“None of that exists?”
“Generally it does—on paper. In practice, no. The land barons and mill owners warp the law to suit their purposes, and the authorities say ‘amen.’ When an elderly person can’t work in the straw any more, as we say, he becomes a beggar. He leaves there seeking charity. The church has a welfare service, but it’s impossible to help everybody.”
“But what about the trial? Do you think Colonel Barros’s friends’ll show up at court?”
“Probably. From the discussions I’ve heard, the colonel and his lawyers have told the accused how they can demoralize the judge.”
“On what basis?”
“Until recently, Judge Fernandes liked to drink beer on weekends. Sometimes he’d get a bit carried away. They want to take advantage of that: to show the community that the judge’s intentions are the caprices of a drunkard linked to communists—of whom I’m one, according to them.”
“And the police?”
“They’re the instrument of Colonel Barros and Martinho. Next to them in the lineup you can put innumerable lawyers, the commander of the military garrison here in Sapé, aldermen and a good part of the membership of the Rotary Club. On the farmworkers’ side there are few volunteers. But our adversaries forget that our commander is Jesus Christ. And, with Him, on His side, nothing will happen to us.”
I asked Father Juliano if he’d be bothered if I took some photos. He allowed it. I tried out the Olympus-Pen. I told the priest my name was Jorge Elias and that I was staying in the Juca Inn. I noticed he showed some concern.
“Before your first story appears in the paper, you’d better move.”
“Why?”
“There are good people who stay there—lots of farmworkers—but some rooms are held for Barros’s and Martinho’s gangsters. Some of them infiltrate the farmworkers to make sure no new leaders arise. When a worker seeks to form a union, he is mysteriously denounced to the plantation or mill’s personnel office. The first measure they take is unemployment. If the worker persists, he winds up persecuted in other ways, including physically. Many have died as a result; others have disappeared. The police aren’t interested. Sapé’s Chief of Police is Juarez Cordeiro. He’s Colonel Barros’s partner in countless business deals, including a tractor dealership. He’s also the police chief and the owner of Sapé’s gas stations.”
“Where are you from originally, Father Juliano?”
“I’m Dutch. I’ve been in Brazil for eighteen years. I first founded the parish of Santa Inês in Caruaru, Pernambuco. Later I was transferred here. When I arrived, Nova Brasília was in its early stages. Since then it’s grown. The people are good and hard-working. Everyone knows and respects everyone else. There’s hardly any crime in this neighborhood, except when the mill owners’ thugs show up. Sometimes they appear late at night in pickup trucks, firing at houses. I’ve been to the police countless times to have something done about it, but it gets worse.”
“And Judge Fernandes? How can I locate him?”
“He lives on Simplício Coelho Avenue, in front of the Augusto dos Anjos city library, very close to João Pessoa Square. It’s a yellow house. He’ll be happy to see you. We need the support of the southern press. There are no newspapers around here and the João Pessoa press turns a blind eye to events in Sapé.”
I said goodbye to Father Juliano with admiration. In the doorless wardrobe, I saw a Bible and some other religious works, nothing more—on the walls, a photo of the church under construction and a crucifix. As I was leaving the sacristan appeared, carrying plates covered with white napkins. The sacristan, a dark-skinned man, wore glasses.
“Offerings of Dona Graça and Dona Umbelina,” he said.
Along the earthen road the dust and heat had become intense. But I was happy to have spoken with the priest. After all, I had gone there just to introduce myself and had wound up taking notes that could constitute my story lead. Given the information I’d received, perhaps it would be enough to interview the judge to send my first dispatch to The Nation’s editors. I didn’t want to spend many days undercover. At the same time, those notes would be useful for fleshing out the hard-news story I’d do on Thursday’s rally. I’d end my first story in the series by reporting on the rally, and could devote the second piece to Friday’s court session, which would feature the testimony against the men accused of working for Barros. I passed by the women decorating the church. Three of them were gluing silky paper pennants to strings to be festooned over the churchyard.
It had been simple enough to begin my work. The only thing I wasn’t eager to find out about was the meaning of cabrocó. But everything I’d already heard and Father Juliano’s comments convinced me of one thing: I should get out of the Juca Inn. But I wasn’t sure where to go. I thought about asking the priest for help, but thought it would be unwise—a reporter who intended to get to the bottom of Sapé’s social problems couldn’t show fear. I remembered that my room’s window was open, my pack exposed. I decided I’d ask the judge for advice.
João Pessoa Square is ringed by imperial palms. In the center sits a copper bust of the famous Paraíban Augusto dos Anjos, unveiled in 1943. The plaza has wooden, iron-footed benches, lush gardens, and a columned, Greek-style bandshell with a floor of large flagstones. To one side of the plaza, on Simplício Coelho, is the Augusto dos Anjos city library, and facing it, as Father Juliano had said, Judge Fernandes’s yellow house, ringed by walls and a grate of forged iron over which stretched flower-laden branches and stems: acacias, ficuses, poppies, lilacs. That section of the city was absolutely silent. Cars seldom passed by. The silence made it possible to hear the wind rustling the palm fronds and the rigid branches of beefwood trees. It was a tranquil, almost subdued redoubt, too orderly for my taste.
I clapped my hands. A young girl of modest expression appeared at the door; she appeared to be a maid. I could see the house’s interior, which tended toward the sumptuous. It had three windows at each side, a carved door, a white marble staircase, and gilt handrails atop the balustrade.
“I wish to speak with Judge Odilon Fernandes.”
The girl asked me to wait and disappeared down a corridor. Did the judge live alone? What would he be like? I had forgotten to ask the priest that detail. A door opened, and a fiftyish man appeared, balding, and calm in appearance.
“I’m Jorge Elias, a reporter for the Rio de Janeiro newspaper The Nation. I came to Sapé to interview you. It was the express suggestion of Veiga de Castro, our editor-in-chief.”
He extended his hand and smiled. He apologized for his temporarily solitary status and consequently disheveled house. His wife and children were in Campina Grande in the company of relatives.
“Around here, they’d be in danger!”
We went into a study lined with bookcases holding books on law, sociology, and botany. A few held the fiction, poetry and essays of northeastern authors, among them José Lins do Rêgo, José Veríssimo, José Américo de Almeida, Paulo Cavalcanti, Ascenso Ferreira, and Orris Soares. The judge offered me a calfskin easy chair and the contents of a silver cigarette box. We lit up and took deep drags as the maid brought coffee and cashew juice.
“Around here this time of year the heat becomes stifling,” he said to put me at ease. “How are things at The Nation?”
“Our readership’s increasing. Veiga de Castro knows how to run a newspaper.”
“He’s from Sapé. We studied together. His family had roots in the Jungle Zone but ended up selling the mill and moving to Rio. It was shortly afterward that the factory mills began to take root, along with the race to acquire land, the government plan to substitute alcohol for gasoline, and the whole crazy business in which we’re now stuck.”
“Why reopen old cases like those of João Pedro Teixeira, