Along the edges of the dirt road to Vila Socorro, 20 minutes from the district of Quatro Bocas, in Tomé-Açu, in the northeast of Pará, Brazil, the Tenetehara I’ixing Indigenous community are bordered by a brick wall with an electronic gate and a security guard.

It protects and imprisons them. “That’s how I feel: like a prisoner in my own village,” says resident Miriam Tembé.

The front part of their territory is now walled off and monitored by camera, a situation imposed by the violent siege of oil palm companies that have settled into the ancestrally-occupied lands of the Acará Valley. The back of the territory is still open, as are the forest and streams.

“For us, territory is freedom. It’s why we fight. I was forced to put up this wall,” says the leader of I’ixing Village, who is also the president of the Tembé Indigenous Association of Acará Valley. In December 2023, from her territory, the Indigenous leader told SUMAÚMA she was being surveilled. “Last week, a drone was here at the gate, flying over the house. It’s constant harassment.”

They began erecting the wall four months ago, in August, right after four young Tembé people were shot. The National Council on Human Rights, the Indigenist Missionary Council, the Pastoral Land Commission and local associations of Indigenous peoples and Quilombolas (as members of Maroon communities are known in Brazil) publicly pointed the finger at security personnel working for the Brasil BioFuels (BBF) Group, a palm oil farming giant. They were seen firing shots by a group of Indigenous people. National Public Security Force troops were sent to the region following the attacks. The Federal Police opened an investigation at the behest of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is being kept confidential. The Public Prosecutor’s Office says the goal is “to investigate the practice of attempted murder,” as well as “other allegedly criminal conduct, occurring in the context of the historical conflict between Brasil BioFuels and the region’s original peoples.” In April 2023, another reported attack wounded three Quilombola people. Armed agents from the company were again accused of involvement in the attack.

The Acará Valley territory is home to several Amazonian peoples. It is located between the municipalities of Acará, Bujaru, Concórdia do Pará, Tailândia, and Tomé-Açu, which sit along the shores of the Acará, Acará-Mirim, and Guamá rivers. Elielson Pereira da Silva, a professor at the Rural Federal University of the Amazon, found records showing the Turiwara Indigenous peoples occupied the upper Acará Valley in 1775 and in 1898. Miriam Tembé’s ancestors have made their homes on this ground at least since the time of her great-great-grandparents, who came from the Gurupi River. Quilombolas and Ribeirinhos also live there, with a history in this land for generations. 

Yet in the 1970s, land-grabbers began to occupy the region, appropriating land. Large palm oil companies came later, like Agropalma, which has been expanding in this corner of the Amazon since the 1980s. The oil extracted from these palms is used to make food, cosmetics, and biofuels.  Over the last 20 years, the federal government has begun to incentivize biofuel production, which has led to the growth of farms in the region. It was as if there were no traditional communities. Its peoples were driven out, torn apart, or squeezed into pieces of their territory. Palm oil began to overrun some areas. Some farms ended up encroaching on Indigenous and Quilombola territories, leading to escalated land conflict. Starting in 2020, the residents say, the situation grew worse. They saw links between the rise in attacks and the expansion of BBF in the region, which that year had purchased Biopalma, created in 2007, from Vale. 

At the edges of the municipalities of Tomé-Açu, Acará and Tailândia, there are stretches where the oil palm desert — the lifeless land where monoculture reigns — seems endless: Row upon row of oil palms with trunks full of scars. In such a repetitive landscape, it is easy to lose one’s bearings.

Between the roads overrun by the companies are at least eight Tembé and Turiwara Indigenous Territories and four Quilombola communities fighting for their territories to be ratified or expanded. Facing government inaction, they see palm companies advancing further and further over their ancestral homes and polluting their rivers  and streams. In response, some communities are now undertaking a so-called land return process — a reoccupation of ancestral land to pressure the government to grant them title to the land. The oil palm companies are claiming ownership of the land and are asking the authorities to recover their possession of the occupied areas, but the documents they have given have been insufficient to prove ownership. 

Over the last 13 years, four Indigenous and five Quilombola people have been killed in this dispute, according to a survey by the Brazilian Anthropology Association and updated by SUMAÚMA. The most recent case was the execution of Agnaldo da Silva, a Turiwara Indigenous man murdered in November 2023 in the municipality of Tailândia, the investigation of which is being kept confidential by the Federal Police.

