Letter of CIMI to all solitary persons and entities

 

After 19 years, the accused of murder of vicente cañas will finally stand trial.

 

this judgement must be spread around and we ask for your support to guarantee that impunity will end.

 

CIMI enters in contact with the entities and people that struggle for justice in Brazil and in other countries to ask support for the fight against the impunity of crimes against people that struggle for land and for indigenous peoples. We suggest sending this letter to newspapers in the state of Mato Grosso, with a copy to the representative of the Federal Public Prosecution Service in Cuiabá, Mario Lúcio Avelar, responsible for the accusation in the judgment.  

 

To the Readers Letter section of the media of Mato Grosso
To the Federal Public Prosecution Service in Mato Grosso, Mario Lúcio Avelar
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

 

After 19 years the man behind the barbarian murder of Vicente Cañas Costa and the two persons that carried the crime out will finally sit down on the accusers bank. The trial is scheduled for October 24, at 8 a.m., in the Auditorium of the Federal Justice of Cuiabá and it can mean a great progress in the fight against impunity.  

 

The Jesuit missionary Vicente Cañas Costa lived together with the Enawenê-Nawê people in the state of Mato Grosso. He was murdered because he struggled for the demarcation of the indigenous land Enawenê-Nawê and worked to improve the health situation of this people.

 

Ronaldo Antônio Osmar, a former chief of police in the city of Juína, where the crime was committed, Martinez Abadio da Silva, a known gunman in the region, and José Vicente da Silva, will stand trial for aggravated homicide in exchange for money and in an ambush. The former police officer was also the first officer of the Civel Police responsible for the investigation of the case. The penalties for aggravated homicide can vary from twelve to thirty years in prison.

Two other men who were also denounced by the Public Ministry died already (Pedro Chiquetti and Camilo Carlos Obici). The lawsuit against the third accused, farmer Antonio Mascarenhas Junqueira, has been expired because of his advanced age. 

 

Why did they kill Vicente Cañas? 
Vicente Cañas lived with the Enawenê-Nawê people for ten years. He participated in the first contacts between the indigenous people and the non-indigenous group in 1974. He accompanied them in their traditional fishing and agriculture activities and in their daily life. In a region where contamination for verminosis was commonplace, he acted in the prevention of these diseases. He organized constant vaccinations to prevent contagious diseases like measles, which decimated so many other indigenous groups in Brazil. The population of Enawenê-Nawê amounted 97 people when they were first contacted. Today, they are with 430.  

Wood and lands were highly coveted by the farmers that settled in the area. Vicente Cañas fought for the demarcation of the traditional indigenous lands and for respecting the culture of the Enawenê-Nawê. He participated officially in a Funai´s working group for identification of the indigenous territory. For this reason, the competence for judging the accused was transferred to Federal Justice. 

 

Violence 
After receiving death threats because of his commitment to ensure the survival of the Enawenê-Nawê people, Vicente Cañas was stabbed to death by farmers in 1987, just as he was getting ready to assist in an indigenous village, taking medicines up there. After being killed, he was abandoned at the door of his hut, and the murderers fled into the forest, in direction of the farm of one of the men behind the crime.

 

Only about forty days after the murder, his body was found by two missionaries of CIMI. His hut was in disorder, presenting signs of a fight, his glasses broken with a bat in his face. His working instruments, like the basket to take the medicines, a flashlight, rifle and a large knife, were already in the boat, with which he was planning to go to the villages, as he had informed by radio some days before the murder.  

 

The police inquiry lasted for six years. In spite of being a voice about the involvement of the accused, the population of Juína and of the indigenous villages feared reprisals and attacks on their lives, and remained silent in relation to the persons behind the murder and the ones that carried it out. The fact that the accused were involved in the crime was revealed by indigenous people belonging to the Rikbaktsa people (canoeiros), inhabitants of the neighboring lands to the one of Enawenê-Nawê.  

 

 

(Signed by the organization)