The virtual land grabbing scheme unites engineers and land grabbers in the illegal appropriation of land in the Amazon that results in the deforestation of the forest. Registering a property in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) requires technical knowledge to fill in the documentation and use cartographic projection systems for the properties.
In Ituna-Itatá, in Pará, 42% of the farms that appear on the indigenous land were registered by a single person, engineer Jorge Luiz Barbosa Corrêa. Known to investigators in Pará, he was the target of investigations that found the maintenance of workers in conditions analogous to slavery and the activities of ghost companies linked to an illegal timber sale scheme. At the beginning of the month, Corrêa gave testimony to the Federal Police in an inquiry that investigates suspected crimes related to land grabbing.
located by Estadão, Corrêa claimed to be unaware of most of the land registered in his name. According to the engineer, someone used his data. “They misused my name. I don’t know who owns several of these properties or where they are. Then I ask my client. He says, ‘Look, I don’t know who did it.’ Honestly, I don’t know who did it then,” he declared.
The Ituna-Itatá indigenous land covers 142,000 hectares, an area almost the size of the city of São Paulo, and is inhabited by communities that live in isolation in the forest. It is one of the most symbolic cases of the advance of land grabbing because more than 90% of its area has already been taken over by farms.
Dispute
In Roraima, agronomist Idelban Pereira da Silva is responsible for placing in the CAR, between 2016 and 2022, more than 6 thousand hectares of farms that occupy at least part of the Pirititi territory, located within the limits of the municipality of Rorainópolis. Questioned about the fact that the properties overlap with an area that is not private, he said he did not recognize the indigenous land. “In my view, the people (owners of the farms) have been there since 2008. The claim is under study, there is no indigenous land”, claimed Idelban.
The version contradicts the official understandings of the public authorities. Although not yet ratified, that is, demarcated by decree of the President of the Republic, there is an ongoing process and the government has already designated the area as an indigenous land. According to Funai’s ordinance, only indigenous people and employees of the foundation can access the site.
Idelban was one of the targets of a major PF operation against deforestation in Roraima, in 2012. The investigation pointed out that a gang of businessmen, engineers and civil servants was grabbing land in Rorainópolis and forging documents to give the appearance of legality to the criminal extraction of wood from the forest.
A telephone interception revealed that Idelban had access to the movement of environmental inspectors and warned about inspections. In one of them, he even suggested to a deforester that “either you break the bridge or arrange for people not to go there”. The engineer was even sentenced to pay a fine in 2017, but most of the crimes he prescribed.
A cook who had the name used by him in the scheme narrated in a 2019 process how the approach took place. In 2006, Idelban’s group sought out the woman, who had provided services to a farmer close to him between 1991 and 2004. The promise was that she and her husband could have a small piece of land to plant whatever they wanted. It was enough to deliver some documents and wait until everything was arranged in the competent bodies. Interested in securing a lot, she signed everything that was asked of her, even at the notary’s office.
The land was not passed and she ended up arrested. According to the police, the cook knew about the scheme and received R$20,000 in exchange. She, however, said she was a victim and sued Idelban for moral damages. The lawsuit did not advance due to lack of evidence and because the woman’s charges were time-barred.
indian of the hole
On the 8,000 hectares of the Tanaru indigenous land, in Rondônia, there is yet another flagrant irregularity. Five properties are registered in the CAR with some level of overlap with the area inhabited by a people who did not resist the advance of cattle and logging. In August 2022, the “Índio do Buraco” was found dead in his hut. He was the last survivor of the Tanaru people, massacred in the 1990s.
Due to their life in extreme isolation, little is known about the customs of the Tanaru, with the exception of the habit of digging holes. But the last of them helped to keep a part of the forest standing during the more than two decades that he lived alone in the woods. His presence led Funai to restrict the site to non-indigenous people from 2012 to 2025, so that he could remain out of contact with the rest of society.
Despite the prohibitions, farms were registered in the CAR. The most recent registrations are from 2020 and 2021. And shortly after the last tanaru died, farmers who claim to be the owners of the land asked for the overthrow of the ordinance that restricted the allotment under the justification that the measure lost its meaning.
Investigation
The onslaught of the ruralists is monitored by the Federal Public Ministry. In recent years, the agency has acted to protect the last tanaru with judicial and extrajudicial measures aimed at keeping invaders away. A new civil action requests that the indigenous land be allocated a socio-environmental destination and be demarcated, despite the death of the last individual.
“The legal argument for demarcating the territory is its ancestry, the tradition of its occupation, its historical importance, its role in preserving the environment, traditional tanaru practices, biodiversity, among others,” said attorney Leonardo Caberlon .
The indigenist Ivaneide Bandeira worked for years monitoring the “Índio do Buraco” area and taking actions to prevent invasions. With four decades of dedication to the defense of indigenous peoples, she has no doubt that the emergence of farms consecrated the fate of the Tanaru. “The advance of the farms on the indigenous land massacred, made a people disappear, to the point of having a single survivor.”
Now, Ivaneide hopes that the body of the “Índio do Buraco”, buried in the place where he was found after a long judicial impasse, will serve to keep the forest standing, just as it did in life. “My view is that that area needs to be turned into a memorial, an indigenous park. It is the memory of a massacred people.”
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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