Brazil: “the war has begun,” says a rural producer about cattle confiscation in Amazonas

By Diógenes Freire

The Lula government reportedly confiscated about 2,400 head of cattle in southern Amazonas under the allegation of fighting deforestation in an area with a cattle herd estimated at 500,000 animals.

The population of the southern region of the state of Amazonas has experienced tense moments since last weekend when the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) launched an operation to confiscate cattle in compliance with “environmental and health regulations”.

According to the release of images taken during the seizure, the operation counted with the cooperation of the Federal Highway Police (PRF) and the Federal Police (PF).

About 2,400 heads of cattle were taken from a farm located in the district of Santo Antônio do Matupi, in Manicoré (AM).

The region targeted by Ibama has an estimated 500,000 cattle head.

When talking to Brasil Sem Medo, the vice president of the Patronal Union of Santo Antônio do Matupi, the rural producer known as ‘Dario do Agronegócio’, said that Ibama’s action might give rise to a conflict with the producers and the towns’ population.

“They are telling me that the city population will not let these cattle leave.”

“They are going to confront; they are going to tear down bridges, they are going to burn trucks, they are going to burn machinery, they are going to confront because the war has begun.”

“The implementation of communism in Brazil has begun so that the war will be big”, said the producer.

Ibama requires that the cattle be taken to pastures regulated by the Environmental Protection Institute (Ipaam) but does not inform the destination of the confiscated cattle, according to Dario revealed to BSM.

“At first, they don’t say where they will take the cattle if they will kill them…”

“They load the truck and take the cattle to an unknown destination,” said the producer.

He pointed out that the process of regularizing the land has been dragging on for decades and that the producers run into the bureaucracy of the environmental agenda resumed with the return of the Lula government.

“We are fighting against a tank (of war) with bows and arrows”, said the producer when highlighting the inequality of the fight against the state machine.

Through social networks, a video is circulating in which Dario do Agronegócio warns about the risks of Ibama’s operation and asks for help from the rest of the country so that producers can react to confiscating cattle.

“My people, our president, João Figueiredo, spoke: I’m going to sign for this fucking PT, for this disgrace to become a party […].”

“But there will be bloodshed to remove this disgrace (from power).”

“The war has begun; the implementation of communism has begun,” says the producer in the video.

NOTIFICATION

Producers in the region have been notified about the confiscation of their herds five days in advance.

The deadline is considered insufficient to regularize the documentation of the property since the processes have been dragging on for decades.

One of the producers published on social networks the notification issued by the Ministry of Environment, headed by Minister Marina Silva.

Sought by many of the local producers, environmental lawyer Vinícius Barbosa considers Ibama’s operation irregular.

“The producers are desperate with this possibility of having all their cattle seized.”

“Although there is a legal provision, as seen in article 103 of decree 6.514/2008, we understand that the federal government has no moral, much less legal security, to promote such seizures of animals at this time,” said the lawyer to the newspaper BNC Amazonas.

The decree cited by the lawyer says that the cattle will be seized if found in an embargoed area.

Sought by BSM to comment on the case, the lawyer and former superintendent of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) of Pará, Miguel Gualberto, said that the full extent of the process that generated the environmental embargoes is still unknown.

“The producers need to have their adversarial rights respected.”

“They need time to present a justification regarding those areas, and we also have to analyze the historical context to know if the governments, in the past and nowadays, have allowed the landholding regularization and the environmental regularization of those areas to be accomplished”, explains the lawyer when he warns about the bureaucratic obstacle created by the state itself.

The excess of bureaucracy, according to Gualberto, encourages producers to use areas for animal management even before regularization since they depend on this to survive.

“We need to identify the Amazon reality, which has, almost in its totality, areas with an agrarian destination, i.e., it has no other source of income other than an agrarian activity, and past governments did not make it possible for agrarian activities to be developed.”

“How will these people (producers) manage their subsistence if they don’t work this way?” he concluded.

WHAT DOES IBAMA SAY

Sought by BSM, Ibama did not respond to the closing of this issue.

The newspaper remains open for any clarification from the Institute.

REACTION

Commenting on the operation, the former senator, Telmário Mota, criticized the short deadline given to the producers to regularize the situation.

“President Lula, Ibama gave five days for the producers of Amazonas: Manicoré, Apuí, Humaitá, Lábrea, etc., to remove 85,000 head of cattle because they were in areas without documentation.”

“My question is: How can this be done in such a short time? Will people eat grass? And the barbecue? It’s Ibama or locks the street,” wrote the former senator on Twitter.

“Lula gave the order to close and confiscate in 5 days all the farms in the Amazon. ”

“The Farmers are desperate!”

“The allegation is a lack of documents, but Incra only gives the definitive title if there are improvements.”

“Improvements have been made but, instead of title, they are expropriating,” commented another profile when posting images of the operation last Friday (31).

With information from Brasil Sem Medo