The oar strokes of Lucivaldo da Silva Tavares, a 55-year-old Quilombola, bear the weight of many generations. Upon leaving the Acará River and entering the narrow Turé Stream, he steers his small boat toward the old mill where his great-grandfather worked as a slave. “Sir, there’s a lot of pain. You have no idea. There’s times when we talk and it makes us want to cry.”

It’s all there. In the woods, in the waters, in memory. The Quilombola man recalls a grove of chestnut trees felled by land-grabbers, the gunmen who threatened him and his brother, the time his son’s house was burned down, the relatives that have fallen in this war.  One of those relatives was Nazildo dos Santos Brito, Lucivaldo’s cousin and the leader of the Association of Remaining Quilombola Residents and Farmers of Upper Acará, who was executed in an ambush in 2018. “One dies, two die, three die, we’re not going to run. It’s ours. Are you going to run from your house?” he asks.

A Brazilian Association of Anthropology map of violence against traditional communities as a result of the war over oil palms  shows not only murders, but also other events and aggressions that began in 2007. The list is long: harassment and repression by private security guards working for companies and by Pará’s Civil and Military Police forces; attempts to criminalize and malign Indigenous and Quilombola people, with over 800 police reports filed by BBF; actions to recover possession and procedural maneuvers that receive approval from authorities who have no authorization to act in cases of agrarian conflict; and weak protections for human rights advocates.

In August of last year, after the Tembé were targeted by gunfire, the Brazilian Association of Anthropology asked federal and state authorities to investigate militia activity in the region and to suspend oil palm companies’ permits to employ armed security personnel, while also recognizing the territorial rights of traditional populations.

Because of the conflicts, the National Council on Human Rights drew up a series of recommendations for the federal government, the government of Pará, agencies connected to the courts, banks (including the Brazilian Development Bank), and the BBF group. Among its recommendations were that Brasil BioFuels put a stop “immediately to the indiscriminate use of lethal weapons by its private security forces.” The council also asked for revocation of authorization to operate given to MTS Segurança, a company providing security services to palm producers, for these security personnel to be replaced with police officers from Tomé-Açu and Acará, and for suspension of financing and loans.

It recommended that the Justice and Public Safety Ministry create a crisis cabinet that would include members of various public agencies. An inter-ministerial meeting was also held in August 2023 to establish actions. The Ministry’s team decided that several agencies should participate — the Federal Police, the Office of the General Counsel to the Federal Government, the Office of the Federal Property Management Secretary, and others — in investigations into the violence against the Tembé and Turiwara Indigenous peoples and the Quilombolas in Nova Betel. Representatives from the Conflict Mediation Department at the Agrarian Development Ministry visited the region to negotiate a dialog between the security forces, the court system, and leaders. In November, the case was added to the mission agenda at the National Commission to Confront Rural Violence. Recently, in May, the commission visited the Acará Valley to hear testimony from the peoples affected. The Human Rights and Citizenship Ministry did not respond to SUMAÚMA’s requests for information about the commission’s visit and about new measures in relation to the conflicts.

Because conflicts have failed to stop, in June of this year the Justice Ministry authorized new orders to dispatch the National Public Security Force to the region. Agents will remain there through the end of August. “The National Public Security Force began to provide support in the Acará Valley in August 2023, responding to a request from the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. This action was authorized following a request  from the Federal Police and with the consent of the Pará state government, in an effort to guarantee the protection and safety of the Tembé and Turiwara Indigenous peoples, as well as of the Quilombola communities in the region,” the Justice Ministry told SUMAÚMA in a statement. The force was also dispatched to “protect the employees, contractors and third-party employees of the Brasil BioFuels (BBF) company in the municipalities of Tomé-Açu and Acará, because of the worsening of  territorial conflicts in northeastern Pará, which are historical, complex and progressive.”

The conflicts involving the region’s Indigenous and Quilombola people and the Brasil BioFuels Group, the largest palm oil company in the Americas, are a signifixant cause of unrest. A report with data from 2023 issued by the Indigenist Missionary Council shows that 26% (5 out of 19 in total) of cases of violence against Indigenous people in Pará were related to palm oil or had direct involvement by BBF. Cases of violence range from abuse of power to threats, racism, ethnic and cultural discrimination, and attempted killings. There are currently 637 Indigenous people living in the municipalities of Tomé-Açu, Acará and Tailândia, all in Pará, according to data from the 2022 Census carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

Reports on traditional peoples drafted by the National Council on Human Rights also point to abuses by the BBF Group’s private security staff. In April 2023, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pará petitioned for security director Walter Ferrari and Eduardo Schimmelpfeng Coelho, the owner of Brasil BioFuels, to be taken into custody, with both suspected of running paramilitary-style activities in the rural Acará community of Vale do Bucaia, in October 2021. During this incident, 11 people were kicked, beaten with batons, or subjected to torture during a daybreak assault. According to prosecutor Emério Costa,, Ferrari and Coelho “ordered the demolition of houses and store buildings belonging to

community members.” In June 2023, the petition was sent to Acará Court Judge Giordanno Grilo, whose denial was based on the grounds that this was an exceptional and extreme measure; yet he warned the ruling could be revised if new information came to light.

The Pará Land Institute, a state land agency, admits there are overlaps between traditional Quilombola territories and oil palm areas. Proceedings related to the conflicts were handled by Castanhal’s Agrarian Court, the state land agency said in a statement to SUMAÚMA. According to Pará’s land agency, this situation froze “the process of granting any land title, since the Institute also depends on judicial solutions to orient its administrative action.” The case is now being heard by the federal courts, because it involves Indigenous and Quilombola rights in a process of recovering possession.

Asked about the recommendation from the National Council on Human Rights to cancel entries made in the national environmental registry of rural properties that overlap traditional communities in the Acará region, the Office of the Environment and Sustainability Secretary provided a generic response to SUMAÚMA, citing the suspension of 5,746 entries made in the environmental registry of rural properties that were on top of the state’s Indigenous Territories, as well as on 192 Quilombola territories. This data does not just concern palm farms, it also shows flagrant land-grabbing in the region.

Court rulings from 2018 have already indicated this. Pará’s courts have, at the trial and appeals court levels, recognized the property records for two areas occupied by Agropalma in Acará are false and invalid: the Roda de Fogo and Castanheira farms. The company says all of its land “was acquired in good faith from its legitimate owners and possessors, and the competent authorities even confirmed documentation at the moment of purchase.” In a statement sent to SUMAÚMA, the company says it “was never convicted of land-grabbing,” yet it admits that “unfortunately, decades after the purchase, errors were found in relation to the register of deeds, which compromised land documentation for some properties.” Agropalma says it tried to regularize the farms, paying market value for the areas, and it believed the documents were reliable.

The palm oil war has also caused rifts and conflicts between traditional peoples. In the wee hours of December 30, 2023, Miriam was attacked inside her own village. The I’ixing community had been invaded by gunmen and neighboring Indigenous people who, according to the Tembé Indigenous Association of Acará Valley, were interested in stealing palm fruits from the village’s area to sell. Shots hit the territory’s store building and a car windshield on the passenger side, where Miriam usually sits. Fifteen minutes before shots were fired, the village’s leader had traveled from the store building to the main house in I’ixing. Ten days earlier, she had gone to the authorities to report invasions of I’ixing territory by gunmen and Indigenous people from other communities.  She even notified them that she had learned of a plot to murder her.

For two years, the government ignored a request for Miriam Tembé, who at 41 years of age had spent 25 years fighting to ensure the rights of her people, to be included in programs to protect human rights advocates. The leader, who is under constant threat, was only included in Pará’s Program of Human Rights Defenders, Communicators, and Environmentalists on August 7 of this year, following insistent requests from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Palm farming is trying to shake relations between relatives, but it is by joining forces that the region’s traditional communities are able to go on existing.  Without anyone to protect them from threats and the invasion of their lands, the peoples have formed an alliance to resist, the IRQ Movement: “I” for Indigenous, “R” for Ribeirinho, “Q” for Quilombola. The group first began to grow active in 2015, to counter Biopalma’s impacts. Starting in 2022, an IRQ commission began to work for collective interests.

Adelina Maciel Tembé, Miriam’s mother who is also a leader, heads the IRQ Movement. Adelina was the first woman to break the cycle of all-male leadership in the Acará Valley. A diminutive woman of 68, she is the main leader of the Cuxiú Mirim Village, in the Tembé Indigenous Territory. Adelina passed the baton to her daughter, defending her people as the leader of a different village, I’ixing, in an area that was retaken by the Indigenous people.

