Page 20 - Respond 2018 Magazine

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Worst land-related killings

in decades expose Amazon’s

lawless frontier

By Fabiano Maisonnave in Taquarussu do Norte

Nine men were brutally killed in April in a remote Brazilian settlement where
deforestation, land grabbing and violence go unpunished

Nine men were stabbed or shot dead on 19 April over a electricity. Several of them are the offspring of settlers
territorial dispute in a remote area of Mato Grosso state, who colonised the neighbouring state of Rondônia in the
deep in the Amazon rainforest. 1970s and 1980s. Now, they have found their own land
to farm. Known as posseiros, or squatters, they have no
In the afternoon, hitmen swept through the land in question, legal claim and take their chances with the inconsistent law
known as Linha (road) 15, killing everyone they found. Some enforcement.
of the bodies bore signs of torture.
Fearing more attacks, most inhabitants left the region after
The worst land-related slaughter Brazil has seen in 21 years the violence, especially women and children. In the area
reflects a chronic ambiguity around land rights. On this where the slaughter took place, dogs roamed inside the
lawless frontier, far from the gaze of the authorities, forest houses in search of food and their deceased owners.
clearance and conflict go hand in hand.
After the attacks, state police arrested two men they
The rampage happened in a remote region, accessible only suspect of carrying out the murders on the orders of a
by an unpaved road. The closest city, Colniza, is a 7-hour timber merchant. Squatters, however, said they had a good
drive in the dry season; when it rains, it can take days. relationship with loggers (all of them illegal) and blamed
Communication here is so hard that the police were not unnamed rival farmers for the attack.
notified of the crime until almost 24 hours later.
Everything in Taquarussu runs informally. Despite the fact
On 26 April, Climate Home was the first media to visit the they have occupied some 20,000 hectares since the early
crime scene. The journey involved an hour’s flight in a rented 2000s and that selling and buying lots are common, none
aeroplane followed by a three hour drive in a 4×4 vehicle. of the families has land titles. As one squatter who asked
to remain anonymous put it, “the only document is our
Around 120 families live in a rural community called presence here”.
Taquarussu do Norte, a smattering of wooden houses
with water wells and bathrooms in the backyard and no The two government agencies in charge of land regulation
of that area disagree about who owns the land. Incra (the
Brazilian Federal Agrarian Reform Agency) said it belonged
to Mato Grosso state. Intermat, the state land management
agency, said it had belonged to a private owner since 1984,
but could not name the owner.

This imprecision is no exception. Official figures gathered by
Imazon, an non-profit research institution, show that there
are about 160,000 land claims pending regularization.
Credit: Google maps Moreover, there are 71.3 million hectares of public vacant

lands in the Amazon, an area twice the size of Germany.
These are vulnerable to illegal logging and land-grabbing,
according to data gathered by another independent
research institute, Ipam Amazônia.