The priest is Stang\u2019s successor and a member of the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT), an arm of the Catholic Church that works with Brazilian rural workers seeking agrarian land reform. He is charged with conspiracy, threat, extortion, property trespass and money laundering, all in connection with his allegedly being the leader of a criminal organization aimed at occupying land in Anapu in the Xingu basin of Par\u00e1 state in the Amazon.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-5276-1-800x533.jpg\")
These serious charges were made by the president of the Rural Association of Anapu, Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes, a logger and former deputy mayor of the city of Altamira, who ran unsuccessfully for state deputy in the October elections. At that time, Fernandes was also a chief campaigner in the region for then presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who in turn, recorded a video supporting Fernandes\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n
After Bolsonaro\u2019s win, Fernandes appeared on local Xingu billboards hugging the president elect, with a message thanking voters for their support. As a reward, it is rumored that Fernandes is in line to head the Xingu, Par\u00e1, branch of the Brazilian Institute for Settlement and Land Reform (INCRA), which oversees the workers settlements that Father Amaro has helped support in the region.<\/p>\n
In addition to being investigated for his participation in a scheme to defraud the federal government known as the SUDAM Mafia in the late 1990s, Fernandes and two of his brothers received R$28.2 million (US$7.2 million) in fines for environmental crimes. \u201cIBAMA [Brazil\u2019s environmental agency] is an industry of fines,\u201d the logger says in his own defense, echoing the rhetoric of the President-elect, who was also\u00a0fined in the past by IBAMA<\/a>\u00a0for an environmental crime, illegal fishing.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is the main organizer of land invasions in Anapu. Father Amaro was behind it all. He was Sister Dorothy\u2019s right hand, and she always encouraged land invasions,\u201d Fernandes says.<\/p>\n Father Amaro denies the allegations: If I did anything wrong it was to direct people to seek their rights at the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office, the Public Defender\u2019s Office and other agencies, because people were often threatened, they were killed and nothing happened.\u2026 If I\u2019ve done anything wrong, it was to help put land in the hands of the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n The charges made by Fernandes and other local loggers and landowners led to a police investigation and a dramatic arrest last March of the priest that involved six vehicles and 15 officers. The operation was even given a name: E\u00e7a de Queiroz<\/em>, a reference to a Portuguese writer whose masterpiece The Crime of Father Amaro<\/em> is about a clergyman\u2019s illicit relationship with a woman. The Xingu Father Amaro was also accused of sexual harassment, a charge that has since been dismissed by prosecutors.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of murdering him, they [Fernandes and other residents] found a way to discredit him [Father Amaro] by attacking his image and criminalizing him to drive him from Anapu,\u201d the CPT wrote in a statement, comparing the landowners\u2019 current smear campaign strategy with the one conducted against Dorothy Stang in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n It is still early, but already very hot: a typical day in the Amazon biome. The red dust rising from the roads, and the white smoke from burning rainforest, obscure the blue of the sky above. The smoke causes an inevitable sensation of suffocation in outsiders. Near Dorothy\u2019s grave \u2013 adorned with flowers and her photo \u2013 a red cross is thrust into the ground. It bears the names of 16 rural workers who have been murdered in the last three years in Anapu, a dark reflection on the region\u2019s escalation of violence.<\/p>\n Stang was assassinated, shot six times, in 2005 while on the road to her major legacy, the PDS Esperan\u00e7a<\/em>, a Portuguese acronym for the Sustainable Development Project Hope \u2013 an Amazon land reform effort that settled small-scale farmers onto plots, with 20 percent of the land intended for agricultural production while the remainder was conserved as forest under Brazil\u2019s Forest Code. That system went \u2013 and continues to go \u2013 against the interests of Xingu-area loggers.<\/p>\n Supporters of Stang and Amaro say that 13 years ago loggers took aim at Sister Dorothy, and now they target her successor.<\/p>\n At the Anapu courthouse, 51-year-old Father Amaro reads a small book, The Liturgy of the Hours<\/em>, while the prosecutor questions defense witnesses. Amaro wears a shirt emblazoned with Stang\u2019s photo. The priest didn\u2019t speak at this hearing because he wasn\u2019t to be questioned until later. Amaro seemed calm in court but admitted afterward that he distanced himself emotionally from the proceeding, viewing it as he would a movie.