"Offer:  R$ 1 million for your life”. It is difficult to imagine such a thing in the 21st century. But in Amazonia, where impunity and land conflicts increase daily, those who defend the region are constantly receiving death threats.

With no control or law, Amazonia is fast becoming a ‘no man’s land’, a situation that has grown worse these last few years. "In the state of Pará alone, 800 people have been murdered in land conflicts and over environmental issues these last few decades", says José Batista Gonçalves Afonso, legal advisor to the CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) in Marabá.

According to the CPT, some 20 people are currently on hit lists and require police protection. “Amazonia is an extremely large and complex region. We track rural issues and we observe that an aggression against people in the region is at a critical point”. He also said that high soy, steel and beef prices on the international markets, in addition to biofuels, have led to expanded monoculture farming and mining activities in the Amazon Region, causing not only environmental but social problems as well. “Large holders expand their holdings, expropriating indigenous, riverbank, maroon and other populations”.

The states where these conflicts are most intense are: Pará, Mato Grosso and Rondônia.  “Instead of the government trying to halt the activities of large landowners, it supports this model. The PAC (Growth Acceleration Program) will enable projects in the region that will provide further incentives to grain farming, mining and ranching activities", he commented.  He said that those who oppose this model are made to appear as criminals. “Whenever society fights for land rights, it is seen as acting criminally as are those that advocate the rights of populations suffering from violence by private parties and their gunmen”.

Running afoul of interests
Don Erwin Krautler, Bishop of Altamira (PA), is just one local leader who know requires 24/7 police protection to avoid becoming another of Amazonia’s martyrs.  The priest has been receiving death threats for years because of his relentless action in defense of indigenous peoples and rural laborers in his state. “My struggle cannot end. Many people have died for Amazonia and we will relentlessly continue defending what they defended”, he says.
In his fight for rights of peasant communities and environmental protection of the Amazon, Don Erwin has also accused local politicians of sexually abusing teenagers, raised the cry against the emasculation and murder of young boys and several large landowners, land-grabbers, loggers and ranchers who use slave labor and cause environmental destruction. “My struggle is one of survival. I live in an area that the State has simply abandoned. We run afoul of the interests of many rural landowners whenever we advocate protection of the environment and indigenous peoples.

Manifesto
On the 18th, civil society organizations wrote a manifesto in support of the Bishop and denouncing the threats against his life. The document states "We do know, however, that a detailed plan in underway to murder him, and its characteristics show that the masterminds are people of great wealth, probably a ‘consortium', as was the case in the cowardly murder of Sister Dorothy Stang three years ago.  Proof of their economic power is the amount offered as the price on his head: one million reals!"

Police protection not enough
Another person with a price on his head is Friar Henri Burin de Roziers. He is a member of the Pastoral Land Commission and is under protection of state police in Pará. “I receive death threats over the phone. “There are another 116 people besides myself in this situation”.

He says that more than police protection is needed. “I criticize the government’s action. You have to root out the causes if you want to get rid of the violence. Ranchers make death threats and are never punished. The problem is impunity”. Questioned as to whether the clergyman intends to continue his activities in light of the threats, he said: “They inspire me to dedicate myself even more to my work. They show me I cannot stop what I’m doing”.

The struggle outside Brazil
Violence against those protecting the Amazon is not restricted to this country. On February 26 of this year, Don Julio García Agapito, the government representative of the Province of Tahuamanu in Madre de Diós in the Peruvian Amazon, was murdered because he had ordered the confiscation of a truckload of mahogany illegally harvested in his community
According to Angélica Almeyda, a researcher on the subject, the region is well-known as one of the regions with the richest biodiversity on Earth.  Loggers say that Madre de Dios is the last frontier where mahogany can still be found on a commercial scale. "This process tends to increase within the context of opening the borders between Brazil and Peru, with a highway linking Brazil to the Pacific through Acre".

Dying for Amazonia
Many have defended Amazonia even with their lives. Land rights, the environment, accusations of abuse were some of the struggles for which they died. Read the stories of a few of them below:
Dorothy Stang
Early in the morning around 7:30 a.m. on February 12, 2005, on a remote dirt road, 53 kilometers from the urban seat of the municipality of Anapu (PA), they approached the nun: "Are you armed?" they asked.  She said: "this is my weapon!”  And showed them a copy of the Holy Bible.  She even read a few passages from the book to the man who shortly afterwards would shoot her.

Gunned down with seven shots, Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered at the age of 73. Thus ended the life of one of the most ardent defenders of Amazonia. Sister Dorothy had lived in the region since the 1970s, working with rural laborers in the Xingu Region. Her pastoring and missionary activities sought to provide jobs and income through reforestation projects in degraded areas with rural laborers along the Transamazon Highway. Her work also focused on trying to minimize land conflicts in the region.

An advocate of fair and coherent land reform, Sister Dorothy maintained intense dialogue with peasant, political and religious leaders, seeking lasting solutions to land tenure and use conflicts in the Amazon Region.
She received several death threats but never let them intimidate her. Shortly before her murder she said: “I will not run and abandon the struggle of these defenseless farmers in the heart of the rainforest. They have the sacred right to a better life on land where they can live and produce with dignity and without destroying the environment”.

