View of the World

by Norman Lewis

  The plans for disposing of the Cintas Largas were laid in Aripuaná. This small festering tropical version of Dodge City 1860 has the face and physique of all such Latin-American hell-holes, populated by hopeless men who remain there simply because for one reason or other, they cannot leave. A row of wooden huts on stilts stand in the hard sunshine down by the river. Swollen-bellied children squat to delouse each other; dogs eat excrement; vultures limp and balance on the edge of a ditch full of black sewage; the driver of an ox-cart urges on the animal wreckage of hide and bones by jabbing with a stick under its tail. Everyone carries a gun. Cachaça offers oblivion at a shilling a pint, but boredom rots the mind. There are two classes: those who impose suffering, and the utterly servile. In this case nine-tenths of the working population are rubber tappers, and most of them fugitives from justice.

  It is cheap and sometimes effective – besides being the quite normal procedure where a tribe’s villages are beyond reach – to bribe other Indians to attack them; and this was tried in the first instance with the Cintas Largas. The Kayabis, neighbours both of the Cintas Largas and the Beiços de Pau, had been dispersed when the State of Mato Grosso sold their land to various commercial enterprises, part of the tribe migrating to a distant range of mountains, while a small group that had split off remained in this Aripuaná area, where it lived in destitution. This group took the food and guns that they were offered in down-payment, and then decamped in the opposite direction and no more was seen of them.

  Later a garimpa – an organised body of diamond prospectors – appeared in the neighbourhood. They were all in very bad shape through malnutritional disorders. They had attacked an Indian village and had been beaten off and then ambushed, and several of them were wounded. The intention had been to capture at least one woman, not only for sexual uses, but as a source of supply of the fresh female urine believed to be a certain cure for the infected sores from which garimpeiros habitually suffer, and which are caused by the stingrays abounding in the rivers in which they work. Garimpeiros are organised under a captain who supplies their food and equipment, and to whom they are bound – under pain of being abandoned in the forest to die of starvation – to sell their diamonds. Like the rubber tappers – who are their traditional enemies – they are mostly wanted by the police. The feud existing between these two types of desperado is based on the rubber tappers’ habit of stalking and shooting the lonely garimpeiro, in the hope that he may be found with a diamond or two. In this case emissaries arranged a truce, and the garimpeiros were brought into town, and given food; a company doctor patched up the wounded men. Common action against the Cintas Largas was then proposed, and the captain fell in with the suggestion and agreed to detach six men for this purpose as soon as everyone was fully rested. In the condition in which he found himself, he may have been ready to agree to anything, but by the time the garimpeiros had put on a little flesh and their wounds had cleared up, there was an abrupt cooling in the climate of amity. Aripuaná was not a big enough town to contain two such trigger-happy personalities as the garimpa captain and the overseer of the rubber tappers. For a while the poverty-stricken rubber tappers put up with it, while the affluent garimpeiros swaggered in the bars, and monopolised the town’s prostitutes. Then, inevitably, the entente cordiale foundered in gunplay.

  In 1963 a series of expeditions were now organised under the leadership of Francisco de Brito, general overseer of the rubber extraction firm of Arruda Junqueira of Juina-Mirim near Aripuaná, on the river Juruana.

  De Brito was a legendary monster who kept order among the ruffians he commanded by a .45 automatic and a five-foot tapir-hide whip. He was a joker with Indians, and when one was captured he was taken on what was known as ‘the visit to the dentist’, being ordered to ‘open wide’ whereupon De Brito drew a pistol and shot him through his mouth. There was a lively competition among the rubber men for the title of champion Indian killer, and although this was claimed by De Brito, local opinion was that his score was bettered by one of his underlings who specialised in casual sniping from the river banks.

