Tonho emerged from the shack that he and Jane had built
the night before. Pulling a Glock. 380 from his waistband, he
pointed it at the guards and demanded they leave. A video of
the encounter quickly circulated on WhatsApp. Alarmed, local
ranchers agreed that the landless squatters had taken things
too far. Something had to be done.
IT WAS CLEAR TO
OLIVEIRA THAT HER
LIFE WAS IN DANGER.
Accompanied by Vargas, she visited the police and asked for
protection, but they advised her to leave the property.
For once, Vargas found that he agreed with the authorities.
“I’m so sorry,” he told Oliveira. “There’s nothing more I can
do. The most important thing at this point is not the occupa-
tion, it’s that you protect your life. My recommendation is you
leave the camp.”
Vargas knew what the police were capable of. In 1996 , as
a teenager in Redenção, he had been sitting in class one day
when he heard the news that 19 landless peasants had been
killed by police on the BR 155 , near the small town of Eldorado
dos Carajas. It was the worst massacre of its kind in Brazilian
history. Vargas went home that day and told his parents he
wanted to become a lawyer, to ght for the rights of farmers.
But Oliveira decided to return to the camp. “She was very
stubborn,” Vargas recalls. “I would tell her, there are times
when you need to back down. If the police are threatening
you, if there are gunmen there, shooting at you, it’s time to
back down.”
The day after Oliveira asked for police protection, the secu-
rity guards returned to the camp and ired at the squatters.
According to eyewitnesses, the squatters red back. Most of
the group dismantled their shacks and ed, but Oliveira and
a dozen others decided to hide in a wooded area on the farm.
The next morning, there was another exchange of gunre, and
a guard was injured.
Oliveira ed to the Nova Conquista settlement, but tensions
grew worse. Five days later, in another skirmish at Santa Lucia,
a guard was killed. An arrest warrant was issued for Oliveira
and Tonho, along with 12 other members of the movement.
Oliveira felt like she had nowhere to run. Worried that police
would hunt her down at Nova Conquista or in Redenção, she
decided to return to Santa Lucia. If she could recruit enough
members of the sem terra, she thought, perhaps they would
be safe. The landowners had guards and guns and police. The
landless had only their numbers.
Oliveira called Fernando Araujo, who had participated
in every occupation of the farm since 2013. “Let’s go back,”
she told him.
Araujo was staying at his mother’s house in Redenção. He
missed the farm, where he’d grown rice and corn and had a
coop full of chickens. But as much as he hated living in the city,
going back seemed risky.
“Isn’t it too dangerous?” he asked.
APRIL 2020 95