“Our communities became more aware of the commonality of problems and began to unite to protect ourselves. In this process of growing closer, there was learning, pains were shared,” says Josias Dias dos Santos, better known as Jota, a Quilombola man from the Turé III community and the president of the Association of Remaining Quilombola Residents and Farmers of Upper Acará. He is also the vice president of the IRQ Movement. “Working together, we grow stronger. And we can learn from each other, because there’s an exchange of knowledge.”

Jota says there are representatives from at least 15 communities who are continually active in the IRQ Movement. Other territories have joined, reaching 25 communities. The alliance’s goal is to join forces to protect themselves, ensure their rights, and demand public policies. “It’s a movement for territory and for life,” he says. The IRQ do not use firearms, but rather clubs and wooden spears. Armed relatives, the Quilombola leader makes a point of mentioning, “do not represent the IRQ.” The movement’s actions and direction are defined at meetings every two weeks.

Josias, a slender 36-year-old man, has fought for his people since he was 22. He is not only Quilombola, but also a descendant of the Turiwara Indigenous people. He has been in the Program of Human Rights Defenders, Communicators, and Environmentalists since 2022, when he reported the murder of Nazildo dos Santos Brito, formerly the president of the Association of Remaining Quilombola Residents and Farmers of Upper Acará. Nevertheless, he doesn’t feel protected. “I am forbidden from going to Quatro Bocas. I can’t have ice cream in the square. If I leave, it has to be in a car that isn’t mine, and there needs to be second car with warriors accompanying me. It’s as if I were a fugitive.”

After the attack on Miriam in late 2023, the IRQ Movement accused Paratê Tembé and Marquês Tembé, Indigenous leaders from the Turé Mariquita Indigenous Territory who are connected to the Tembé Indigenous Association of Tomé-Açu, of perpetrating the attack on I’ixing. The movement suggests the band was financed by Brasil BioFuels, which allegedly promised to purchase stolen fruit from them. On January 29, the two Indigenous men suspected of involvement in the attack on the village leader were taken into custody by the Federal Police. They are being investigated for attempted murder, criminal conspiracy, formation of a private militia, and illegal possession of a firearm. Attorney Jorde Tembé, who is defending Paratê and Marquês, told SUMAÚMA there is no concrete evidence of his clients’ participation in the cases in which they stand accused. Jorde feels the mass detainment of Indigenous people is aimed at disjointing the movement of traditional communities and marginalizing leaders. Their lawyer said internal conflict would not have occurred if the government had fulfilled its responsibilities, advancing the land demarcation process.

“The venom of capital has eroded collective actions and put the struggle of this region’s peoples and traditional communities at risk. It is a network of relationships involving other political and economic agents,” says Elielson Pereira da Silva.

On January 3, 2024, while visiting the police station in Quatro Bocas to report invasions and threats, Miriam Tembé was caught by surprise. In a sudden twist, she ended up being detained and accused of coercion and procedural fraud in a parallel case: the death of her brother, Manuel Tembé. It happened in October 2023; her son, Ítalo Maciel, was suspected of the murder. The Indigenous leader’s brother died after a night out at a bar, under still-murky circumstances that are being investigated. Miriam, who had never been subpoenaed to testify in the case, was taken to the Women’s Recovery Center in Ananindeua, in the Belém metro region.

After the Tomé-Açu Court denied access to the preventive detention records, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office petitioned Pará’s State Appellate Court for a writ of mandamus to obtain the documents used to justify Miriam’s detainment. The I’ixing territory’s leader was released on January 26, but the Tomé-Açu Court prohibited her from resuming leadership of the village. On March 19, challenged by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the state court found Miriam was inappropriately removed from her leadership role, overturning the district judge’s ruling.

When Miriam was taken into custody, IRQ members went down to I’ixing to prevent invaders from taking over the land. On January 4 of this year, another attack, with shots fired into the village, was made against four Quilombolas who were protecting the territory, including an adolescent victim.

When SUMAÚMA asked the Brasil BioFuels Group for comment in March, the company said through its press office that it would not provide a statement on land conflicts in the Acará Valley and on recent attacks. An e-mail with questions was sent to the company, but no response was provided. Approached again in September, the company failed to respond to an e-mail and to WhatsApp messages.