<\/p>\n Amaro first dedicated himself to rural workers and their land rights at the age of 19, after hearing a radio report covering the murder of Father Josimo Tavares, then the CPT coordinator in neighboring Maranh\u00e3o state. Amaro decided then and there to become a priest and work in the same organization as Tavares. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know what the CPT was,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n Three years later, Amaro went on to study at the seminary in Bel\u00e9m. There he met Stang, who invited him to do an internship in Anapu. After being ordained priest in 1998, he went to the local parish and worked with Stang at the CPT until she was murdered.<\/p>\n Father Amaro himself was released from jail in late June. He has since left Anapu and now lives at the church\u2019s headquarters in Altamira, surrounded by security guards. Feeling always threatened, he complains of not being able to walk by himself and shows distress at the uncertainty surrounding his future.<\/p>\n In an interview with Rep\u00f3rter Brasil, the first since his 2018 arrest, Amaro blames Fernandes for the ordeal of recent months. He adds that, after the wrongful lawsuit is concluded against him, that he plans to file a countersuit against his attackers, asking for compensation for the psychological pain and suffering that the false accusations have caused. \u201cDid you see how people treat me in Anapu?\u201d he asks, referring to the hugs he received from the local population when he walked out of the courthouse. The case\u2019s conclusion isn\u2019t expected until 2019, and not before Father Amaro and other witnesses have testified.<\/p>\n By the time he was released from jail in June, Father Amaro had served 92 days, all of them in the same prison where Regivaldo Pereira Galv\u00e3o, aka Tarad\u00e3o (Portuguese for Big Pervert) was doing time; he is the rancher convicted of masterminding Stang\u2019s assassination<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect they set it up [putting me in that particular prison] to kill me in jail,\u201d says the priest.<\/p>\n Local authorities made no attempt to hold the two men separately. \u201cWhen I got there Tarad\u00e3o was inside. He was the first to wish me a Happy Easter,\u201d Father Amaro revealed. \u201cI didn\u2019t say anything and I didn\u2019t even shake his hand. He [Tarad\u00e3o] said, \u2018You\u2019re innocent. I\u2019m innocent. This was something they\u2019ve set up for us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Like so many other killings in the Brazilian Amazon, Dorothy Stang\u2019s murder was motivated by land disputes. Pereira Galv\u00e3o bought a plot from the Fernandes family. However, that property was already part of the land reform project advocated for by Stang. Then Pereira Galv\u00e3o sold the plot to logger Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, aka Bida. Later, according to authorities, Bida and Pereira Galv\u00e3o teamed up to arrange Stang\u2019s 2005 murder.<\/p>\n After the crime, Pereira Galv\u00e3o hid on the farm belonging to Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes\u2019s brother D\u00e9lio. Although D\u00e9lio was also investigated for allegedly masterminding the crime, he was never charged or tried for participating in Stang\u2019s assassination, even though he had supposedly threatened the nun in 2002. D\u00e9lio Fernandes once offered Stang a ride, and reportedly told her that no one should ever invade his lands or they \u201cwould have blood to their ankles.\u201d<\/p>\n During a telephone interview with Rep\u00f3rter Brasil, which lasted more than half an hour, Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes spoke mostly in a polite tone, though raised his voice several times. At one point, he declared menacingly that he wanted to \u201clook in the eye,\u201d presumably of the inquiring journalist. When asked if Fernandes was making a threat, he replied: \u201cWhat threat? F__k you, lad.\u201d Fernandes also directed anger at Father Amaro, who he called \u201ca pederast, a fagot and a bum.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fernandes family is part of the consortium that killed Dorothy,\u201d Father Amaro told Rep\u00f3rter Brasil, noting that the family is responsible for the charges he now faces. \u201cThey claim to be the owners of these lands. What makes them angry? It\u2019s that the PDS [settlement] was created within the area D\u00e9lio Fernandes had sold to Tarad\u00e3o.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite its small population of just 27,000 people, Anapu is larger than some countries, including Jamaica and Qatar. The population there has soared by 32 percent in the last eight years, a demographic boom caused by its proximity, just 80 kilometers (50 miles) away from the controversial Belo Monte mega-dam<\/a>. With the conclusion of the dam\u2019s construction in 2015, hundreds of families, without jobs or prospects, came to Anapu in search of homes, work and land.<\/p>\n \u201cMany families arrive and are pressured by loggers to invade [established workers\u2019] settlements,\u201d explained Jorge Jatob\u00e1 Correia, Brazil\u2019s national agrarian ombudsman.<\/p>\n The influx of people hunting for land helped ignite already smoldering disputes between land reform settlers and illegal loggers. Those conflicts had their origins back in the 1970s when Brazil\u2019s military government invited outsiders to settle along the new Trans-Amazon Highway. The government offered provisional land titles that depended on the properties\u2019 production for the deeds to become permanent.