{"id":2472,"date":"2020-05-31T15:23:04","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T18:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amigosdaterrabrasil.org.br\/?p=2472"},"modified":"2025-06-17T15:33:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T18:33:34","slug":"the-motorcycle-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amigasdaterrabrasil.org.br\/?p=2472","title":{"rendered":"The motorcycle night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vruuuum vruuum vruuuuuum and the noise woke Jos\u00e9 Marques da Costa, a rural worker from Alenquer, a small municipality in the state of Par\u00e1 with just over 50 thousand inhabitants. Of the 53 years that Jos\u00e9 carries on his shoulders, most of it was filled with restless nights: there’s no easy sleep in the corners of Brazil for those who dare to defend the rights of small farmers and rural workers – exactly what Jos\u00e9 does, and when he heard the fourth vruuum he stood up, alert.<\/p>\n

A few months earlier, new messages had reached him (always indirectly, cowardly warning, \u201csend word\u201d) – We will kill about five of you people, they will not even know<\/em> and – Justice is slow, in the bullet we can solve it faster. <\/em>If before Jos\u00e9 slept with one eye open he started to open them both on nights of little or no rest. And if television seemed like a good medicine to make him sleep what actually happened was the opposite: the dragging voice of the current president of the Brazilian Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, echoed from the device and only aggravated Jos\u00e9’s insomnia by saying things like – Who should have been arrested were the MST people (Landless Workers Movement), those vagabonds. The policemen reacted so as not to die<\/em>, and – Let’s shoot who is from the Labour Party in the state of Acre, huh!<\/em> Hate speech that encourages and materializes violence against rural workers in the Amazon Region and in Brazil: against him, Jos\u00e9. The first Bolsonaro’s sentence refers to the Caraj\u00e1s Massacre<\/a>, when the police in Par\u00e1 murdered 19 landless workers in cold blood; the second was said during the 2018 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Vruuuum vruum followed the noise, and Jos\u00e9 Marques risked a glance out on the street.<\/p>\n

Motorcycles. Many motorcycles – One, two, three, half a dozen, nine, ten<\/em>, he was counting, but the task was hampered by the constant circular movement of the vehicles, accelerating and decelerating in front of the house. Twenty, it must have been something near that, and soon Jos\u00e9 started to focus not on the bikes but on who rode them: that was certainly a matter of greater importance. That was when he saw neighbors, friends, colleagues, and the fear that had settled in his chest gave way to a little curiosity – What are you all doing here at this hour?<\/em> and then commotion took place: the circus set up there was not an ambush. On the contrary, it was an escort to protect him exactly from attack and possible murder.<\/p>\n

Since the end of the day the rumor had run through the small town that gunmen – All very treacherous, they’ll drink a coffee at your house before killing you,<\/em> these treacherous gunmen were lurking on the road, ready to attack Jos\u00e9 Marques when he left home. Death ordered by the big farmers in the region. The twenty or so motorcycles would serve – and did serve – as a shield to take Jos\u00e9 Marques to a safe place. That was how he got on his motorcycle, in the middle of the night of little Alenquer, took off and lived to fight another day among and for his people.<\/p>\n\n\n

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At the top, Jos\u00e9 Marques; in the other images, a map of the region in conflict and records of irregularities and violations of rights committed by land grabbers, who took down trees and destroyed the only access bridge to the site. Photos: Carol Ferraz \/ Amigos da Terra Brasil <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Land grabbing:<\/b> overlapped<\/strong> CAR and \u201cFour Years of Storm\u201d
<\/b>What led gunmen to pursue Jos\u00e9 Marques is related to the long-named position he carries: president of the Community Association of Residents and Small Farmers of the Lim\u00e3o Grande Community, located in Alenquer. There, 86 families lived and worked in an area of around ten thousand hectares – until, in 2016, what Jos\u00e9 called \u201cFour Years of Storm\u201d began.<\/p>\n

First, there was the requisition – by farmers – of three thousand hectares of the area where the families lived. In consultation with Incra (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, in English), with the support of the Union of Rural Workers and Family Farmers of Alenquer (STTR-ALQ), it was shown that the request was fair: the families accepted to leave that area, redistributing themselves in the seven thousand remaining hectares. In the meantime, the land was georeferenced, a necessary step for the community to register in CAR (Rural Environmental Registry, in English).<\/p>\n

Work done, they returned to Incra and then came the surprise: fifteen days earlier, several people had registered those areas as their own. Suddenly, the land where families have lived since 2007 had “owners” – and they were others. There was never any inspection by Incra to verify if those who registered in CAR actually occupied the self-declared land; if there were one, it would be simple to see who actually occupied the area – They didn’t even know where it is<\/i>, however Jos\u00e9 does and this seems to be of no use.<\/p>\n

The registration, based on the information provided by the applicant, has no deadline for verification by the competent public agency: some states claim that the analysis of the registrations would take from 25 to 100 years. However, contrary to the popular imaginary of slowness in justice, long before the due inspection could take place, the repossession of the site was decreed – which happened with a strong police apparatus. In short: 86 families were thrown out on the street. Everything they had was left behind – clothes, crops, houses – and what was left behind was set on fire and tored down.<\/p>\n

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