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In 2024, life itself is up for vote
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Talita Bedinelli
It was the perfect plan. After his still youthful face was splashed across the papers because he had killed one of Brazil’s greatest Amazon defenders, Darci Alves Pereira decided to pick up his life again, this time under a different name and an invented persona. The confessed assassin of Chico Mendes became “Pastor Daniel,” moved to a town of 27,000 inhabitants along the Trans-Amazonian highway, in the state of Pará, and entered politics. In Medicilândia, a city named after the dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici, he camouflaged himself among his own people, destroyers of the Amazon.
One of many, he dealt in cattle, cacao, and land. In between, Darci led worship services at a failed church. A perfect reflection of the ruralist Bolsonarism that has thrived in recent years, his reinvented life landed him the presidency of the local chapter of the Liberal Party, whose membership includes far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro. Darci became a precandidate for council member in this year’s elections—which might have been a first step towards an eventual seat in Congress, in Brasília, had the site ((o))eco not revealed that “Pastor Daniel,” leader of the right-wing party in town, and Darci Alves, killer of Chico Mendes, were one and the same person.
Medicilândia and Brasília lie over 1,200 miles apart but are connected by an invisible thread. The thread of death. The land-grabbing elite of towns like Medicilândia depend on the political elite of Brasília to continue destroying and profiteering. These two elites are oftentimes the same. To keep their clans in power, the Brasília of the far right—which has left the presidency for the time being but still inhabits Congress—depends on towns like Medicilândia, on the destruction of the forest, and on the elimination of lives that get in the way of greed. These two ends of the thread feed on each other. No wonder Bolsonarism planned to “let the cattle through”—that is, weaken environmental protections to facilitate exploitation of the Amazon.
Reporter Bruno Abbud and photographer Christian Braga traveled to Medicilândia in April for SUMAÚMA to reconstruct Darci’s transformation into Pastor Daniel. The story kicks off ours coverage of these municipal elections. Over the coming months, we will explain how local politics works in the Amazon and how its ties extend well beyond city borders. At SUMAÚMA, we believe Brazil’s still nascent democracy is unfinished. It needs to incorporate all human and more-than-human people and their future generations. In 2024, what is up for vote is life itself—both the lives here today and those born in the future. |
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