Brazilian Police Gun Down Peasants At Land Protest

Even given the bloody history of the eastern Amazon rain forest, the violence was shocking. State police with rifles and machine guns opened fire on hundreds of peasants demanding land, killing at least 22 of them.

Dozens more were wounded in the attack in Eldorado do Carajas, a remote village in the state of Para, 1,250 miles northwest of Rio. One policeman was killed and six were wounded in the confrontation.

“One (policeman) said, ‘It’s time for the landless to die,”’ Orlando Galvino said by telephone from Maraba, about 80 miles from the scene of the attack.

Galvino is a member of the Landless Peasants Movement, which organized a national day of demonstrations April 10 to protest Brazil’s widely unequal distribution of land - 20 percent of Brazilians own 88 percent of the land, while the poorest 40 percent hold just 1 percent.

Some 2,000 peasants gathered in southern Para for a march to Maraba, but they only made it as far as Eldorado do Carajas.

Survivors said state authorities had promised to send buses and food for the families. When the aid failed to come, the peasants blocked the road. Late Wednesday, two state police battalions arrived. What happened next is in dispute.

According to police, the officers tried to negotiate with the protesters but were pelted with rocks and shot at.

“We came to talk and open the road and they started shooting,” a police officer who identified himself only as Lt. Furtado said by telephone from Maraba. “We just returned their fire.”

Survivors claim the officers didn’t say a word.

“They didn’t even try to negotiate,” said Galvino. “They came off the trucks shooting tear gas and firing into the air, then lowered their sights.”

The peasants, armed with sticks, stones, machetes and some handguns, were quickly cut down or scattered in panic. Human rights activists contend that some of the victims were killed execution-style.

In the past decade, at least 961 peasants and their supporters have been killed in land disputes, according to the Pastoral Land Commission, which is linked to the Roman Catholic Church. Eighty-three of those deaths were in Para.

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso called the violence “intolerable” and sent Justice Minister Nelson Jobim to Para to investigate.

“Nothing justifies having police shoot people who are expressing their opinions,” Cardoso said.

The eastern Amazon region, which is remote and lawless, has seen some of the worst violence in Brazil. Most of it involves gunmen hired by ranchers and loggers, who attack Indians and poor peasants occupying their land.