Pará’s government claims “new measures” are being organized, in dialog with Indigenous and Quilombola people from the region, to build solutions in conflict areas. In a statement sent to SUMAÚMA, the state government said it is part of the crisis cabinet assembled by the Justice Ministry last year to discuss the palm oil war. Pará’s government did not respond to SUMAÚMA’s requests about updated visits to the region and recent actions. According to the Office of the Public Safety and Social Defense Secretary of Pará, “the change in Civil and Military police commands in the municipality occurred according to the natural rotation within the institutions.” This change was also a recommendation made by the National Council on Human Rights.

The Brazilian Development Bank says BBF currently has no financing or loans and that, based on the recommendations of the National Council on Human Rights and following an internal analysis, “the group is blocked from performing (direct and indirect) operations with the bank.”

The Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, told SUMAÚMA that Indigenous demands for territory are being considered.

“Long live Belém, the capital of the Amazon, the capital of climate change discussions! Long live the forest people! Long live the people of Pará!” In August 2023, Pará’s governor, Helder Barbalho (Brazilian Democratic Movement), closed his speech to applause at the opening of the Amazonian Dialogs, a program held in the run-up to the Amazon Summit that was attended by heads of state. That same day, around 200 kilometers away, in the Bananal Village territory, Kauã Tembé, age 19, was shot in the groin. The communities, social and Indigenous movements, and the National Council on Human Rights, said the attack was carried out by Brasil BioFuels security personnel — the BBF Group is disputing ownership of the land. Kauã was taken to Belém and underwent surgery. The case is being investigated, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed, but it is also confidential. SUMAÚMA tried to speak with Kauã, but he did not answer our contacts.

Kauã Tembé, 19, was shot last year in a conflict with security personnel working for Brasil BioFuels. Photo: Screenshot

The then-president and now vice president of the National Council on Human Rights, federal public defender André Carneiro Leão, was in Belém. Because of the severity of the case, he traveled to Tomé-Açu. Indigenous, Quilombola, and Ribeirinho leaders were waiting for the council delegation to arrive when three other relatives were wounded in daylight at the BBF hub while they were protesting the attack against Kauã. According to claims made by the company in the media, the Indigenous people invaded and vandalized the hub. Daiane Tembé was hit in the neck and jaw; Erlane Tembé ended up getting shot in the thigh and shoulder; Felipe Tembé took a bullet to his back.

Felipe was taken to the hospital. Before he was finished receiving medical care, the Civil Police took him to a precinct station to provide a statement. On the way, the Military Police of Pará stopped the car and arrested Felipe, accusing him of vandalising  the company’s property. He was taken in handcuffs to the municipality of Castanhal. “He was arrested in an abusive, illegal manner, because there was nothing to justify an arrest made during the commission of a crime. That is why we also decided to act in relation to this police violence against this Indigenous person,” says the vice president of the National Council on Human Rights.

The IRQ Movement protested in front of the Quatro Bocas police station, demanding Felipe be set free. The young Tembé man was released that same day and returned to the community.

For the three Indigenous victims of the August attack, the consequences extended over time. In November 2023, Daiane Tembé underwent two face graft surgeries. “I didn’t wake up very well today. In pain, swollen,” she told SUMAÚMA in an audio message, nine days after the procedure.

The then-president of the National Council on Human Rights met with Pará’s Public Safety and Social Defense secretary, Ualame Machado, back in August 2023. Sources who spoke with SUMAÚMA said there was agreement on both sides — federal and state — about the growing violence against the traditional peoples since the BBF Group arrived in the region. Public defender André Carneiro Leão asked Joenia Wapichana, the president of the Indigenous affairs agency, to hurry analysis of requests to demarcate and expand Indigenous Territories in this conflict region. Joenia promised to provide a response.

In May 2010, in the last year of his second term as Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in Tomé-Açu to launch the Sustainable Oil Palm Production Program. “What we’re doing here is the start of a revolution in this region. I pray to God that I’m here in seven, eight years, so I can come back, so we can see what happened.” What happened, since then, was an intensification of agrarian conflicts, worsened by a policy under the extreme-right Jair Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) of not demarcating land and of violating human rights, as noted in a report issued by the Global Witness organization.