<\/p>\n However, in most cases, the land neither became productive, nor were the provisional titles ever cancelled. Eventually the outsiders began selling the properties. The main buyers \u2013 including the Fernandes patriarch and his sons \u2013 turned to logging, cutting down the rainforest, extracting and selling timber.<\/p>\n It was in this context that Dorothy Stang arrived in Anapu in 1983 and began fighting for the possession of that same land as eventually justified by Brazilian agrarian reform policies. In 2003, during the administration of President Lula da Silva, the first agrarian reform settlements in the area became official. Stang was murdered less than three years later.<\/p>\n After her assassination, international pressure resulted in a stronger Brazilian government presence in Anapu, which provided some respite from the conflicts. But, the Belo Monte dam\u2019s completion and the surge in unemployed construction workers seeking livelihoods and land caused violence to explode again in 2015.<\/p>\n The escalation of the clashes, which resulted in the arrest of Father Amaro last Spring, has centered around Lot 44, also known as the Santa Maria Farm, an agrarian reform settlement covering an area equivalent to 3,000 football fields whose possession is disputed by the Fernandes family.<\/p>\n Although the Fernandes family continues to claim Lot 44 ownership, the Brazilian Institute for Settlement and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), and the Federal Prosecutor\u2019s Office both requested the property be slated for agrarian reform \u2013 a request accepted by a federal justice in Altamira last August. The Fernandes family has appealed that decision.<\/p>\n In October 2016, the encampment of rural workers living on the property was burned, and Public Prosecutors charged Silv\u00e9rio and Luciano Fernandes with the crime. Asked about it on the phone, Silv\u00e9rio said he \u201cdemolished\u201d the houses. \u201cLot 44 is ours. It\u2019s ours!\u201d exclaimed Fernandes, president of the Rural Association of Anapu, and possibly the next head of the Xingu, Par\u00e1, branch of INCRA, with authority over the settlements.<\/p>\n M\u00e1rcio Rodrigues dos Reis, the primary accuser against the Fernandes brothers in the encampment fire, was himself arrested in March 2017 while trying to rebuild the camp at Lot 44. Reis was accused of trespassing and illegal possession of a firearm. Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes accompanied the police when they came to arrest Reis.<\/p>\n Another accuser of the Fernandes family, Valdemir Resplandes dos Santos, was murdered in January 2018. Two of his relatives have also been killed, as has a witness to the crime. Of the 16 murders of rural workers since 2015, police investigations have led to the arrest of suspects in just one case. Another 15 remain unsolved.<\/p>\n The CPT calls the Civil Police \u201cinoperative\u201d in their failure to identify, arrest and charge perpetrators. \u201cThe police act in a partial way, without hiding their proximity to the landowners and land-grabbers who illegally occupy public lands. The impunity of these crimes is one of the causes of continuing violence,\u201d the Catholic organization says.<\/p>\n The press office of the Civil Police was asked to comment for this story, but failed to reply.<\/p>\n Tensions between landless rural workers and illegal loggers were further fuelled by the May 19 murder in Anapu of Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes\u2019s brother Luciano.<\/p>\n After his brother\u2019s death, Silv\u00e9rio recorded a video<\/a> asking for assistance from then presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. The shirt displayed in the film, stained with Luciano\u2019s blood, was emblazoned with an image of retired army captain Bolsonaro, who has long expressed his opposition to the landless workers\u2019 movement, and likened its participants to terrorists<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to fight these land invaders, these criminals, these thugs. Anapu has become a place of thugs. You are our hope,\u201d Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes said in the video, which went viral on social media among Bolsonaro supporters. Fernandes accuses Luciano\u2019s murder on social movements, whose actions, he says, are locally led by Father Amaro.<\/p>\n This view, however, is not confirmed by the police investigation of the killing. According to the Chief of the Xingu Civil Police Superintendence Walison Damasceno, the motive behind Luciano Fernandes\u2019 killing is allegedly a dispute between loggers. Damasceno, who is in charge of the nearly finished investigation, says the current crime suspects have no connection whatsoever with Brazil\u2019s social movements.<\/p>\n A month after the murder, the police arrested a person alleged to have ordered the killing. Later, they also arrested Josiel Ferreira de Almeida, aka \u201cThe Booted Cat,\u201d accused of acting as a middleman in the crime. In October, Almeida\u2019s two sons were murdered in an Anapu bar.