they loaded onto ships destined for China, while small farm-
ers tilled the ground with wooden plows, eating the beans and
yucca they grew. The number of cattle in the region soared from
22 , 500 to 2. 2 million—the country’s largest herd. Today nearly
20 percent of the region’s rain forest has been destroyed, and
the top 2 percent of Brazil’s landowners hold more property than
all the land in England, France, Germany, and Spain combined.
Oliveira arrived in the region just as landless workers were
beginning to ight back. By 1997 , emboldened by a govern-
ment decision to redistribute millions of acres of unused farm-
land, 350 , 000 families across Brazil had legally obtained land
by setting up 1 , 300 camps on idle estates. But when the sem
terra tried a similar approach in the Amazon, they were metowing behind her. It was the height of the rainy season, and the
air hung thick with the scent of a coming storm.
From a distance, they could hear the police arriving at the
camp, kicking over cooking pots and rummaging through
the belongings they’d left behind. Hidden in the forest, the
squatters stretched a black tarp above them as the rain began
to fall in a torrent.
Blondie was terried. They should keep running, she said.
But Oliveira urged calm. The police were not going to follow
them into the jungle, especially in such a heavy downpour.
What she didn’t know, as rain cascaded o the tarp, was that
they had already been surrounded.
A moment later, she heard the crack of gunre.
LIKE MANY OF THE
SEM TERRA, OLIVEIRA
HAD WATCHED
FOR DECADES AS THE
RAIN FOREST
STEADILY VANISHED.
Located more than 1 , 500 miles from Rio de Janeiro, the Santa
Lucia farm occupies a remote and lawless area about 30 miles
west of the BR 155 , a highway that cuts through what was once
dense, lush jungle. In the 1990 s, as a single mother in her early
20 s, Oliveira had moved to the region and found work as a
teacher in the nearby municipality of Xinguara, the traditional
home of the Kayapo and Parakana tribes.
The area was undergoing a ghastly transformation. A new
railroad had been carved through 550 miles of rain forest to
the north, and land speculators had descended on the region
to clear-cut the Amazon. Indigenous farmers were stripped of
their land, driven o at gunpoint or tied up and forced to watch
as their huts were burned. Wealthy landowners used enormous
threshing machines and expensive fertilizer to grow soy, which
with entrenched resistance from wealthy landowners—and the
police and judges who protect them. In 2017 , the year Oliveira
led the occupation at Santa Lucia, Brazil had more murders
over land disputes than any other country.
The longtime owner of Santa Lucia, Honorato Babinski, was
one of the most powerful and feared men in the region. He built
his fortune by clear-cutting timber in the Amazon, despite a
law that prohibited logging, and he was widely suspected of
occupying public lands without a legal deed. His sawmills and
farms soon sprawled across 170 square miles of Brazil—an area
four times the size of Paris.
Emboldened by Babinski’s death in 2013 , a group of sem
terra occupied the Santa Lucia farm. In nearby Redenção, a
cowboy boomtown with a large rodeo arena and stores that
sell boots and Wrangler jeans, longtime ranchers called it “the
invasion.” A friend of Babinski’s speculated that the squatters
knew they had little to fear from his eldest son and heir, Hon-
orato Babinski Filho, an actor and model who lived in Rio and
liked to post photos of his bronzed body on Instagram.
Babinski Filho went to court, requesting that the squatters
be evicted. But pressed by the judge, he had a hard time prov-
ing that the farm was actually productive. Although he
claimed that there were 1 , 700 cattle at Santa Lucia, he could
only produce evidence that 75 had been vaccinated. Never-
theless, the court ruled in his favor, and the squatters were
evicted. Over the next three years, the farm would be occu-
pied three more times. Each time, the judge ordered the
squatters to leave.92 VANITY FAIR