  The expeditions mounted by De Brito were successful in clearing the Cintas Largas from an area, insignificant by Brazilian standards, although about half as big as England south of the Thames; but there remained a large village considered inaccessible on foot or by canoe, and it was decided to attack this by plane. At this stage it is evident that a better type of brain began to interest itself in these operations, and whoever planned the air-attack was clearly at some pains to find out all he could about the customs of the Cintas Largas.

  It was seen as essential to produce the maximum number of casualties in one single, devastating attack, at a time when as many Indians as possible would be present in the village, and an expert was found to advise that this could best be done at the annual feast of the Quarup. This great ceremony lasts for a day and a night, and under one name or another it is conducted by almost all the Indian tribes whose culture has not been destroyed. The Quarup is a theatrical representation of the legends of creation interwoven with those of the tribe itself, both a mystery play and a family reunion attended not only by the living but the ancestral spirits. These appear as dancers in masquerade, to be consulted on immediate problems, to comfort the mourners, to testify that not even death can disrupt the unity of the tribe.

  A Cessna light plane used for ordinary commercial services was hired for the attack, and its normal pilot replaced by an adventurer of mixed Italian-Japanese birth. It was loaded with sticks of dynamite – ‘bananas’ they are called in Brazil – and took off from a jungle airstrip near Aripuaná. The Cessna arrived over the village at about midday. The Indians had been preparing themselves all night by prayer and singing, and now they were all gathered in the open space in the village’s centre. On the first run, packets of sugar were dropped to calm the fears of those who had scattered and run for shelter at the sight of the plane. They had opened the packets and were tasting the sugar ten minutes later when it returned to carry out the attack. No one has ever been able to find out how many Indians were killed, because the bodies were buried in the bank of the river and the village deserted.

  But even this solution proved not to be final. Survivors had been spotted from the air and were reported to be building fresh settlements in the upper reaches of the Aripuaná, and once again De Brito got together an overland force.

  They were to be led, in canoes, by one Chico, a De Brito underling. The full story of what happened was described by a member of the force, Ataide Pereira, who, troubled by his conscience and also by the fact that he had never been paid the fifteen dollars promised him for his bloody deeds, went to confess them to a Padre Edgar Smith, a Jesuit priest, who took his statement on a tape recorder and then handed the tape to the Indian Protection Service.

  ‘We went by launch up the Juruana,’ Ataide says. ‘There were six of us, men of experience, commanded by Chico, who used to shove his tommy-gun in your direction whenever he gave you an order!’ (Chico, it was to turn out, was no mere average sadist of the Brazilian badlands. For this kind of Latin American – and they have been the executioners of so many revolutions – the ultimate excitement lies in the maniac use of the machete on their victims, and it was to use this machete that Chico had gone on this expedition.) ‘It took a good many days upstream to the Serra do Norte. After that we lost ourselves in the woods, although Chico had brought a Japanese compass with us. In the end the plane found us. It was the same plane they used to massacre the Indians, and they threw us down some provisions and ammunition. After that we went on for five days. Then we ran out of food again. We came across an Indian village that had been wiped out by a gang led by a gunman called Tenente, and we dug up some of the Indians’ mandioca for food and caught a few small fish. By this time we were fed up and some of us wanted to go back, but Chico said he’d kill anybody who tried to desert. It was another five days after that before we saw any smoke. Even then the Cintas Largas were days away. We were all pretty scar
ed of each other. In this kind of place people shoot each other and get shot, you might say without knowing why.

  ‘When they drill a hole in you, they have this habit of sticking an Indian arrow in the wound, to put the blame on the Indians.’

  This expedition breathed in the air of fear. Ataide reports that there were diamonds and gold in all the rivers, and the shadow of the garimpeiro stalked them from behind every rock and tree. A violent death would claim most of these men sooner or later. Premature middle age brought on by endless fever, malnutrition, exhaustion, hopelessness and drink overtook the rubber-tappers in their late twenties, and few lived to see their thirtieth birthday. An infection turning to gangrene or blood-poisoning would carry them off; or they would die in an ugly fashion, paralysed, blind and mad from some obscure tropical disease; or they would simply kill each other in a sudden neurotic outburst of hate provoked by nothing in particular – for a bet, or in a brawl over some sickly prostitute picked up at a village dance.

