Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura Convicted (Again) in Dorothy Stang's Murder

Excellent news:

A jury in the Brazilian city of Belém has sentenced a rancher to 30 years in prison for the murder of an American-born nun, news agencies reported.

The rancher, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, was convicted of ordering the murder in 2005 of Sister Dorothy Stang, from Dayton, Ohio, a longtime organizer of rural settlers and the poor in their efforts to protect their land from seizures by cattle ranchers and timber merchants.

Globo News, in Sao Paulo, reported Tuesday that the jury reached its verdict late Monday night after 15 hours of deliberations. The trial was the second appeal in the case, and the decision on Monday upheld the original conviction from 2007.

After being found guilty in 2007, Bastos de Moura, or "Bita," was acquitted in a second trial in 2008 (and for those wondering about double jeopardy, in Brazil, first-time convicts sentenced to more than 20 years are automatically given a re-trial). The third Trial took place after the state of Para's top court ruled that video evidence that Bita's defense used in the second trial was inadmissable, effectively rendering this third trial his "second" after Brazil's Supreme Court upheld the Para court's ruling. Now, it appears that Moura will actually serve time for contracting the murder of Dorothy Stang.

The conviction itself is huge, as it is one of the first times that a powerful rancher has been found guilty for his role in the murder of a land rights activist. Of course, Para sees many such murders, including just last week, and it is often commonly accepted that the wealthy landowners are often behind those murders but never see trial due to their power in the region. Certainly, Stang's case is particularly high-profile, but it is still extremely encouraging to see at least one landowner has been punished for his deeds, offering tentative hope that perhaps ranchers involved in future contracted murders will also be punished within the Brazilian courts (or at least deterred from hiring killers in the wake of Bita's sentencing). As Rebecca Spires put it, the only real chance at ending the murders in the Amazon is to go after the contractors; otherwise, the killings will most likely never cease. This is a good step in that direction, and if nothing else, Stang's case alone is an encouraging case of elites in Para not being protected by their money or status.

Challenges Facing Indigenous Peoples in Brazil

There were a couple of articles of note in the New York Times recently on indigenous issues in Brazil. The first deals with the growing struggles an indigneous group is having with drugs in the western-most part of the country in the Amazonian basin, where Brazil shares a border with Colombia and Peru. With the drug trade in the region growing, and with a non-indigenous town where drugs and alcohol are legal (they are illegal on the reserve) only a few miles away, growing numbers of Tikunas are getting involved in both the supply and demand sides of the drug trade: some are helping to smuggle the drugs across the border from Colombia and Peru into Brazil, while a growing number of Tikuna youths are becoming addicted to cocaine.

At a loss of what to do as traditional tribal authority has eroded, the Tikunas are turning to the government for assistance:

“We want government officials to help us save our children, so they don’t take part in these ruinous practices,” said Oswaldo Honorato Mendes, a deep-voiced Mariaçu chief. “Every day the situation gets worse. The younger generation does not obey. They do not show respect for our authority as chiefs. They need to learn respect.”

This is a rather new and interesting (albeit sad) portal into indigenous-state relations in Brazil. In Brazil, indigenous groups are not subject to most Brazilian laws, and the police are not allowed to enter reserves. The fact that the Tikunas (and maybe other groups in the region, now or in the future) are at such a loss as to be willing to cede at least some of that independence to the police in order to get a grip on the drug problem shows how bad things have gotten.

However, I'm not really sure what the police could do from either a theoretical or practical standpoint. The police themselves, after listening to the Tikuna's case, are unwilling to do much, simply because they feel the law doesn't really let them, even if the Tikunas themselves are soliciting help. They may be right, and it's definitely a murky legal issue. What is more, though, I'm not sure what the police could do. It's not like they don't have jurisdiction over Tabatinga, the neighboring non-reserve city, and the drug trade is absolutely flourishing there. Although I don't mean to question the decency of the police, I find it hard to believe that at least a few corrupt cops in what is far from a "metropolitan" part of Brazil are not at least implicitly involved with the burgeoning trade, even if it's just payoffs to look the other way (though I do not doubt, either, that many police in the area do want to do all they can to combat the problems in Tabatinga). Finally, given the police's record in places like Rio when it comes to the drug trade, I'm not even sure a stronger police presence is really the answer (though, to be fair, dealing with a very poor Amazonian border city is far different from dealing with the favelas in Rio).

And then there's the way in which Brazil deals with drug abusers. Unlike in the U.S., where drug abuse is a crime, in Brazil, it's treated as a social problem, as the article also points out:

Brazil treats drug users as victims who require treatment, not as criminals. They are usually sentenced to receiving drug-addiction treatment and performing community service in lieu of serving prison time.

I realize that's an extremely novel approach to drug abuse, but it also means that the police realyl aren't supposed to be involved with problems of drug abuse (and that's an important distinction between the indigenous reserve and the favelas - in the latter, they aren't combatting drug abuse, but drug trafficking).

