[INTRO PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ZE CLAUDIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
ZE CLAUDIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
MARIA SANTO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
MARIA SANTO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
ZE CLAUDIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: A month after
Ze Claudio and his wife,
Maria, were murdered,
we flew to Brazil
to meet their relatives.
Our first stop was Maraba,
a small city in
the state of Para.
We just landed in Maraba.
It's right, kind of on the
edge of the Amazon.
It's known for it's cattle
ranching, production of
pig-iron from charcoal, and
for being one of the most
violent, lawless places
in all of Brazil.
Maraba is sometimes called
Marabala, which means lot of
bullets because it's
kind of like the OK
Corral, but in the jungle.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: We traveled to
Maraba with Felipe Milanez, a
Brazilian journalist who
covers the Amazon.
Until recently, Felipe
was the editor of
National Geographic Brazil.
But he got fired after publicly
criticizing another
magazine owned by the same
company who printed a bogus
article about Indians.
Felipe met Ze Claudio and Maria
a few months before
their death and shot an
interview with them outside
their house.
They became friends and Felipe
has continued to cover their
story for different outlets.
We're heading across the river
to visit Ze Claudio's sister.
They're scared that they're
next on the list--
you know, people to be killed.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGESE]
CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: Claudelice grew
up in the same farm settlement
where Ze Claudio and Maria
lived, a couple
hours north of Maraba.
Since the murder, she's
decided to move to a
relative's house in the city
where she feels safer.
CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: We wanted to see
the settlement where Ze
Claudio and Maria lived.
Maria's sister, Laisa, lived
there too, but she has also
moved to Maraba because of
the safety situation.
However, she had to go to her
house to pick up some of her
belongings.
So we drove up there
to meet her.
We're on our way to the
settlement where Ze Claudio
and Maria lived and worked.
This is the road actually that
they were killed on.
And it's a kind of scary road if
you think about it in terms
of ambushes.
You have to slow to basically a
stop every couple of minutes
to cross bridges or to get
cows out of your way.
It's a little creepy feeling.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LAISA SAMPAIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: Did you or
anybody in your family, were
you guys worried for Maria
and Ze Claudio's safety?
LAISA SAMPAIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: This is
Ze Claudio's house?
FELIPE MILANEZ: Yeah.
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: This is Ze
Claudio and Maria's house.
As you can see, it hasn't
been touched
since they were killed.
It's frozen like it was
when they went out.
There's still clothing
on the line.
There's still food
in the kitchen.
There's still nuts rotting
now in the nut area.
The family, I think, for
the most part is
scared to come up here.
So it is sad and spooky.
In the back of the house, Ze
Claudio had a little nut
workshop, tabletop nutcrackers,
a little
greenhouse with a rack to dry
the nuts on, a small press,
and an oven which they would use
to make oil and cream and
other products.
This was the base of
their livelihood.
Ze Claudio wasn't a political
guy or some professional
activist, he was just a
small time nut forager
living off the land.
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
ZE CLAUDIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
MARIA SANTO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
LAISA SAMPAIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: Jose Batista is
a lawyer who works at the
Pastoral Land Commission
in Maraba.
For the last 15 years, he's
provide legal aid to poor
workers in area as well as
people associated with the
various social movements.
He was also a friend and legal
adviser to Ze Claudio and
Maria before they were killed.
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: Can you explain
kind of why there's so much
violence in this region?
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: While we've
come to think of the
rainforest as primarily an
environmental issue, the heart
of the violence in the Amazon
is land reform.
The real conflict here isn't so
much between man and nature
as it is between
rich and poor.
Since Brazil became a democracy
in 1985, more than
1,700 land activists
and community
leaders have been killed.
One of the most violent episodes
in the struggle for
land happened in 1996 just
south of Maraba.
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: On that day,
thousands of peasants and
small farmers were marching for
land rights and for the
right to occupy a large local
ranch which was being kept
intentionally unproductive
by its rich owner.
