Josimo was facing a hideous dilemma. He didn't want to get shot, yet he couldn't quite bring himself to run away. He knew full well how much the local ranchers detested him—all on account of the fact that he had set himself up as the champion of the miserably exploited peasants. When they were evicted from their lands, Josimo supported them and encouraged them to return. He told them about their rights, and helped them set up unions and join the Workers' Party. When the peasants were beaten up, Josimo denounced the ranchers and their strong-men and complained to the police. He was tireless in the defense of the defenseless. He was a thorn in the side of the landowners, he was a source of considerable annoyance to the police and the local authorities, and he was behaving in a manner most unsuited to a parish priest. Worst of all, he was a black man. This was the final insult. Josimo's enemies had been gunning for him for some time, but recently they'd been getting too close for comfort.

Saturday May 10th 1986 dawns hot and clear. "It was a beautiful day, not a day for terrible things to happen," remarked Perpétua later on.

Inside the parish house in São Sebastião, Padre Josimo slings his leather bag over his shoulder, grabs a pile of books and adjusts his new straw hat at a becoming angle. Edna, the young catechist, comes up behind him humming a few bars from the popular song "Tall, Dark and Handsome."

"I've never seen you in a hat before," she remarks, "What's going on?"

"It's so the pistoleiros won't recognize me," he grins, and swings out through the kitchen to the yard. Last night a group of his friends had been sitting around the kitchen table eating potato chips and kidding Josimo about living dangerously.

"Don't worry," he told them half seriously, "If they don't get me when I'm thirty three, I'll live to be eighty."

It's nine o'clock when Josimo tosses his bags into the back of the blue Toyota.

"OK, Domingos," he says to his bearded assistant, "See you tomorrow."

"Josimo!" His mother, Dona Olinda is frowning sternly up at him. "Aren't you going to take Domingos with you? You know I don't like you traveling alone."

"I'll be fine, mother," says Josimo comfortingly. "I've asked Domingos to take a message to the Sisters. Maybe you'd like to go along too." He knows that Dona Olinda likes nothing better than to visit the French nuns in the next village. Olinda brightens, and with a quick "Be back a week tomorrow," Josimo jumps into the car and is off.

It's nothing new for him to spend more time away than at home; he has a large parish to look after and a lot of traveling to do. Today he is heading eighty miles down the dirt road to Imperatriz, the nearest town of any size. It's the place where the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) has its office. Josimo is the local coordinator, and Imperatriz is where they do their shopping, collect their mail and make their telephone calls. A careful driver, Josimo rounds the corner of the square, waving at a bunch of women there, and heads off on the long bumpy road to Imperatriz.

"Domingos, I wish you had gone with him. You know I don't like him to travel alone," grumbles Dona Olinda.

"I'll be seeing him tomorrow in Tocantinópolis," says Domingos, humoring her, "Come on now, hop in," and off they go in a cloud of dust.

One of the women who had waved at Josimo watches the two cars leave, and hurries to the public telephone. She puts through a call to the next village, Augustinópolis. "The man has left," she says, and puts down the phone.

Shortly after nine o'clock, gunman Geraldo is downing black coffee and Coca Cola in a bakery in Imperatriz. He is attempting to shift his hangover, and waiting for his orders to come through from Augustinópolis. He's been offered fifty thousand cruzeiros ($1750) for the job, but they warned him he'd better not mess up this time around......

In Augustinópolis, town councilor Neném is preparing a monster barbecue for the seventy military policemen in town. They have come to collect the body of his brother; a much-feared gunman known as Donda. Donda was notorious for having an ungovernable temper and when the mood was on him he would shoot anyone who crossed him. He had recently been working as foreman on one of the local farms, and had treated the workers so outrageously that accumulated resentments had finally boiled over. The workers had ambushed Donda and killed him. Not only that, but they had refused to allow the family to collect the body. "Let the dogs eat it," was the message they sent, "That's what Donda used to say when he shot someone."

