New York Times
June 14, 2000

This month in the Brazilian state of Para, the wealthy and influential rancher Jeronimo Alves Amorim received a 19-year prison term for ordering the murder of a rural union leader, Expedito Ribeiro de Souza, nine years ago. More than 1,000 activists for the landless such as Mr. Ribeiro de Souza have been killed in Brazil in the last 10 years. Only a handful of the murderers have been tried, virtually all of them low-level hired triggermen. The conviction and sentencing of the powerful Mr. Amorim is one of several recent setbacks for Brazil's ranchers, whose drive for land is furthering the destruction of the Amazon and condemning peasants to lives of destitution.

Brazil has one of the world's most unequal patterns of land distribution. One percent of landowners own half the agricultural land -- much of it idle, bought for speculation. Brazilian law allows land to be expropriated if it does not fulfill its "social function." Tens of thousands of peasants have won title after occupying idle land, but millions remain landless, and their leaders run huge risks. Other victims are rubber tappers who live in the forests claimed and burned by ranchers and farmers.

The ranchers have great political power in rural Brazil and in Congress. They have little to fear from the justice system or the police, who have themselves massacred the landless. In 1996, 19 peasants were killed and dozens injured when they clashed with military police in Para State. Last year three police commanders were acquitted of the massacre after a trial marred by evidence-tampering and accusations of jury bribery.

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso criticized the verdict. His government supports some land reform, but the ranchers' lobby has been able to block progress. After the landless movement occupied government ministries recently, Mr. Cardoso cracked down, establishing a federal police unit to deal with the movement and making it harder for those who occupy land to win title to it.

But Brazil's state and federal authorities also feel pressure from sectors of the Catholic Church, environmentalists and the growing movement of the landless, who can mobilize a network of supporters abroad. On controversial issues, these voices can be persuasive. Para has now ordered a new trial for the police accused of the 1996 massacre. Ranchers had sought a change in forestry laws that could have allowed a 25 percent increase in the clearing of Amazon forests. Last month in Congress, the legislation was unexpectedly defeated. Mr. Amorim's sentence is perhaps the most significant victory in the courts. The challenge for Brazil, however, is to do justice and make fair land decisions even in the cases that never make headlines.

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company