This is Raimundo Gouvea,
who was here when
the massacre happened.
He survived it.
Raimundo, can you tell me what
was happening before the
massacre took place?
RAIMUNDO GOUVEA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[SHOUTING]
RAIMUNDO GOUVEA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: The march that
ended in the massacre was
organized by the Landless
Workers Movement, or MST, one
of the largest social
movements in Brazil.
Joao Pedro Stedile is one of
MST's founding members.
JOAO PEDRO STEDILE:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: We're at
an MST encampment.
All this land is owned by some
rich guy who basically doesn't
take care of the land.
It's all overgrown.
And so what the Landless
Movement does is they take
farmers who don't have any land
and they move in and set
up a little village like this
that they have to guard.
And it's basically, like,
there's no such thing as
squatters rights in Brazil.
It's not in the law.
But that's the principal
they're using.
And eventually they'll hope to
turn it into a legitimate
settlement.
And all these people will be
able to use the land legally.
JOAO PEDRO STEDILE:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: This massive
inequality in land ownership
has been the central bugaboo
of Brazilian politics.
The last president to openly
call for land reform in 1964
was overthrown by a military
coup two weeks later.
And Brazil spent the next 20
years in a brutal, repressive
dictatorship.
JOAO PEDRO STEDILE:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: At the same time,
the juntas set out to
boost Brazil's economy by
conquering the Amazon, which
brought the land conflict
into the rainforest.
They created a program like the
American Homesteading Act
where settlers were given big
chunks of land provided they
clear cut at least 50% of it.
The government also built the
Transamazonica, a highway
coming straight through the
heart of the rainforest
opening it up for loggers
and developers.
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: The dictatorship
ended in 1984.
As Brazil transitioned into
democracy, social movements
like MST pushed for a long
overdue land reform.
They were thwarted, however, by
a powerful political block
of cattle ranchers, land owners,
and loggers known as
the "ruralistas."
[SINGING IN PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: As MST led the
struggle for land reform in
the '80s, the fight to protect
the rainforest also gained
movement under the leadership
of Chico Mendes.
Chico was a rubber tapper from
the state of Acre who became a
union leader and from there
was thrust into
environmental activism.
He fought for the creation of
extractive reserves, which are
sections of rainforest like
Ze Claudio and Maria's
settlement, that are set aside
from development exclusively
for the use of people who make
their living off the forest.
After rising to international
attention, Chico
called his own death.
He told attendees at
his 40th birthday,
I'll be dead by Christmas.
And he was.
Killed by gunmen at his house
on December 22, 1988.
MALE SPEAKER:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: Six months before
Ze Claudio was killed,
he was invited to Manaus
to give a TED
talk about the Amazon.
There in front of the audience,
just like Chico, he
predicted his own death.
ZE CLAUDIO:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: When we think of
the rainforest in America,
it's kind of a very effete,
environmentalist,
hippy sort of cause.
But down here, it sums up
everything that's been going
on with Brazil for a while.
It's about issues of
land ownership.
It's also about the environment
and the impact
it'll have.
And it's about the economy.
Right now we're in Belem.
It's the capital of Para,
which is the state
that Maraba is in.
It's sort of at the mouth
of the Amazon.
We're going to go to the
offices of Imazon.
They're a private research group
who tracks the effects
of deforestation.
So hopefully we'll get kind of a
general overview so we don't
have to rely on Sting
lyrics for all
our rainforest knowledge.
PAULO BARRETO: So this is
the map of the Amazon.
It shows deforestation in red.
This is called the "arc of
deforestation." This is where
most of the forestation is.
Nowadays, about 17%
is the forest.
THOMAS MORTON: So it's
at 17% deforestation
basically right now.
How quickly has that happened?
Has that been since the 1900s?
Or has most of it been in
the last 20 or 30 years?
PAULO BARRETO: Yeah.
In the last 30 years.
THOMAS MORTON: How much
can the forest take?
