Members of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) last week visited three important leaders of the Tupinambá people being held in Bahia incarceration units. Paulo Machado Guimarães, Juridical Assessor for the Council, together with Dr. Valdir Mesquita, attorney appointed by the indigenous family, conversed with the  Rosivaldo Ferreira da Silva brothers, better known as Cacique Babau and Gilvado de Jesus.

 
On Sunday afternoon, June 27, Saulo Feitosa, adjunct secretary of the Council, and Haroldo, Genário and Edward, members of the Council in the state of Bahia, went to Jiquié where they met with Glicéria Tupinambá and Eruthawã, her baby of only two months.

A week without news
Babau has been imprisoned since March 10, when he was detained in his Sierra do Padeiro home, in the southern Bahia municipality of Buerarema. His arrest by Federal Police (FP) occurred at 2:30 in the morning. Givaldo has been detained since April, when he was taken from in front of a workshop where he had left his car for repair.

 
The two were incarcerated at the FP jail of Mossoró (RN), from which they were moved on June 18 to the FP in Ilhéus, with a stop at the FP of Salvador. Since then, family and friends had no knowledge of where they had been taken. On the 25^th, Guimarães was informed by federal police agents in Salvador that the two were not on site. As he did not find the indigenous detainees, he contacted Salmeirão Antonio, lead attorney for the National Foundation for Indigenous Affairs (FUNAI), who said he knew they were in the Penitenciária de Salvador.

On the morning of the 26^th , Guimarães walked through the entire penitentiary complex in the capital and did not find them. Only on Monday (28^th ), through indigenous intermediary Patricia Rodrigues dos Santos, Pataxó Hã Hã Hãe, did he get word that Babau and Gil had been in the Presídio de Itabuna since June 21. This information was made possible by way of contact with the superintendent of Penal Affairs of the Department of Justice, Citizenship and Human Rights of Bahia, Isidoro Orge Rodriguez, who found no information on the indigenous prisoners, even in the Companhia de Processamento de Dados da Bahia (Prodeb- company for data base processing of Bahia), where there is a registry of all prisoners in the state. Rodriguez then called the regional superintendent of the Federal Police of the state who informed him that the two had been sent to the Presidio of Itabuna by the Federal Police of Ilhéus.

On the morning of June 28, attorneys Guimarães and Mesquita found that in the process which ordered the arrest of Babau and Gil, there was no information contained about the location to which they had been taken. They had been imprisoned for one week without their attorneys, families and community having knowledge of their whereabouts. Only the district judge of Buerarema, the Federal Police and director of the Itabuna Prison  knew where the indigenous people were.

With this information, Guimarães and Mesquita were at the presidio on the morning of the 28th, where they were able to converse with the two brothers. According to them, both were well despite the succession of irregularities and journeys of which they have been victims since they were arrested. During their encounter, the attorneys were informed of the decision by Rodriguez, who had determined that the indigenous detainees were to be transferred for reasons of security, from Itabuna to Observation Centro de Observação Penal (COPE) in the Lemos de Brito Penitentiary Complex in Salvador.

On the morning of the 29th, they were taken to Salvador, where they arrived at approximately 18:00 hours. Before being transferred they had a meeting with the mother and a sister.

Nearly a month at the Presídio de Jiquié
"We arrived and found Glicéria well, more animated and less anxious than the previous week, when she received a visit from a niece". This passage is from the report by Saulo Feitosa on his impression from the meeting with Glicéria Tupinambá last week. He and other members of CIMI / Itabuna Staff were at the Presídio de Jiquié where the indigenous mother and her child Eruthawã have been since June 3.

The environment where Saul spoke with Glicéria was quite different from that found in the Maximum Security Penitentiary in Mossoró for the visit with Gil and Babau. "We conversed in a quiet environment. Only myself, she and the baby", said Feitosa. She was content and animated for continuing in the struggle for demarcation of the traditional land of their community.

The single complaint of Glicéria is that she is not able to sleep with the child and has faced problems to breastfeed. One of her breasts is very sore. Nevertheless, she reports between smiles that the situation is improving, having been transferred on the 23^rd to a cell with fewer inmates, four. She had previously shared space with eight other women.

Next step
Now awaited are the reviews of two petitions for writs of habeas corpus; one filed by  FUNAI and the other by the CIMI Juridical Assessor. Also expected in the coming week is the decision by the Buerarema district judge on the petition for conversion of preventive imprisonment of Glicéria from the Présidio de Jiquié to her village.