The Brazilian Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra, in Portuguese) has concluded the process of collecting part of the area of Novo Natal non-designated land (known in Brazil as “gleba”), in the town of Labrea, State of Amazonas, for the families living in the Marielle Franco encampment.
The process’ conclusion could end almost a decade of violence. Over the years, landless families have been attacked – including torture and threats – and have had their houses burned down. In January 2025, an encamped landless worker was found dead, shot in the chin. The case is under investigation.
“It’s a relief for us, isn’t it?” says Paulo Sérgio Araújo, leader of the group of encampers, about Incra’s decision. Arrested a year ago, he is accused of criminal organization. Araújo claims innocence and defines the region as a “lawless land.”
The collection of 28,400 hectares of the Novo Natal gleba – the process that designates the land as belonging to the state – was published in Brazil’s Official Gazette on February 24 of this year.
According to Incra’s superintendence in Amazonas, the settlement will probably be created in the next few months and will serve 150 of the 200 families waiting for the area to be regularized.
The encampers’ activities include harvesting Brazil nuts. This practice allows for environmental preservation, as the chestnut trees, typical of the Amazon, grow in harmony with other species.
As well as harvesting, some encampers also farm. Joana, a farmer who prefers not to reveal her last name, has lived in the encampment for around nine years, growing rice, cassava, vegetables and raising chickens.
“We were under psychological torture,” she says, referring to the pressure on the community during the conflict. She recalls drones flying over the area, as well as house fires and threats of eviction.
Joana believes that collecting the land and settling the families will reduce the number of attacks by large landowners. “We’ll be more confident,” she says.
One of the big farmers the encampers identified as the mastermind behind the threats is cattle rancher Sidnei Sanches Zamora, who owns land in the states of Acre and Amazonas. Among them is a property called Palotina Farm, which partially overlaps the area the encampers are requesting.
In November 2024, his son, Sidney Sanches Zamora Filho, also a cattle rancher, was arrested on remand by the 7th Federal Environmental and Agrarian Court of the Amazonas Judicial Sub-section as part of an investigation into a criminal organization specializing in land grabbing.
Contacted by BdF, Zamora Filho said he was dismayed and surprised to receive the arrest order, “Especially since I wasn’t even heard [by authorities].” “I have always denounced the invaders and cooperated with environmental and police authorities,” he added.
In a reply sent by email, he said that his legal team “managed to reverse this injustice and canceled the preventive detention order, by proving that I had not committed any violent crime”.
Regarding the land’s ownership, the cattle rancher claims that Incra has recognized his ownership of Palotina Farm. One of the documents he sent to BdF, dated 2019, is signed by João Miguel Souza Aguiar Maia de Sousa, a colonel appointed to the position of National Agrarian Ombudsman during Jair Bolsonaro’s government (2019-2022).
While he was in office, Maia de Sousa became notorious for sending a memo to Incra’s regional superintendencies recommending that they not receive “entities that do not have legal status”, as well as “land invaders”. In practice, the determination prevented the institute from dialoguing with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese).
According to Denis da Silva Pereira, Incra’s superintendent in Amazonas, the certificate of ownership for part of the land that Zamora Filho mentioned has been canceled.
“We are answering for our part, which is to fulfill Incra’s mission of collecting vacant land,” says the superintendent, who led the collection process. “And the Novo Natal gleba is vacant land. To be fully developed, the Amazon needs to have its territory regularized, democratized and produced according to sustainability principles,” he says.
Amazon’s most violent area
The Marielle Franco landless encampment is located in a border area between the towns of Labrea and Boca do Acre, both in the state of Amazonas and leaders in the number of cases of violence in the countryside, according to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT, in Portuguese).
They are in a region known as Amacro, which covers part of the states of Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia, and is defined as a frontier for agricultural expansion during the government of Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party).
“While we’re witnessing a decrease in violence in the Legal Amazon, it’s growing in Amacro,” says Afonso Chagas, a CPT agent.
“In 2023, Amacro concentrated 10% [179] of all land conflicts registered in Brazil, and 26% of all murders that occurred in the context of conflicts in the countryside,” highlights the Pastoral’s 2023 report on conflicts in the countryside.
Of the 31 murders related to rural conflicts in Brazil that year, eight were in Amacro, five of which were caused by land grabbers, according to the CPT. In 2021, of the 60 records of agrarian conflicts in the state of Acre, 51 were in the Amacro region.
“Unfortunately, in that area, physical violence and murders have been a specialty of landowners, of land grabbers,” says Chagas, about the high number of violence cases in Labrea and Boca do Acre. He believes that the difficulty in reaching the region is one of the factors driving the rise in violence.
With more than 6 million hectares – the same area as Sri Lanka – Labrea is the tenth-largest municipality in Brazil. Although the Marielle Franco encampment is within Labrea, the complaints against Araújo were registered by the police in Boca do Acre, whose urban area is closer to the encampment, about 100 kilometers away. From the urban center of Labrea to the community area, it is more than a thousand kilometers of distance.
“As the region is difficult for the state to reach – that is, everything is far away because it’s a border area – the jurisdictions are not sufficiently demarcated. Impunity is a kind of cover and legitimacy for these violent practices,” says the Pastoral worker.
Another attraction for land grabbers in the area is the abundance of undesignated public lands – those that belong to the state or federal government, but have not yet been transformed into settlements, Conservation Units or other protected territories, such as Indigenous Lands and Quilombola Territories. Without proper demarcation, these areas are left in a state of legal insecurity and are attractive to invaders.
“[Amacro] is the epicenter of all this violence, which corresponds to the other data: That’s where there is the largest number of uncollected federal public lands, not allocated and illicitly appropriated by large land grabbers,” explains Chagas.
According to the CPT, the first conflict on the Novo Natal gleba, in the area of the Palotina farm, was recorded in 2008.
Arrested after denouncing torture
Paulo Sérgio Araújo was arrested after going to the Boca do Acre Civil Police to report a case of violence in the Marielle Franco encampment in February 2024, when four residents of the area were beaten and tortured.
They were in the forest, filming the illegal logging activities of invaders in the area when they were approached by men wearing bulletproof vests. According to one of the victims’ statements to the Civil Police, the aggressors “(…) beat them with a ‘machete, a kick, a slap’, on the back” all over the body.
In another excerpt of the statement, the victims say that the attackers told them they weren’t going to kill them “so that they would tell the community to be afraid of them”.
A video the residents recorded shows one of the victims, a bloodied and trembling man, being led by others to a car. From there, he would be taken for medical attention. “No investigation was conducted into the crime of torture,” Araújo complains.
When he went to the police to report the case, Araújo found out about the investigation against him, and ended up being arrested.
“They had me arrested. They have no piece of evidence,” he says. According to the victims’ statements, the torture was filmed and transmitted to the mastermind using a Starlink router, which allows internet access in remote areas.
In August 2024, Araújo’s house was burned down. A few days later, another house in the encampment was also consumed by fire. “Everything was destroyed. They even killed the dog that was inside the house,” Araújo recalls.
The community leader is currently at his family home in Rio Branco, Acre’s capital, where he is serving an open prison sentence and awaiting the next decision from the courts. He will only be able to return to the encampment if his imprisonment is reversed.