Dema
Ademir Alfeu Federicci, also known as ‘Dema’ was murdered in his home in Altamira (PA) on August 25, 2001.  Former coordinator of MDTX, an umbrella movement with over 100 rural and urban member organizations including unions, neighborhood groups and NGOs, he came to live in Medicilândia (PA), a municipality along the Transamazon Highway, in 1975.

His career included work as coordinator of the Youth Pastoral Commission, the founding of the Transamazon Survival Movement (MPST), heading three marches to Brasilia to demand repair of the Transamazon Highway and expansion of health and education services in the region. He also participated in the “Cries for Land – Brazil’ demonstrations that included demands for bank credit for small holders.

While heading the MDTX, among his many activities, he accused the Superintendency of Development of Amazonia (the since shut-down SUDAM) of misuse of public funds, illegal logging on indigenous lands and land grabbing. Shortly before his death, he led the movement fighting against the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant, a project part of FHC’s Brazil on the March program that has since been incorporated into Lula’s PAC (Growth Acceleration Program). Although union leaders and organizations have decried the murder as an assassination, the police investigation into his death hastily and sloppily concluded within less than a week that he had been killed during a break in.

Brasília
Union leader Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, also known as Brasília, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered with twelve shots to the head.

His body was dumped alongside the Santarém-Cuiabá highway near the Castelo dos Sonhos district, where the union leader lived and acted as union boss for the Rural Workers of Altamira union and also as substitute city councilman for the PT.

The Altamira Rural Workers Union had been pressuring INCRA and the state government since 1997 to resolve serious land conflicts in the Castelo dos Sonhos district of Altamira, near the state border with Mato Grosso along the Cuiabá Santarém highway.

Miguel de Freitas da Silva
At 44 years of age, Miguel Freitas da Silva, President of the Rural Workers Association of Ipaú and father of eight, was murdered by two gunmen on September 1, 2001.  He was sitting in front of his home in Tucuruí (PA) by two men on a motorcycle.  One of them asked: "Who here is Miguel?”  He answered: “I am”. The two men drew their guns and fired several shots. Two of them hit Freitas da Silva in the chest. He died before reaching the hospital. In addition to being a union leader, Miguel also advocated expropriation of unused lands in the region.

Vicente Cañas
Vicente Cañas is one of the most famous advocates of indigenous rights in Mato Grosso. The date of his murder was most likely April 6, 1987, and is a typical example of rural wealthy working with constituted authorities to expand farmlands in Mato Grosso at the cost of loss and even death of traditional peoples.

He was murdered in his shack where he lived alone, along the banks of the Iquê River, a tributary of the Jurena, on the Enawenê-nawê indigenous lands, surrounded by the municipalities of Juína, Comodoro and Campo Novo do Parecis in central-northern Mato Grosso.

The police investigation into the crime took an unbelievable six years to conclude and was marred by irregularities, including the disappearance of evidence. The victim’s skull, smashed by a sledgehammer, was found in the Bus Terminal Square in Belo Horizonte (MG) in February 1989, when supposedly it was under the care of the Coroner’s Office (IML).
 
Chico Mendes
Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, also known as Chico Mendes, was a Brazilian rubber tapper, union leader and environmental activist.  His intense struggle for preserving the Amazon made him famous internationally and was the cause of his murder on December 22, 1988.

He began his career as a union leader in 1975 as general secretary of the recently-founded Rural Workers Union of Brasiléia. Beginning in 1976, he actively participated in struggles by rubber tappers to halt deforestation through peaceful demonstrations in which the rubber tappers protected the trees with their own bodies. He also organized several activities to advocate land tenure for native populations.

Under his leadership, the rubber tappers’ struggle to preserve their lifestyle became known nationally and internationally. The proposal of the “Rainforest Peoples Union” to protect the Amazon Rainforest sought to converge the interests of indigenous peoples, rubber tappers, Brazil nut gatherers, small-scale fishermen, babassu coconut gatherers and riverbank dwellers through the establishment of extractivist reserves.

In 1987, Chico Mendes received a visit by certain members of the UN in Xapuri, where they were able to observe firsthand the destruction of the rainforest and eviction of rubber tappers by projects financed by multilateral banking institutions. Two months later he took his accusations to the US Senate and to a meeting of the financing institution, the IDB. Mendes received a number of international awards for his work, including the Global 500 awarded by the UN for his work in defense of the environment.

Throughout 1988 he participated in the establishment of the first Extractivist Reserves founded in Acre. After expropriation of the Cachoeira Rubber Grove in Xapuri, owned by Darly Alves da Silva, death threats against Chico Mendes increased and he told police and government authorities that his life was in danger and that he needed protection.

On December 22, 1988, exactly one week after his 44th birthday, Chico Mendes was murdered in the doorway of his home. Married to Ilzamar Mendes, he was survived by his two children, Sandino and Elenira, at the time two and four years old, respectively.

The Brazilian court convicted ranchers Darly Alves da Silva and Darcy Alves da Silva of his murder and sentenced them to 19 years imprisonment in December 1990.  Darly escaped in February 1993 and hid out in an Incra settlement in rural Pará, and even received government financing from the Bank of Amazonia under an assumed name.  He was recaptured in June 1996. His forgery of documents earned him a second conviction: an additional two years and eight months in prison.

In December 2007, 19 years to the week in which he murdered Chico Mendes, Judge Maha Kouzi Manasfi e Manasfi awarded rancher Darly Alves da Silva the right to serve his sentence under house arrest until March 2008.