Acquitted indigenous people who kept agents in private prison – 01/27/2023 – Frederico Vasconcelos

Federal judge Júlia Cavalcante Silva Barbosa, from Campo Grande (MS), acquitted seven indigenous leaders accused of keeping a team of health agents in private prison.

The chiefs intended to put pressure on state managers linked to the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai), an agency of the Ministry of Health, because four villages were left without access to drinking water for several days.

“The process is out of the ordinary, due to the ethnic-cultural characteristics of the defendants and the motivation for the conduct denounced”, recorded the judge in the sentence. Anthropological expertise certified that it would be unreasonable to demand different behavior from the defendants.

The facts occurred in 2016. The defendants are members of the Nioaque Indigenous Tribe, of the Terena ethnic group.

Chiefs Ramão Marques da Silva (Taboquinha village), Adão Marciano Marques (Cabeceira village), Frederico Cabrocha Pereira (Brejão village) and Arino Brites da Silva (Água Branca village) were denounced, as well as Claudionor do Carmo Miranda, Rogério Veron Alcântara and Carlos Alberto Marquez.

The engineer Simara Viana Minetto, the biologist Juliana Polonio Faganello, the engineer Edson de Souza Lima Júnior and the driver Valdemir Gamarra Gauna were subjected to false imprisonment.

They were held hostage from the early afternoon of March 2, 2016 until 11 am the next day.

They acted as outsourced. They went to the site to maintain the water supply.

According to the press reported at the time, the indigenous people would only agree to release the hostages if SESAI reconsidered the dismissal of the only doctor who attended the community.

The doctor would have been exonerated after complaining about the lack of resources and work materials.

Faced with the difficulty of finding a professional who would agree to carry out the investigation, the magistrate appointed an anthropologist expert. Funai informed that it does not have an anthropologist in the Campo Grande Regional Coordination.

The Federal Public Ministry fought for the acquittal of the accused. He maintained that there was no demonstration of the guilt of the accused, since the anthropological report concluded that the defendants “did not understand that the conduct of false imprisonment is prohibited”.

The Federal Public Defender’s Office took steps to enter the final allegations phase.

Plurality and traditions

The anthropological report concludes that the defendants acted “with a potential awareness of the illegality of their conduct”. Most held leadership positions in the community (chiefs and/or pastor).

The Constitution recognizes indigenous peoples’ social organization, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions. According to the magistrate, although the defendants are attributable, they could not oppose the collective decision taken by the community.

“We believe that the action of the accused was not only consistent with the tradition of collective action, but was characterized as an action to defend the rights of the community itself”, he recorded in the sentence.

“We repudiate, as we understand racists and ethnocentrists, any theories that, attributing to them a supposed ‘primitive mentality’, consider individuals unimputable or semi-imputable due to their condition as indigenous people, and based on the evaluation of their degree of integration into the so-called ‘civilized’ society”, said the judge.

It ruled that defendants would not be required to refrain from acting in accordance with their values ​​and customs.

Once the unenforceability of different conduct was recognized, the culpability of the defendants and the criminal nature of the conduct were excluded, which imposed acquittal.

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