  Hacking their way through this sunless forest a month or more’s march from the dreadful barracks that was their home, they were dependent for survival on the psychopathic Chico and his Japanese compass. It was the beginning of the rainy season when, after a morning of choking heat, sudden storms would drench them every afternoon. They were plagued with freshly hatched insects, worst of all the myriads of almost invisible piums that burrow into the skin to gorge themselves with blood, and against which the only defence is a coating of grime on every exposed part of the body. Some of the men were blistered from the burning sap squirted on them from the lianas they cut into.

  ‘We were hand-picked for the job,’ Ataide says, with a lacklustre attempt at esprit de corps, ‘as quiet as any Indian party when it came to slipping in and out of trees. When we got to Cintas Largas country there were no more fires and no talking. As soon as we spotted their village we made a stop for the night. We got up before dawn, then we dragged ourselves yard by yard through the underbrush till we were in range, and after that we waited for the sun to come up.

  ‘As soon as it was light the Indians all came out and started to work on some huts they were building. Chico had given me the job of seeking out the chief and killing him. I noticed there was one of these Indians who wasn’t doing any work. All he did was to lean on a rock and boss the others about, and this gave me the idea he must be the man we were after. I told Chico and he said, “Take care of him, and leave the rest to me,” and I got him in the chest with the first shot. I was supposed to be the marksman of the team, and although I only have an ancient carbine, I can safely say I never miss. Chico gave the chief a burst with his tommy-gun to make sure, and after that he let the rest of them have it … all the other fellows had to do was to finish off anyone who showed signs of life.

  ‘What I’m coming to now is brutal, and I was all against it. There was a young Indian girl they didn’t shoot, with a kid of about five in one hand, yelling his head off. Chico started after her and I told him to hold it, and he said, “All these bastards have to be knocked off.” I said, “Look, you can’t do that – what are the padres going to say about it when you get back?” He just wouldn’t listen. He shot the kid through the head with his .45, and then he grabbed hold of the woman – who by the way was very pretty. “Be reasonable,” I said. “Why do you have to kill her?” In my view, apart from anything else, it was a waste. “What’s wrong with giving her to the boys?” I said. “They haven’t set eyes on a woman for six weeks. Or failing that we could take her back with us and make a present of her to De Brito. There’s no harm in keeping in with him.” All he said was, “If any man wants a woman he can go and look for her in the forest.”

  ‘We all thought he’d gone off his head, and we were pretty scared of him. He tied the Indian girl up and hung her head downwards from a tree, legs apart, and chopped her in half right down the middle with his machete. Almost with a single stroke I’d say. The village was like a slaughter-house. He calmed down after he’d cut the woman up, and told us to burn down all the huts and throw the bodies into the river. After that we grabbed our things and started back. We kept going until nightfall and we took care to cover our tracks. If the Indians had found us it wouldn’t have been much use trying to kid them we were just ordinary backwoodsmen. It took us six weeks to find the Cintas Largas, and about a week to get back. I want to say now that personally I’ve nothing against Indians. Chico found some minerals and took them back to keep the company pleased. The fact is the Indians are sitting on valuable land and doing nothing with it. They’ve got a way of finding the best plantation land and there’s all these valuable minerals about too. They have to be persuaded to go, and if all else fails, well then, it has to be force.’

  De Brito, the man who organised this expedition, was to die within a year of it in the most horrific circumstances. When he found cause for complaint in one of his men he would normally tie him up and thrash him until the blood ran down and squelched in the man’s boots, but in an aggravated case he would have one of his henchmen use the whip while he raped the culprit’s wife as the punishment was being inflicted. An Italian called Cavalcanti, who tried to attack the overseer after receiving the more serious punishment, was promptly shot dead and his body burned. A revolt of the rubber tappers followed in which nine men were killed. De Brito when cornered was like Rasputin, very difficult to disable, and absorbed several bullets and a thrust in the stomach with a machete before he went down. After this he was stripped, the bowels plugged back with a tampon of straw, then dragged still alive into the open and left ‘for the ants’.