Neném's first attempt to retrieve his brother's body was met by a hail of bullets, and he was forced to withdraw. He went to the police station for help, and the police chief sent for reinforcements. Seventy military policemen were detached for the job, as well as a helicopter. Nothing like this had ever been seen in Augustinópolis, and the town was in a ferment of excitement, with rumors flying in all directions. "It's all the fault of that communist priest," some people were saying. "This sort of thing never used to happen before he came here. Those church people are nothing but a bunch of agitators, if you ask me."

As Josimo approaches Augustinópolis he remembers his friends' repeated warnings. "For God's sake drive through that place without stopping, it's a hornet's nest if ever there was one." Augustinópolis is the seat of the local ranchers' association—sworn enemies to Josimo and the CPT. Josimo and his friends are fully aware of this, and they know too that in this town there are gunmen for hire on every street corner. But as luck will have it the only road passes through the center of town, and even amidst all the excitement, Josimo's distinctive blue Toyota does not pass unnoticed. Neném is chewing on a chicken bone, while his brother Guiomar opens another bottle of beer. Guiomar gestures toward Josimo's car, and mutters, "There goes a dead man." Brother-in-law Vilson grins at the other two, tosses his cigarette end onto the ground, and climbs into a yellow car that is waiting in the drive. He slams his foot to the floor and heads for the open road, overtaking Josimo on the edge of town. Adstonir Resende, head of the ranchers' association, notices the two cars with great satisfaction. He walks in a leisurely fashion to the public telephone and dials a number in Imperatriz. "The man has left," he says. A woman takes the call the other end. She hurries down to the corner bakery and whispers into the ear of Geraldo the gunman. Geraldo downs his soda and heads out.

Josimo drives along the dusty road, glad to be past the spot where he was ambushed not three weeks earlier. Today there is no hurry. His plan is to leave the Toyota in Imperatriz at the workshop. Later in the day he will take the bus to Tocantinópolis, at the request of the bishop. He knows just what Dom Aloísio will say. A cautious man, he will advise Josimo to leave the area for a time. Things are getting too hot, and it's time to leave.

The friendly village of São Miguel comes into sight, and Josimo pulls in at the house of one of his staunchest allies. Dona Raimunda Bezerra is a pillar of the local workers' association, and as usual she rushes out to greet him. She has a document for him to study, and her habitual scolding to administer. "How many times have I told you, Padre Josimo, that you shouldn't be traveling alone?" she demands. "I'm always uneasy about you crossing that ferry, and that's the truth."

Josimo smiles affectionately at her, and before she can continue he is saved by the arrival of a young police recruit, football boots in hand, heading for the Saturday game at the police station by the ferry. A young woman runs up, asking for a ride for herself and three small children, and Josimo packs them all into the back. Straightening his new straw hat, he gives Raimunda a friendly wave, and drives off.

The ferry is always a bottleneck, and the ferry landing is a good place for an ambush, with its maze of little wooden huts and tortuous paths. But today is such a beautiful day, hot and sunny. Tomorrow will be Mother's Day, and Josimo will meet up with his friends. They're off to a meeting down in the south of the state. He can feel the tension draining out of him at the thought of it. He drives onto the ferry and parks his car in the space behind Vilson's. Vilson sees him in his rear-view mirror but makes no sign. As the ferry draws in, Vilson is first up the ramp, and disappears into the maelstrom of people in the narrow street. Josimo follows him slowly, careful not to splash the large crowd of pedestrians, and makes for the post office. He is just in time to collect the mail. The post office shuts at midday. Meanwhile Geraldo has sobered himself up, collected his 7.65 mm pistol and has stuffed it into his belt. Vilson and he are approaching the CPT office on Avenida Dorgival Pinheiro when they see the blue Toyota coming towards them. Josimo has dropped off his passengers and is alone. Vilson stops his car outside the barbecue stand, and Geraldo crosses the street and dives into the copy shop, two doors down from Josimo's office.

Josimo parks the car and hurries up the first flight of steps. He is just turning the corner when he hears someone shout his name. "Ei! Padre Josimo!" He turns and looks back. Below him stands a blond man with long hair, wrestling with something in the waistband of his pants. In a flash, Josimo realizes he is pulling a gun, and turns to run. Geraldo fires twice, hitting Josimo in the kidney.

Josimo is dead, but he doesn't know it. 

It was February 1993, I was on the trail of Padre Josimo, and I was sitting in a lawyer's office in Brasília learning about the time Josimo had got himself into trouble with the law.

"It was a put up job, of course," said the lawyer, peering at me through her pebble lenses. "They brought a case against him for willful destruction of state property. Never proved a thing, but the case still drags on, believe it or not. Of course Josimo's been dead for years, but some of his colleagues in the CPT were indicted. In fact," she sniffed indignantly, "There's a hearing scheduled for Tuesday. In Itaguatins."

She pointed to the wall map. I could just see Itaguatins written in very small print at the northern end of the state of Tocantins, a thousand miles from where we sat. "Why don't you come along?" said the lawyer comfortably. "I'll be there, and I can introduce you to some of the characters in the story. It's on Tuesday, at 2.30 in the afternoon."

I sailed out of the office in a happy haze. It was Friday afternoon, and it would take me a good twenty-four hours to get to Itaguatins. Probably longer. But with luck I'd be able to make it in time, and I'd certainly meet some of Josimo's friends. Some of his enemies too, no doubt. Perfect.

A twelve hour bus journey over a bumpy road that had once been paved took me to the town of Gurupi, halfway up the state of Tocantins. I was directed to the small, airless office of the Pastoral Land Commission to talk to one of their lawyers, Adilar.

"Tell me about the CPT," I began. "What is it that you do that makes you so many enemies?"

Adilar poured us both a cup of strong dark coffee, and leaned back in his chair. "Well," he smiled, "I guess it's because we get ourselves involved in the land wars. We see our job as supporting the peasants in every way we can. They don't have title to the land, you see. Never knew such a thing existed. It didn't matter until the great land rush was on, and all of a sudden they found themselves served with eviction orders. Well, the law says they can acquire squatters' rights under certain circumstances, and most of them had a far stronger claim to the land than the big ranchers who got their titles by all sorts of dubious means. Of course the ranchers do everything in their power to throw the peasants off the land, and that's where we come in, make as much noise as possible, and see if we can establish their tenure. And that's only a first step. Then we've got to figure out ways they can stay on the land. There's no infrastructure at all; no roads, no credit, no nothing. No technology, no marketing, no access to seeds or fertilizer, no help of any sort from anybody. We do what we can to set up cooperatives and credit schemes, and give a little technical advice. So as you can imagine we make ourselves pretty unpopular among the ranchers. They reckon we're inciting the peasants to revolution, I suppose. That's why we make ourselves so many enemies. Now tell me something; which court hearing did you say you were going to attend?"

"Something to do with the destruction of public property," I ventured.

"The case of the telephone exchange?" he snorted. "Let me tell you about that. It was pure fabrication, from start to finish. You know that Josimo lived in a little place called São Sebastião? The mayor there was called Zé Carneiro, and if there was one person Zé Carneiro couldn't abide, it was Josimo. I think he thought that Josimo was trying to build a power base, but he couldn't have been more wrong. Anyway there's another little village up there called Buriti, and the people of Buriti finally got some money from the state to put in a public telephone. Nobody had any quarrel with that, except when the mayor started to build the telephone exchange on a piece of land belonging to the church.

"There was no end of a row about it. Josimo protested to the mayor that it was church land, and asked him to stop construction, but the mayor refused. He even put a guard on the building site. Well, it so happened that Josimo had to be out of town for a couple of weeks, and by the time he came back the work was almost complete. The villagers sent him a message asking him to do something urgently, but Josimo realized the mayor wouldn't listen to him, so he suggested they call in the bishop to arbitrate. But the truth was that the people didn't really trust the bishop. They thought he'd sell them down the river. So one dark night they went in there and knocked the building down. Josimo wasn't actually present, although I'm pretty sure he knew about it.

"The mayor was livid with rage. He called in the police, and they arrested a whole bunch of people and beat the daylights out of them. They managed to line up some witnesses to testify that Josimo and three of the nuns had been in charge of the whole operation, carrying machine guns if you please! The whole thing was one big lie, from start to finish. Even the witnesses admitted it was hearsay. The French Sisters were at home twenty miles away, and Josimo kept his head down that night and never stirred out of the place he was staying.

"There's one thing you have to realize in connection with all this. That whole area was under the jurisdiction of the National Security Laws at the time. On account of the so-called guerrilla war they'd had there in the early '70s. The military government regarded the Araguaia/Tocantins corridor as a flash point for insurrection, so they put it under military law. The whole business of the telephone exchange was blown up into an attack on National Security, exacerbated by the fact that the Sisters are foreigners. Well, the case continues, although Josimo's out of it, of course. The whole thing's a complete farce. But it'll give you a good insight into Brazilian justice."

That evening I marched across town to the bus station and found a bus heading for Araguaina. "Should get in around 3:00," said the driver. "You can pick up another bus from there." Long experience had taught me how to arrange self, pack, water bottle, sweater and legs to best advantage, and I settled down to doze my way along the bumpy Belém-Brasília highway.

At 3:00 a.m. we arrived at the dark and cheerless bus station at Araguaina. There was no bus waiting. I stared disbelievingly at a wooden board on which was painted the time of the next bus to Itaguatins. 14:00 hrs. Eleven hours to wait. It was not an encouraging thought.

I sat down to consider my position. A small child materialized out of the shadows and began tugging insistently at my arm. "There's someone who wants to see you," he whispered. I didn't like the sound of that either.

But the someone proved to be the driver of an ancient and decrepit bus called JAMJOY.

"Itaguatins?" he inquired brightly. "Come with me and I'll drop you at Estreita. There'll be a connecting bus waiting." It sounded unlikely, but a lot better than sitting in Araguaina. I fought my way to the last seat, well to the rear of the bus. It looked as if the bus had been on the road for several days, there was a thick layer of garbage on the floor and it had a homely lived-in smell. Luckily no-one had been throwing up lately.

It was still dark when we got to Estreita. There was nothing there at all; just a muddy little intersection, and, predictably, there was no sign of the promised bus. I could see no advantage in staying at Estreita; better, I decided, to throw in my lot with my fellow passengers. At the next town the driver suggested off-loading me and several others. "You take a canoe across the river and walk up to the bus station," he suggested. "You can get a bus to Itaguatins from there."

"The bus doesn't run any more," objected one of the passengers.

"There's sure to be a truck," said the driver cheerfully.

But the idea didn't appeal. It seemed altogether better to stick it out until we reached Imperatriz and start over from there. At least it would be daylight. I settled myself as best I could and dozed fitfully as far as Imperatriz.

The bus station was ankle deep in garbage, and there were muddy puddles everywhere. I seized my pack and headed into the humid heat of the morning. The bus driver pointed to an even older and muddier JAMJOY bus which was just on the point of pulling out. "That's your bus," he said, thumping on the side of it. "Get off in Sítio Novo and you can hitch a ride from there."

I scrambled aboard the bus, picking my way carefully over sacks and bundles which were piled up just inside the door. The bus rattled its way down to the river bank, and the passengers piled out into the mud. I trudged onto the ferry and staked out a seat next to an overweight Bolivian who told me that he was a bush pilot working in the gold mines of the interior. "I fly out the gold," he told me confidentially, "And on the return journey," he tapped the side of his nose and looked at me significantly, "I bring in the women."

The ferry pulled in, disgorging several pickups, a couple of horse carts, a host of muddy passengers and the JAMJOY bus. We picked our way across the puddles and settled back in our lumpy seats. I lay back and gazed through the dirty windows at the strip of land known as the Parrot's Beak, the land that Josimo had died for.

It lies between the Araguaia and the Tocantins; two of the large rivers that make up the Amazon River system. Innocent green palm trees cover one of the most violent and bloody regions of a violent continent. The violence and the bloodshed come from the land wars.

In the beginning, no-one bothered to lay claim to the land. Land was a gift from God, something to be used, not to be owned. All that changed in 1960, with the coming of the first road. Before that, the region had been inhabited by small bands of Indians and others of mixed European and African descent, who had drifted in by river, attracted by fertile lands, or the occasional find of gold or diamonds. To the east lie the great drylands of Piauí, Ceará  and Maranhão, and these lands have always provided and still provide a steady stream of migrants heading west to the green lands by the great rivers. The early settlers cleared patches of forest and put in their little fields of manioc, rice, beans and corn. They built small settlements and these were named after the first arrivals; Firmino's Center, Ferreiro's Center, Center of the Mulattos. The fields were moved every year or two, and there was land enough for everyone. Babassu palm trees grew in profusion, and the women pressed delicious cooking oil from the nuts, wove baskets from the leaves, and made charcoal from the husks. There were fish in the rivers and game in the forest, and the land provided a good living for those who didn't need to plan very far ahead. Although no-one had title to the land, they were entitled by law to squatters' rights, but they never knew about that until it was too late.

The Parrot's Beak—so named for its shape on the map—lies at the extreme northern end of the state of Tocantins, which split off from Goiás in 1988. It is more than a thousand miles north of the federal capital, Brasília One of the chief ideas behind building Brasília was to attract development to the hitherto untouched heartland of continent-sized Brazil, and in order to do this it was necessary to build some roads. The very first of these, the Road of the Jaguar, was scheduled to cut across the eastern edge of Amazônia to the mouth of the Amazon River at Belém.

Construction began in 1960, and for the inhabitants of the Parrot's Beak the good times vanished like the morning mist. People came swarming up the new road, looking for land, looking for gold, looking for a new life. Since the peasants had no clear notion about the concept of property, they were easily persuaded to part from their lands in exchange for a rifle, a bicycle, or a piece of paper promising some money.

The new owners started to fence off the land, and forbade access to the babassu palm trees. They moved in, announced that the land was now theirs, and produced documents to prove it. Any families in residence were ordered to leave, and those who protested soon attracted unwelcome attention from hired gunmen. If that didn't frighten them off, they were served with eviction notices. Entire villages were emptied, houses and crops were burnt, and the people were intimidated, beaten up and sometimes killed. In their bewilderment they found no place to turn.

But help was at hand. In 1979 a lay missionary from Italy arrived in the Parrot's Beak. His name was Nicola. He started walking from community to community, listening to the problems of the peasants, telling them about their legal rights, and helping them organize the first elements of resistance. He was joined soon afterwards by three French nuns, Mada, Bia, and Nicole, and a Brazilian nun called Lurdinha from the far south of the country. In 1983 Padre Josimo came to take over the parish of São Sebastião, a small village right at the end of the Parrot's Beak. For a short time this extraordinarily talented and courageous group was to challenge the power of the establishment, stand up for the dispossessed, and threaten the local power structure. It was to be a long hard battle, and Josimo was to pay for it with his life.

This was the story I had come in search of, and as I looked at the faces of my fellow passengers on the bus, I tried to imagine which of them had known Josimo, and what effect he had had on their lives.

The stony road managed to be both muddy and dusty at the same time. We were traveling through a green landscape; low forest, lots of babassu palms, small clearings of corn, beans, rice, and manioc, and the occasional cattle pastures. The villages are nothing but higgledy-piggledy collections of mud huts with thatch roofs, but Sítio Novo has turned itself into a town and boasts a large square, a telephone office, and several paved roads.

The local office of the Pastoral Land Commission is just off the main square, next to the church. I wander over to check whether Xavier, the French Dominican friar who is setting up lines of credit for the local village associations, is home. But the office is all shut up, and I stick a note under the door and make my way back to the square in the hopes of finding a ride to Itaguatins. Several pickup trucks are parked there, but they are all going the other way. Itaguatins, it seems, is on the road to nowhere. "Best thing is to go wait at the turnoff," advises one of the villagers. "Most of the traffic going through here is headed for Imperatriz."

I shoulder my pack and head for the turnoff. Fortunately there is a house there, and better still the ancient owner invites me into the shade, where there is a rocking chair strung with broken plastic. All the traffic, without exception, is going to Imperatriz. The old man gets bored of talking to me and goes inside to take a siesta. His rhythmic snores fill me with an overwhelming desire to do the same, but the confines of the plastic rocking chair do not permit.

It is one o'clock, the hearing is scheduled for two thirty, and there seems to be no way I can get there on time. I am beginning to get a bit edgy when a telephone company truck draws up in a cloud of dust and agrees to give me a ride. By a miracle we are in Itaguatins by two. I do not find the bustle I had expected to see, with lawyers swarming all over the place. The town is wrapped in profound silence. I make my way to the Forum and inquire. "Hearing?" says the girl at the desk as she listlessly pecks at an elderly typewriter. "Oh no, it's been canceled. The judge is on holiday."

I flounce out and look venomously at the small town. It consists of two streets of neatly painted houses. Very small donkeys wander around. The flooded brown river sweeps past. Everyone is asleep. I seek refuge in the priest's house. He is traveling, but I'm welcome to stay the night. There's no bus before the morning. I dump my stuff and while away the rest of the day listening to one of the justice officials telling me about his blameless part in the local land evictions. We both know he is lying. It is almost too hot to matter. But he does mention, in passing, that there were a couple of murders out in Mata Seca a short time back.

After a restless and mosquito-ridden night, I am up at dawn to catch the bus to Itaguatins. I hear the sound of a car engine approaching, and to my immense delight who should round the corner but Xavier the French friar from Sítio Novo, together with a jeepload of people from the Rural Workers' Union. They are heading for Mata Seca to check out the murders.

In response to my urgent request, Xavier decides he can squeeze in one more. This is far better than attending an audience at the forum. Right here are three of the best-known figures of the whole land struggle in the area: Dona Raimunda who once lunched with Danielle Mitterrand in Paris—and didn't think much of the food—João Custódio, veteran of innumerable standoffs with the police, and Maria Senhora, the articulate black union leader from the Centro dos Mulatos. Together with Xavier, his colleague Pedro, and a couple of other union officials, we are to spend the next forty-eight hours in Mata Seca, hearing the full story of the murders, and helping the squatters draw up a plan of action. These are the first land-related deaths in this particular area, and the squatters have sent out an urgent plea for help.

"Hey!" shouts Pedro, wrestling with the steering-wheel as the Toyota bucks across the ruts. "Tell us the story of Mata Seca, somebody."

"I'll tell you what I know," says Iran, the union leader from Tocantinópolis. "It's a complex situation. To start with, Mata Seca is Indian land, although the Indians have never objected to the squatters. There are sixteen squatter families there, and most of them live on their own little plots. Been there for more than fifteen years, most of them, and never had any problems. Recently this guy Gideão shows up and says he has got title to a piece of land in the middle; right next to Zé Barros and Mauro. Well, at first he doesn't bother them, but then he decides he likes the look of their lands and so he hires a pistoleiro to go round scaring them off. First thing that happens is that Zé Barros' house gets burned down. Luckily there's no-one in it. Then they set fire to his corn crop. Fifteen acres of it. Then this same pistoleiro, Gerínio, son of Rattlesnake, goes over to Mauro's place and starts shooting at the fence posts. Intimidation tactics, of course, but pretty effective all the same. So the squatters get together and go talk to the police about it, and eventually seven families sign a good neighbor statement with Gideão.

"But it doesn't end there. Seems that Zé Barros and one of his sons—a young lad of fifteen or so—are out in the field one day and they hear that the pistoleiro Gerínio is around. So they go and hide in the little shelter they have there, and when Gerínio comes along Zé Barros plugs him with his shot-gun. What he doesn't see is that Gideão's son, Gidevan, is right behind, and when Zé stands up to take a look, Gidevan shoots him dead. Zé Barros just has time to shout to his boy, and he takes a shot at Gidevan, but fortunately he misses.

"Rumor has it Gideão has hired a whole lot more gunmen, and he's as mad as a snake because they had a go at his son; half of the squatters are in fear and trembling and the other half are hell-bent on revenge, and, if you ask me, I'd say the thing could blow up any time."

I closed my eyes and wondered what I was getting myself into. I'd known what was going on in the Amazon land wars. I'd actually volunteered to come to the Amazon and investigate them, and one of the things that had triggered my quest had been the figure of twelve million landless peasants, in a land the size of the United States. Twelve million people forced to take to the road in search of a living. It was as if the entire population of Calcutta had packed up its bags and bundles and was off to find a new life. I knew that hundreds of thousands of families had landed up in the cruel cardboard slums of the huge cities, others had drifted into poorly-paid jobs in construction and industry, others had succumbed to gold fever and rushed like lemmings to the subhuman conditions of the gold mines. And countless thousands had swarmed to the agricultural frontier as it swept up into the empty spaces of Amazônia, where they had cleared their patches of forest, planted their crops, and watched their dreams die as the soils were exhausted. I had spoken to families who had doggedly moved on; five, ten times; leaving their lands to be snapped up by the wave of speculators that followed them like a pack of hyenas. But I could sense that here in Mata Seca things were different. The people here were making their last stand. They had found fertile lands, they had raised their crops, and they intended to stay put.

They were facing a group of people that was equally determined to move them on. Nine out of ten squatters had never heard of the Greater Carajás Project—the multi-billion dollar scheme to develop one of the richest mineral areas in the world. But they all knew about the gold strike at Serra Pelada; most families had at least one member who had tried his luck there at one time or another. What they didn't know was that, as part of the Greater Carajás Project, government planners had zoned their area for cattle ranching. The idea was to raise beef for export and send it out on the Carajás railroad to the port at São Luís. On a still night the inhabitants of São Sebastião could hear the train whistle as it passed by on the other side of the river. But they were completely unaware of the implications of the government's mammoth development plan. Cattle ranching requires capital, and it requires large stretches of land. Cattle ranching is inimical to small squatters on their subsistence plots, and that is why the government had given its tacit consent to their expulsion. There were only two organizations fighting for the dispossessed; the church and the unions. Without support from these, the squatters would have been wiped out.

After several wrong turns we arrive at a clearing in the forest, and park the car in front of a small house of wooden stakes with a thatch roof. This is the house of Mazoniel; head of the recently formed squatters' association. During the course of the morning several of them drift in, and finally the meeting gets under way. The men are thin, sharp-faced, watchful as a pack of wolves. Each one props his rifle up against the wall, within easy reach. We sit on benches made of tree trunks, ranged round the wall. The women huddle in the kitchen. One or two small children and dogs play on the beaten earth floor. There's a table, a shelf with a water filter, a few posters on the walls. Half partitioned off is the bedroom and next to it the kitchen, with its mud stove and its shelves full of plates and mugs. A stout board outside holds a tin wash-pan and the gourd of washing-up water. Bathing is done in the river. Anything else in the forest.

The squatters reconstruct the story for us. They are jittery, expecting more violence. There is a stir when one-eyed Mauro comes in, he has come out of hiding for the occasion. The tension is cut by the calm voice of João Custódio, speaking from his long experience. He explains that the trick is for people to stay together. To work together. One man makes an easy target, but a gunman won't take on a group. If people stick together they won't get killed.

The men eye one another uneasily. Dona Raimunda marches into the center of the room and looking over her glasses she addresses them as if they were a bunch of unruly schoolchildren. She bends over to draw a triangle on the dirt floor. "This," she announces, "is called a pyramid. It shows us how the world works. At the top here, the pointed bit, are the very few people who live at the expense of all the others at the bottom. And, deep down, we all want to be at the top. But we can only climb up by treading on our companions. And if we do that, we'll be on our own.

"Do you know something? We human beings aren't nearly as smart as the animals. They know they can't be safe if they're alone. They know they need to be together; they do it by instinct. But we keep wanting to do things by ourselves. That's why people don't join the union," she looked round fiercely, "because they can't see what's in it for them. I tell you what's in it. If we're all together we can get what we want. If we try on our own we'll never get anywhere."

Maria Senhora isn't the combative type. Soft-spoken but firm. "What we have to remember about the union is this," she begins. "It doesn't matter how few you are so long as you all act together. Let me tell you the story of Zé Antônio. The ranchers came to him and said they wanted his land. They even said they'd indemnify him. Then they looked a little closer and saw that Zé Antônio had a lot of fruit trees, so they'd have to pay a lot more than they'd planned. They sent round a pistoleiro to see the lie of the land. Pretended he wanted to buy some chickens. Well, Zé didn't like the look of the pistoleiro so he told him to come back in the morning and the chickens would be ready. Meantime he sent for all his friends. Next morning they were all waiting when the pistoleiro came and they caught him and made him confess. Well, if they hadn't got together and made a plan someone would have been killed. Anyone can see that."

"I use the picture of the swarm of bees," said Mazoniel, "Mess about with one and the rest will be after you."

"Right!" said Raimunda. "That's why you must move your houses. Build them close together. Put them so close you can smell each other's food cooking. You never know when you're going to need each other. The pistoleiros won't go after you if you're all together, but if you're alone they'll pick you off one by one."

The squatters discuss the matter over lunch, bowls of rice and beans with roasted manioc. Halfway through the meal there is a commotion as three strangers ride up. Mauro slips into the kitchen, and four or five of the men pick up their rifles and go outside. Through the wooden stockade walls we can see the strangers approach. One of them takes out a bottle of the local firewater and passes it round. There is a short, stilted conversation, and they turn to leave. No sooner are they out of sight than Raimunda lays into the men. "I don't know what you boys were thinking of!" she harangues them. "Accepting a nip out of the bottle like that! Anybody'd think you were born yesterday. I suppose they asked you your names?" Bashful silence and averted eyes confirm her suspicion. "You never do that again, do you hear me? They're only trying to find out who's here. Looking for Mauro, I don't doubt." Mauro shrinks into his corner. He's blind in one eye. I feel heart sore for him.

Later that evening I talk to Dona Antônia, Zé Barros' widow. A frail woman, she is still in shock.

"We'd been married thirty years," she whispers. "Zé Barros was as good a man as you'll find. Never harmed a fly. And there am I with seven children and no food in the house. I haven't had the nerve to set foot in the fields since that day." Her ravaged face bears eloquent testimony to her suffering.

"Never harmed a fly." The thought haunts me as I lie in my hammock that night. We string our hammocks in a row, and I put mine well in the middle, convincing myself that Raimunda is right and there will be no shoot-out tonight because we are all together. Zé Barros never harmed a fly. But he killed the pistoleiro. Had it been just like killing a snake, something done on the spur of the moment? Had he planned it? My thoughts whirl round and round. THOU SHALT NOT KILL. What then shall we do? 

A Land to Die For by Binka Le Breton, Clarity Press, 1997. Published by permission. Price: $12.95 plus $3.95 shipping. The book can be ordered COD or by credit card by calling (800) 626-4330.

Binka Le Breton is a British journalist living in Brazil. She also wrote Voices from the Amazon and The Rain Forest.