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| Edition 37 |
| Friday, 05 April, 2024 |
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| Our Voice
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Marielle: Who is the land for?
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Eliane Brum
Altamira, Xingu River, Amazon
“Whoever owns the land owns the man.” This declaration by abolitionist André Rebouças (1838-1898) was remembered on social media platforms by Silvio Almeida, Brazilian minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, when the men suspected of ordering the assassination of Marielle Franco were finally named and arrested. Reflecting the reality of Brazil at the time of the Empire, Rebouças’s words still hold true and even reinvigorated today. And they are crucial to understanding why the question "Who ordered Marielle killed and why?” has haunted Brazil for more than six years.
It wasn't until March 24, on a Sunday, exactly 2,202 days after her murder, that the Federal Police arrested the brothers Domingos Brazão, a councillor of the Rio de Janeiro State Audit Court, and Chiquinho Brazão, a federal deputy affiliated with Brazil Union until the party threw him out following his detention. Both men are accused of instigating the crime. Likewise arrested was Rivaldo Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro police commissioner at the time of the killing. Barbosa is the alleged mastermind behind the murder plot and also said to be responsible for obstructing investigations. The motive for the execution: as a city councilwoman, Marielle was hampering illegal land appropriations in Rio de Janeiro, pointed to as one of the businesses of the Brazão family and the paramilitary groups currently dominating vast portions of the territory. In Brazil’s most iconic city, Marielle died for the same reason that a long, and mounting, list of Amazon leaders has been executed, including Chico Mendes ( 1944-1988) and Dorothy Stang (1931-2005).
Who the land belongs to and what it is intended for are questions entwined with the very foundation of Brazil, and they have persisted across more than five centuries of genocide and devastating destruction of nature. With the rise of the far right, represented in Brazil by Bolsonarism, the dispute finds expression today in even more radical form. The tangled web concealing those implicated in Marielle’s murder has only begun to be unraveled. Hopefully, there will be enough political courage to delve deep into the bowels of this crime, which exposes the bowels of a country. |
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| Howler
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Episode 34
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...as he explores his forest home and tries to understand the humans who threaten it |
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Read here
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