According to Elielson Pereira da Silva, the oil palm farming project in Pará was aimed at selling three ideas: “That it was supposedly an economically stagnant region, which is why it needed outside investment; that it was an environmentally degraded area and those responsible for the degradation were the peoples; and that it was a socially impoverished region.” These economic, environmental, and social accusations are aimed at legitimizing the developmentalist palm project, he explains.

The agroindustrial operation’s green propaganda boasts about recovering degraded areas and making fuel out of biomass. Yet those living in the territories experience trails of bullets and destruction. “You can’t talk about sustainability when you spill Indigenous peoples’ blood,” says federal public defender André Carneiro Leão. In August 2023, the National Council on Human Rights recommended the suspension of the Social Biofuel Seal given to BBF certifying inclusion of family farmers in the biodiesel market. The Agrarian Development and Family Farming Ministry, responsible for issuing the seal, told SUMAÚMA that the Social Biofuel Seal was canceled for AmazonBio, a Brasil BioFuels (BBF) Group company. SUMAÚMA’s made initial inquiries on February 5. The seal was canceled when a notice was published in Brazil’s Official Gazette on March 5, 2024.

The Brasil BioFuels Group, along with Vibra Energia, formerly BR Distribuidora, promises to produce sustainable aviation fuel — currently one of the biggest culprits of greenhouse gas emissions — and green diesel from palm oil between 2025 and 2026. “BBF is going with this greenwashing of discourse, which involves decarbonization and the bioeconomy, and with intensified repression, believing in a political alliance with the state government [of Pará],” says Elielson.

Milton Steagall, the president of BBF, published an article in the Correio Braziliense newspaper in September of last year on the UN’s COP-30 climate conference, to be held in Belém, and on the bioeconomy in the Amazon. In it, he compares palm oil to the “pre-salt” oil found underneath Brazil: “Our country has the potential to be a global leader in palm oil production. I always say we have a truly ‘green pre-salt oil’ in our country, yet to be explored.”

But for communities in the Acará Valley, palm oil production is not sustainable. Every day they sense the air and ground are poisoned by agrochemicals sprayed on crops. Ten years ago, back during Biopalma times, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office filed suit with the courts asking that a scientific examination be carried out to measure the impacts of agrochemicals on the environment and on the health of Tembé families in Tomé-Açu. After going back and forth, the Regional Federal Appellate Court of the First Region handed down a favorable ruling. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office is still waiting for the result of the examination. The communities also sense and report pollution in river waters from vinasse, the malodorous waste generated from the industrial milling of palm fruit. “And we drink it. Because where do you get water if not from there?” asks Lucivaldo da Silva Tavares, a member of the Quilombola community.

The leader of I’ixing was 6 years old when the Tembé Indigenous Territory was declared, in 1989. Miriam remembers there was still an immense Forest, bountiful water, abundance and wealth.  Then came occupations of loggers and farmers in the surrounding area, then the palm companies. Now, the peoples are building a cry for protection out of bricks and mortar. Yet when the walls go up, something in the territory and in its people is lost.

While Miriam was eating lunch and talking to SUMAÚMA, 10-year-old Messias was walking around the table, eying a pitcher of açaí. Earlier, on that Sunday morning in winter, the small Tembé boy, Miriam’s son, wanted to go fishing in the stream. No way was he going by himself. “I don’t have the guts to let my son go out, inside of his own territory. In the past, we would go out fishing, take a canoe, go to the River, go the Stream. Our fathers, our brothers would go hunting, and we knew they would come back safe. We can no longer do this, because we are being hunted too.” Early this month, in another conversation with SUMAÚMA by video-conference, Miriam suddenly disconnected. She had to leave the virtual meeting room because shots had been heard in the Tenetehara I’ixing Indigenous community, she said later.

The hunted and deforested lives that resist, says Jota, a Quilombola man, carry the “wildness of secondary vegetation,” of plants that are re-growing. “We are nature. If you cut down an area, set fire, the vegetation that grows is different. It doesn’t make shade, it is wild vegetation. It contains jurubeba, haspan flatsedge. It’s thorny. That there is a defensive mechanism of nature. You enter a forest under large trees. But I’d like to see you enter a secondary vegetation area, the re-growth, after one, two years.” “We are nature and, when provoked, we react.”  This is the IRQ Movement: Indigenous, Ribeirinho, and Quilombola people in the Acará Valley becoming secondary growth.