<\/p>\n When asked by Rep\u00f3rter Brasil if he had any involvement in the Almeida sons\u2019 deaths, Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes denied it: \u201cWe don\u2019t endorse this terrorism of taking anyone\u2019s life. We are good people. We were defending our property. My brother was murdered and now I become a suspect?\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of sacred images and a cross, the altar of the local church in Anapu displays a painting of a rural worker crucified on a cut tree. Sister Dorothy Stang and Father Josimo Tavares, both members of the CPT, both assassinated, stand on either side. The altar divides the town and even the church, since some parishioners want the painting replaced by a conventional altar.<\/p>\n The disputes in Anapu echo ideological struggles between the left and the right that in recent years have polarized Brazil as a whole, and which some say helped put leading presidential Workers Party presidential candidate Lula behind bars<\/a>, while catapulting far right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency.<\/p>\n Now analysts fear that these tensions, especially between Amazon land-grabbers and agrarian reform settlements, could explode into violence<\/a> in 2019.<\/p>\n In Anapu, most believe that Silv\u00e9rio Fernandes will become the next head of the INCRA Xingu regional branch sometime after Bolsonaro takes office on 1 January. Asked about this possibility, Fernandes says he isn\u2019t aware of it, but he did reveal his intentions if appointed: \u201cI want to solve the land problem in the region. We came here to guarantee the sovereignty of the Amazon.\u201d In his view, the 1970s land contracts need to be honored, whether their requirements were fulfilled or not, with the land settlements claimed by landless workers handed over to the outsiders.<\/p>\n The dream of accomplishing land reform in Anapu will be more distant if Fernandes is appointed as head of INCRA, according to 78-year-old Sister Jane Dwyer. Born in the United States, she decided to become a missionary when she participated in the historic 1963 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King. Dwyer is still active in the struggle for land democratization, despite the prosecution of Father Amoro, escalating violence in Anapu, and Bolsonaro\u2019s threats against rural activists.<\/p>\n Attending a baptism ceremony in Mata Preta \u2013 occupied land expected to become a land reform settlement \u2013 the nun, who belongs to the same order as Stang, expresses resistance: \u201cWe cannot panic. We have to be patient, keep a cool head and at least preserve what has already been achieved.\u201d Dwyer sees no solution, however, if parishioners paint over the controversial altar in the church: \u201cIf they do that, I\u2019ll never set foot in there again.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Father Amaro, he remains outspoken and unbent: \u201cIt\u2019s time for a united struggle; for believing in life even when everyone is losing faith; for resisting wherever we are; for believing in the small, because they have their strategies for struggle and resistance.\u201d Amaro is also resolved to follow through to the end: \u201cSuddenly these people [have] found a piece of land. If I have to die defending them, I guess I\u2019m ready.<\/p>\n This story was written by Rep\u00f3rter Brasil with support from DGB Bildungswerk, and is co-published with Mongabay.<\/em><\/p>\n O post Brazil: Bolsonaro supporter works to imprison Dorothy Stang\u2019s successor<\/a> apareceu primeiro em Rep\u00f3rter Brasil<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fonte: Reporter Brasil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANAPU, Par\u00e1 state, Brazil \u2013 \u201cDorothy lives!\u201d shouts a student with his fist clenched. Another ten people repeat the gesture and shout: \u201cAlways!\u201d The cries of protest close a prayer held round the grave of Dorothy Stang, the U.S. missionary murdered in 2005 in the struggle for Brazilian land reform here in the Brazilian Amazon. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[43],"class_list":["post-19163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-noticias","tag-infoeconomico-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infoeconomico.com.br\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-6132-800x535.jpg\")
\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nCharges and counter-charges<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-menor_lunaeparracho-800x547.jpg\")
An unfolding dispute<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-5170-800x523.jpg\")
\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nLand, the source of Amazon conflict<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/14-Dorothy-Stang.jpg\")
Inside Anapu<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-5690-800x547.jpg\")
The clash over Lot 44<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-5812-800x529.jpg\")
Bolsonaro enters the fray<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-5335-800x504.jpg\")
The Amazon: a tinder box, ready to explode<\/h1>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/reporterbrasil.org.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Anapu-5760-800x510.jpg\")
\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n