The attack on a settlement of the (Landless Rural Workers Movement) that left six injured on Friday night (10) in Tremembé, 156 km from São Paulo, occurred after a dispute that dragged on for months around a empty 5,000 square meter plot of land that had been vacant for at least two years.
The land is one of around 50 plots of land regularized by Incra (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) since 2005 for rural producers. Next to the urban area of Tremembé, the site had been the target of land grabbers who wanted to divide the lot and change its use to urban use, according to local residents.
This Monday (13), the settlement was a place of lots with closed gates and an atmosphere of fear. In the homes of relatives of victims and survivors of the tragedy, MST members from other cities were present to provide support. Most of the perpetrators of the attack have not yet been identified by the police.
The land at the center of the dispute has electricity, contains an abandoned house and a vandalized artesian well. It is 10 minutes from the urban area of Tremembé. There are still pools of blood at the entrance gate to the lot and on the stretch of dirt road in front. It was there that Valdir do Nascimento de Jesus, aged 52, was killed.
Jesus had been a militant for more than two decades and should assume, in the coming weeks, the post of regional leader of the movement in Vale do Paraíba, according to the current regional leader, Altamir Bastos.
The victim and seven other people, all residents of the settlement, were in the abandoned house on Friday night to protect the land from a group, not yet fully identified by the police, who wanted to take over the area.
According to residents of the settlement, more than a year ago people claiming to be members of a real estate company began harassing Valdir to occupy the land. Given his refusal to collaborate with the invasion, the harassment became a threat. They say they don’t believe there really was any real estate agency involved.
“Last Tuesday [7]some people came here to steal pipes from the artesian well and broke everything”, says leader Bastos, who was a friend of the victim.
From then on, the residents of the settlement began to prepare for an imminent invasion.
On the afternoon before the murders, a man, identified by the police as Ítalo Rodrigues da Silva, threatened residents to leave the lot empty and said he would return to the location.
Ítalo was identified as Ítalo Rodrigues da Silva and had his temporary arrest ordered by the courts. Until Monday afternoon,
“Because of this, Valdir and the others decided to spend the night here, keeping vigil”, says Bastos.
In addition to Jesus, there were Gleison Barbosa de Carvalho, 28, who also died, his brothers Denilson and Denis Barbosa de Carvalho, 29 and 24; Roseli Ferreira Bernardo, 49, and Olga Bernardo Honorio Da Silva, 18, mother and daughter; Michele Anita da Silva, 41, and Jose Luiz Santos de Almeida, also 41.
Denis was shot twice in the head and underwent surgery. Residents are awaiting information about his health status. The other victims say they recognized another person who also participated in the attack, Antônio Martins dos Santos Filho, “Nero do Piseiro”, owner of a bar and forró club in the region who has already been arrested on suspicion of illegally carrying a weapon.
A witness to the attack told Sheet that there were more people at the vigil, who chose to go to sleep in their homes before dawn. Those who stayed saw a convoy of cars and motorcycles arrive at the lot’s gate at around 11pm. The group on vigil went to the gate to talk. They were received by bullets and the two deaths occurred right there.
The witness says that, when he arrived where the bodies and injured were, he found that the Carvalho brothers were still breathing and put them in a car, taking them straight to an emergency room in Tremembé. The ambulance took around 30 minutes to reach the scene.
Witnesses and relatives of the victims were interviewed this Monday afternoon by the Taubaté Civil Police, which is investigating the case. the same people who had been coveting the land or were hired to commit the attack.
Bastos states that MST settlements in metropolitan areas or close to cities have been under pressure from land grabbers to have their lots split up and sold as urban land, with a higher land value than those in rural areas.
The problem, according to the leader, was exacerbated by government (PL) policies of issuing land titles to settlers, which would allow the land to be sold.
“In all the settlements in Vale do Paraíba we have this problem,” said Bastos. “They take a lot, subdivide it and sell it,” he said.
The leader criticizes Incra for taking too long to allocate new settlers to unoccupied lots in settlements, which, according to him, attracts criminals. Bastos showed a report prepared by the institute, in November 2023, attesting that the lot in dispute was now empty, without allocation to another family by the agency since then.
The place originally belonged to a family headed by a woman who gave up the settlement after separating. According to local residents, she tried to transfer the land to a third party, who also gave up the area after realizing that he could not take possession of the land, as the transfer would not be permitted by law.
A Sheet He contacted Incra by email to comment on the MST leader’s statements, but received no response.