  How many Indian hunts of the kind mounted against the Cintas Largas must have gone unnoticed in the past, condemned at worst as a necessary evil? Ataide speaks of them as if they were commonplace, and the likelihood is confirmed by a statement, made to the police inspector of the 3rd Divisional Area of Cuiabá Salgado who investigated the case, by a Padre Valdemar Veber. The Padre said, ‘It is not the first time that the firm of Arruda Junqueira has committed crimes against the Indians. A number of expeditions have been organised in the past. This firm acts as a cover for other undertakings who are interested in acquiring land, or who plan to exploit the rich mineral deposits existing in this area.’

  When one considers the miasmic climate of subjection in which these remote rubber baronies operate, in which the voice raised in protest can be instantly suffocated, and as many false witnesses as required created at the lifting of a finger, it seems extraordinary that police action could ever have been contemplated against Arruda Junqueira. It appears even more so when one surveys the sparse judicial resources of the area.

  Denunciations of the kind made by Ataide lie forgotten in police files by the hundred, simply because the police have learned not to waste their strength in attempting the impossible. Nine major crimes out of ten probably never come to light. The problem of the disposal of the body – so powerful a deterrent to murder – does not exist where it can be thrown into the nearest stream, where – if a cayman does not dispose of it – the piranhás can reduce it to a clean skeleton in a matter of minutes.

  In the case of the brazen and contemptuous tenth, where a man murders his victim in public view, and makes not the slightest attempt to hide the crime, he knows he is under the powerful protection of distance and inaccessibility. Aripuaná is 600 miles from Cuiabá, the capital and seat of justice of Mato Grosso, and it can be reached only by irregular planes. Moreover at the time Inspector Salgado began his investigation, about 1,000 criminal cases were awaiting trial in Cuiabá, where, since the tiny local lock-up can accommodate some fifty persons (all ages and sexes are kept together), most criminals manage to remain at liberty awaiting their trial, which may be long delayed.

  Salgado’s task was immediately complicated by factors unrelated to the normal frustrations of geography and communications. Ataide, principal witness and self-confessed murderer, was now the owner of a sweet stall on the streets of Cuiabá, and could be picked up at any time, but
other essential witnesses were beginning to disappear. Two of the members of Chico’s expedition had managed to drown themselves ‘while on fishing trips’. The pilot of the plane used in the attack on the Cintas Largas was reported to have been killed in a plane crash. De Brito had of course been murdered in the rubber tappers’ revolt, and even Padre Smith, who had taped Ataide’s confession, could not be found.

  Despite the series of contretemps, Salgado completed the police’s case against Antonio Junqueira and Sebastião Arruda exactly three years after his investigations had begun, and the documents were sent to the judge. Under Brazilian law, however, the next procedure is the formal charge, the denuncia, which must be made by the public prosecutor, and it now became evident that the case might never surmount this hurdle. In all such countries as Brazil where a middle class is only just emerging, the landed aristocracy and the heads of great commercial firms are almost impregnably protected from the consequences of misdemeanour by dynastic marriages, interlocking interests and the mutual security pacts of men with powerful political friends. This is by no means an exclusively Latin American phenomenon, even, and is equally prevalent in Mediterranean Europe.

  In this case the public prosecutor, Sr Luis Vidal da Fonseca, promptly objected that the case could not be tried in Cuiabá because Aripuaná came under the jurisdiction, he said, of Diamantino. The papers were therefore sent to Diamantino where the judge immediately sent them back to Cuiabá. The question being referred to the supreme judiciary, it was ruled that the trial should take place in Cuiabá. So far only a month had been lost.