

Among the 40 municipalities that compose south and southeastern Pará, only two, Rio Maria and Eldorado do Carajás, do not have a rate of impunity of 100% in relation to murders of agricultural workers in the last thirty years (1972-2002).

José Batista Gonçalves Afonso is an attorney and national coordinator of the Agrarian Commission of Land, Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT).