The Federal Government is suing the Union and the state of Brazil for human rights violations against rural workers during the .
Among the accusations are torture, murders and forced disappearances of rural workers and members of the Peasant Leagues in the period from 1964 to 1981. The public civil action, filed by the organization on Tuesday (26), points to evidence that persecuted politicians were taken to sugar factories where they were killed and their bodies were incinerated in furnaces to eliminate traces.
The Attorney General of the State of Paraíba reported that it has not yet been notified of the action and, therefore, cannot comment on the matter. The report contacted the (Attorney General of the Union) by email this Friday afternoon (29), but received no response.
The Peasant Leagues were groups of workers mobilized for better working conditions in the countryside and for agrarian reform. The movement was born in the 1940s, linked to the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party), and gained strength in the 1950s from rural mobilizations in Pernambuco. The model of political organization expanded to Paraíba, where it gathered around 40 thousand members, and is estimated to have reached at least 13 states.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, public agents and armed groups linked to landowners acted in a coordinated manner to suffocate the movement and persecute leaders, using surveillance, illegal arrests, destruction of labor documents, in addition to torture and murders.
The agency cites the confession of an agent identified as Corporal Chiquinho, from the Military Police, to a social worker. “According to the executor, the victims were taken to Usina São João or Usina Santa Helena, where they were executed and their bodies destroyed in sugar furnaces to completely eliminate any biological traces”, says the text.
The action highlights the cases of militants João Alfredo Dias, known as Nego Fuba, and Pedro Inácio de Araújo, known as Pedro Fazendeiro, who are officially considered the first political disappeared during the military dictatorship in Brazil.
point out that Pedro Fazendeiro disappeared after voluntarily presenting himself to the Army for clarification, after being included in a military investigation, and was subjected to torture before disappearing.
Nego Fuba, a shoemaker and councilor elected in Sapé, had his mandate revoked days after the military coup, in an initiative to remove leaders close to the Peasant Leagues. He was arrested in the same year, taken to the 15th Infantry Regiment of the Army, in , and was never seen again.
“In no other case of forced disappearance recorded during the military dictatorship in Brazil was the Public Power so close to breaking the veil of invisibility that surrounds these serious violations”, says the text of the action.
“The materiality of the crime was within the reach of the authorities in Paraíba, making this episode one of the most emblematic and perverse chapters of state terrorism in the country”, he continues.
According to the lawsuit, family members of the missing who sought information from the State received ironic or false responses.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office also states that violence against rural workers did not end with redemocratization in 1985, and continued to manifest itself in the countryside in the following decades, with murders of rural leaders.
The process calls for general and individual accountability for the violations committed during the period and also requires the posthumous accountability of Colonel Ednardo D’Ávila Mello, Major José Benedito Montenegro de Magalhães Cordeiro and Military Police Colonel Luiz Ferreira Barros, identified as responsible for the disappearances of Nego Fuba and Pedro Fazendeiro.
The measures include interruption of pensions and benefits linked to the three soldiers, regressive actions against estates and heirs to reimburse amounts paid by the State and revocation of tributes in public assets.
The action also asks the public authorities to present official apologies, open files on the repression, establish a task force to search for the missing and include the history of the Peasant Leagues in school curricula in Paraíba.