And, if that weren't enough, there's the simple difficulty in patrolling the border. Brazil has historically had a very weak presence in the Amazon and its borders with Colombia and Peru (the dictatorship actually used the simple creation of a highway through the Amazon as a marker of Brazil's "progress"; it was never completed, fortunately). Brazil is enormous (larger than the United States if you take out Alaska), and it simply doesn't have the infrastructure, with police or other governmental agencies, to put the kind of strong state presence in the region that might deter the growing drug trade.

Finally, there's the fact that this isn't just Brazil's problem. Being so close to the borders of Peru and Colombia, those countries have to patrol their borders, too. Despite all of his talk, Uribe hasn't really done nearly as much as he claims in the anti-drug battle; it has simply shifted some, and is increasingly turning towards Brazil, Argentina, and even Europe. This just reinforces how un-winnable the "War on Drugs" is, and I may sound like a broken record player, but until countries like the United States deals with this issue on the demand side rather than the supply side (something Brazil has already done a much better job of addressing simply by recognizing drug addiction is a social, not a criminal, problem), then these issues will never go away.

In much more positive news, Brazilian courts have cleared the way for the federal government to establish an indigenous reserve "larger than Connecticut" in the Amazon basin. This is absolutely huge (and not just in terms of land-size). The court found that Lula's establishment of the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve, near the Venezuelan border, is legal, culminating a long-fought process:

The reserve would be one of the largest protected indigenous areas in the world. It has set off a sharp controversy over property rights, the limits of government authority and the rights of Indians to their original lands.
The reserve was decreed by Mr. da Silva’s government in 2005 after a legal battle of more more than 20 years. At more than four million acres, it encompasses about 42 percent of Roraima State and is 11 times bigger than the city of São Paulo.

If this does go through (and, at least from a legal standpoint, I don't think there are too many roads left available to challenge Lula's decision - but more on that in a second), it will be enormously important both for indigenous policy and environmental policy in Brazil.

The legal declaration is all well and good; however, I can't help but believe that actually enforcing this decree is going to take more effort from the government. According to the report, the area is inhabited by rice farmers, cattle ranchers, and even the remnants of an old gold mining industry. None of those groups is terribly interested in leaving, and each has a powerful voice in national and local politics. Lula's administration absolutely cannot just rest on the legal declaration of the court. I have little doubt that it will take a significant governmental presence, particularly military forces and national bureaucrats (local politicians simply cannot be trusted in cases like these, as they have absolutely no interest in protecting indigenous rights over the wealthy landowners - the latter, not the former, helped those local politicians arrive in office in the first place), as well as NGOs for indigenous rights and environmental protection. Fortunately, the government has shown a willingness to have this involvement, having already begun dispatching federal police to the area to evict farmers. The farmers are resisting, but it's still good that the government has begun establishing a strong state presence to enforce the decree and court decision, and one can only hope this will go through and set a new precedent for indigenous rights throughout Brazil.

Mr. Trend vs. Rio's Power Company

I've been sitting on this story for awhile, but Venha Futuro's recent post on people and companies trying to screw over the average person in Brazil has motivated me to tell it. It's a long story involving how things sometimes work (or don't work) in Brazil's companies and courts, but the absurdities and insanities are worth it.

When I first moved in to my apartment, I was surprised at the light bills I was getting. It's not that they were high - for the first two and a half months, I was paying roughly 2 dollars a month for my electric bill. I figured this was probably because the power had been turned off in the apartment for awhile prior to my moving in (the previous resident had already moved out some time before), and that eventually, things would correct themselves. My belief in this was confirmed when, in February 2007, my January light bill came to 68 reais (roughly 34 dollars at the time), which seemed reasonable to me. All was right in the universe.

So I was extremely shocked when the February light bill total came to 765 reais (or 380+ dollars). The bill claimed that the high amount was due to the fact that my wife and I had used an astonishing 1500 kilowatts for the month of February (and this in a one-bedroom apartment!) The impossibility of this was not limited to the fact that our apartment is only one bedroom; we also had spent 10 out of the 28 days of February traveling, and thus were using virtually no power (save for letting the refrigerator run).

Naturally, we called the Light company, and they said it may be a problem with the meter, so they would have a guy come and check it. Which he did. Two weeks later. Meanwhile, we were left wondering what happened, and if the light bill would be "normal" for March. After two tests, the Light company said there was nothing wrong with the meter, and we must have used the power, so we had better just pay up.

Of course, there was no way in hell we were going to cough up 380 bucks for power there was no way we could have used. My mother-in-law (who owns the apartment) was discussing the issue with a total stranger one day, and he said he actually used to be an electrician, so he would take a look. We all went to the basement of the building to read our meter, and it turned out, Light hadn't even opened the meter to see if it was working properly - the seal that marked whether it had been opened or not was 3 years old, and clearly had never been touched since it was originally put there. The guy said he could fix it for us, and charged my mother-in-law 100 reais up front, which she paid. I, in the meantime, had asked my mother-in-law about the guy's credentials, and she said she was sure she was legit. A few days later, he came by, saying he would fix it, and we paid him another 80 reais for parts he needed.

And then we never saw him again.

It turns out, she had just taken him at his word that he was an independent electrician, and he very well may have been at one time (I know little about those kinds of things, but he seemed to know a fair amount). It turns out, he saw an opportunity and took my mother-in-law and I on the proverbial ride to the total tune of 180 reais.

In the meantime, March's light bill arrived, and it was another 275 reais. While this was a marked improvement, there was once again no way we had used that amount of power, so on the advice of one of my wife's friend's mother (who is a judge), we formally entered a suit against the Light company, simply asking that the two absurd bills be stricken, and we pay the average amount (60-70 reais) for those two months. While the case worked its way through the bureaucracy, Light was ordered not to turn off our power over failure to pay the bills until the case was resolved. We felt pretty good, and thought things were going to work out, and at the end of April, my wife and I were married, honeymooning in Buenos Aires.

The day we returned from Argentina, tired, we arrived to apartment to have the doorman tell us that, in spite of the court order, Light had turned off our power that very day. He claimed he had tried to call my mother-in-law's apartment 3 times, and nobody answered, and her cell phone once, with no answer. This was a remarkable trick, because my mother-in-law and one of my wife's cousins had been in her apartment the whole day, and the phone never rang. What's more, there was no record of the doorman calling the cellphone. So he had not only let Light do what they weren't allowed to do, he also lied about calling my mother-in-law first. So, on the day of returning from my honeymoon, I got to spend the night at my mother-in-law's apartment. "Honeymoon is over" indeed.

Given the fact that Light had received a court order saying they couldn't shut off our power, and then straight up ignored it and turned it off anyways, we took the gloves off, entering into a full-blown lawsuit against the Light company, now demanding not only a removal of the over 1000 reais ($500) of light bills, but financial compensation, which could arrive to 7000 reais in small-claims court

In the meantime, we tried to get our power turned back on. My mother-in-law, my wife, and I went back to the courthouse to get an order demanding Light turn the power back on and not turn it off again. However, a lowly clerk who felt she had far more power than she actually did said that not only would she not sign another form ordering Light to turn our power back on, she rescinded the previous order (even though that was not within her authority), deciding that we just had to pay the Light bill.

Fortunately, the Brazilian bureaucracy is a slow-moving machine, so my mother-in-law took the previous order straight to the Light company, saying they had violated the order and they had better turn the power back on, which they did. However, from the beginning of May to the end of June (when our case was to be heard), my wife and I lived in constant fear that the rescinded order would go through, and we would be powerless once again.

Fortunately, that didn't happen, and the day of our hearing arrived. The lawyers for Light pulled a total-asshole argument by saying that the 1500 kilowatts represented not only February, but the previous months where we had registered light bills of 3 reais. Unfortunately for them, had that been the case, then the bill for January should have been 1500 reais; yet it had only been 60-some. The judge listened to both arguments (with the idiot clerk who had tried to rescind the previous court order by his side, typing away), and, after 2 weeks of deliberation, ruled in our favor, saying the light company not only had to strike from the record the light bills for February and March, but also awarded us 1500 reais. We were thrilled, and we waited for the bills to disappear and the money to arrive.

And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Light continued stalling. They claimed that, because the Light bill was still in the name of the previous owner, they couldn't give us the money until the name had been changed (something we had begun in October 2006, but that still hadn't made its way through all the bureaucratic channels as of late-2007). Yet they couldn't/wouldn't change the name on the bill themselves, either. My mother-in-law kept making trips to and from the Light company, trying to get the case resolved, get the name on the bill switched from the old owner's name to hers, and we kept waiting.

Finally, in January of 2008 (only 11 months after the first bill of doom happened), we got not only our money from Light, but a refund for 66 more reais, and the 760 reais were stricken from the record. We were puzzled as to why the refund of 66 reais, and equally puzzled as to why the 250 real bill continued to show up as unpaid.

It turns out, Light had one final "fuck you" left for us. The judge had ruled that the bills for February and March were to be stricken from the record, but Light used a verbal loophole to declare that that meant the bills we PAID in February in March were to be stricken. Thus, they refunded us the 66 reais we had paid in January, and struck the 760 from the record, but still demanded the 250 reais from March. Of course, this was a vulgar and disgusting attempt to get out of the deal - everybody (including the judge) knew that he was referring to the bills received FOR the months of February and March, and not the bills received IN the months of February and March.

We once again returned to the courthouse to fix the issue to pay back light the 66 we had originally paid for January, and to get the 250 reais bill removed once and for all. Yet we were informed what?

That we would have to enter another lawsuit to fix it.

And that's where it stands as of today, March 13, 2008, a year to the date that I received the original 760 reais electric bill of doom. Things will remain stalemated - Light (theoretically, and I don't think they'll do this again) can't turn off our power no matter what, and we aren't going to pay the bill. So next Wednesday night, after 18 months in Brazil, I will be flying back to the United States, leaving an unpaid 255 reais light bill and all these legal issues behind.

I hope.