Invasion Zero advances in the field in actions without approval from Justice – 01/28/2024 – Power

The call came on Saturday (20) through a group on the WhatsApp messaging app. The following day, farmers would meet at 10 am on the Pardo river bridge, which separates the municipalities of Itapetinga and Potiraguá, in the south of Bahia.

The order was to vacate a farm that was under the control of the Pataxó Hã Hã Hãe people after an action classified as an “invasion” by the farmers and seen as “retaken” by the indigenous people. The conflict resulted in the death of indigenous Maria de Fátima Muniz, known as Nega Pataxó.

The case exposed the way in which the group ‘Invasão Zero’ operates, an entity created in 2023 by farmers from Bahia that currently brings together around 5,000 participants and has inspired similar groups in at least nine other states.

The initiative gained prominence in the National Congress in the MST CPI, which ended without an approved final report and was the seed for the Zero Invasion Parliamentary Front, requested in October 2023 in a ceremony attended by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The group is on the radar of the authorities, who compare its mode of action to that of militias or paramilitary forces. Experts reject the legality of actions that are called “repossession” by farmers, but which are not supported by court decisions.

In the attack on Potiraguá that resulted in the death of Nega Pataxó and left six other indigenous people injured, at least two men were armed – a 19-year-old son of farmers and a 60-year-old retired police officer.

Both were arrested after police identified that the weapons had been used. Days later, forensics confirmed that the shot that killed the indigenous woman came from the gun in the young man’s possession.

“It is unacceptable that, in a democratic regime, armed groups move and attack anyone”, stated the state secretary of Justice and Human Rights of Bahia, Felipe Freitas.

The Civil Police of Bahia opened an investigation to investigate the actions and operating methods of the group that called for the act. The investigation into the murder of indigenous woman Nega Pataxó will be conducted by the Federal Police.

National coordinator of the Invasão Zero group, rural producer Luiz Uaquim told Sheet that the entity acts within the law and classified the death of the indigenous woman Nega Pataxó as a fatality.

“We are an extremely orderly, peaceful organization that fights for its rights legally. What happened is extremely atypical, a fatality,” he stated.

The entity took five days to comment on the case, issuing an official note on its social networks only this Friday (26). In the note, the association states that it never encouraged or consented to acts of violence.

Invasão Zero was created last year in Santa Luzia, southern Bahia, after a group of rural producers prevented the invasion of a farm by landless families. The group gained followers and organized itself in WhatsApp groups promising an offensive against invasions in Red April, the annual day of struggles for agrarian reform by the MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement).

The entity was formalized as an association in August 2023 and its president is Renilda Souza, known as Dida Souza. She is the daughter of Osvaldo Souza (1930-2012), an agriculturalist who was a state deputy for the PFL from 1987 to 2003.

The movement has grown and currently has representatives in 200 cities, concentrated in 16 regional centers. At least ten actions were carried out to prevent the invasion of farms and to retake areas that were occupied by landless and indigenous families.

In most cases, repossession actions were carried out by groups of farmers on their own, without the support of a repossession injunction decision issued by the Court.

Luiz Uaquim states that the farmers’ action has legal support in the so-called “immediate dispossession”, an instrument of the Civil Code that provides that the owner can maintain or retake possession that was subject to expropriation “by his own power, as long as he does so soon” .

Experts, however, refute the hypothesis of “immediate effort” in the case of the farm in Potiraguá, since there was a prior organization for the attempt to recover the property.

“The action has to happen at the moment of the invasive action. In the space of time that passed, there was enough time to go to the Judiciary. There was an obvious abuse, and the people who acted there must answer for it”, assesses lawyer Pedro Serrano, professor at PUC-SP and specialist in constitutional law.

He also classifies the action of armed groups in the countryside as a threat to national sovereignty: “These are groups of people wanting to replace the State to impose what they think is right through violence. This is very serious and must be combated.”

A similar view is shared by Erik Boson, regional human rights defender at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, who compares the group’s action to that of militias and paramilitary groups.

“What we saw was the action of an armed group, planned and institutionalized with this type of objective. It was not a reaction to a robbery, it was planning violence. A group like this should not exist.”

He states that this type of organization becomes more dangerous in a context of violence against traditional communities and the State’s omission in agrarian reform and in the process of demarcating indigenous lands, quilombolas and background communities and closing off pastures.

Uaquim denies that the movement uses violence. He sent to Sheet a booklet from the entity that says that “any action that is not orderly and peaceful will be the sole responsibility of those who carried it out, thus exempting the Zero Invasion movement.”

She also states that “not 1%” of the approximately 200 rural producers who tried to retake the farm in Potiraguá were armed: “Whether there was one person or another, that has nothing to do with the association issue. You can’t control 150 people or more. If a person is armed, it is their responsibility.”

The participation of police officers in the Invasão Zero group worries the authorities and should be the subject of investigation. In the Bahian government, however, the assessment is that the actions do not have the support or condescension of the command of the security forces.

In a joint note, the Federal Public Ministry and the Public Defender’s Office of the Union and the state of Bahia demanded effective measures from the federal and state governments, citing recent cases of murders of indigenous people in the extreme south of Bahia in which the involvement of police officers was found.

The popularity of Invasão Zero boosted the creation of other groups with similar ideas and practices, such as Unagro and the Baiana Farmers Association. In October, a group of farmers was accused of trying to set fire to an MST camp in Itiruçu (335 km from Salvador).

In parallel, there is an ongoing legislative offensive against land invasions, with dozens of bills that seek to speed up repossessions, including the possibility of doing so without the approval of the Court.

Faeb (Federation of Agriculture and Livestock of the State of Bahia), which represents rural unions, said it advises its members to act in defense of their interests “within the limits of the law, without extremism or violence of any kind”.

Entities such as Apib (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil), CPT (Pastoral Land Commission) and MST repudiated the attacks on indigenous people and demanded measures to demarcate the lands.