There's got to be a
level at which you
basically kill it, right?
At which the forest starts
to collapse?
When does that happen?
PAULO BARRETO: If you have more
than 30% deforestation,
then you have a huge risk of
larger areas of the Amazon
becoming more like a
savanna-type vegetation.
THOMAS MORTON: At the
current rate, how
soon will we hit 30%?
PAULO BARRETO: 30 years.
THOMAS MORTON: 30 years.
PAULO BARRETO: Less
than 30 years.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: To see what the
Brazilian government is doing
to slow down deforestation,
we tagged along with a law
enforcement operation
back in Maraba.
Good morning.
It's a little after 6:00.
We're just loading some picnic
snacks in a cooler into the
back of our truck.
And we're supposed to go out
into the rainforest today to
do a raid on a illegal logging
operation with IBAMA, which
it's just like the Brazilian
version of the Environmental
Protection Agency.
Except instead of looking like
the red-haired nerd from
Ghostbusters, they all look
like the cast of Predator.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
FELIPE MILANEZ:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: IBAMA helicopters
flew ahead of the
convoy and spotted the saw
mills through the trees.
From the air, they saw three
men trying to get
away on dirt bikes.
Two managed to escape, but
federal police caught the
third one and made him lead us
back into the forest to show
us the sites where he'd
been harvesting trees.
We just crossed from basically
a cow pasture into straight
on, full on jungle.
MALE SPEAKER:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
EVERALDO EGUCHI:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
These are illegal to
cut down, right?
EVERALDO EGUCHI:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: We just pulled
over to the guy who was
arrested's house and
it's really grim.
Now his wife's sobbing.
You know, they've
got to feel bad.
People who do the illegal
deforestation aren't
necessarily the people who
are really profiting
from it that much.
These are often cases, like,
poor, desperate log workers or
farmers and stuff
out of business.
After all the good lumber has
been sold, the loggers use
what's left over to
make charcoal.
We went with IBAMA in a
helicopter to see some of the
illegal charcoal evidence
near Maraba.
It's actually nuts how
many there were.
It's like hundreds of little
Jawa huts belching out smoke
everywhere you looked.
MARCO VIDAL:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: The charcoal
produced in these ovens is
then shipped to the
many pig-iron
plants surrounding Maraba.
And you see that's
a charcoal truck.
You see them all over the
streets in Maraba.
This is COSIPAR.
It's one of the companies in
Maraba that makes pig-iron,
which is a component in steel.
And it's actually, like,
Amazonian pig-iron is used in
a lot of US steel and US
products that involve steel,
like the car industry.
A lot of the charcoal used by
the pig-iron plants isn't just
from illegal wood.
It's also made by slave labor.
Actually, slavery is a really
big problem in all of Brazil.
Cattle farms, illegal
sawmills, even
factories use slaves.
Nobody is bought and
sold outright.
But what happens is poor workers
get recruited for jobs
far away from home, then charged
their entire wages
just for food and lodging.
So essentially, they're stuck
working for free and often in
concentration camp-like
conditions.
Batista took us to a shelter
for escaped slaves.
There we met a guy who had just
gotten away from a shady
cattle operation.
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
MALE SPEAKER:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
MALE SPEAKER:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
MALE SPEAKER:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
THOMAS MORTON: All these
different abuses from the
landowners, the loggers, the
charcoal producers, and the
farmers were what Ze Claudio
and Maria were fighting to
stop, particularly in the
area where they lived.
Nova Ipixuna is the nearest town
to Ze Claudio and Maria's
settlement.
It's economy is almost
completely
reliant on illegal logging.
Unsurprisingly, Ze Claudio
and Maria had a
lot of enemies here.
About a month after their
deaths, IBAMA launched a
massive series of raids shutting
down all the illegal
sawmills in the area.
MARCO VIDAL:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
JOSE BATISTA:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
CLAUDELICE DOS SANTOS:
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
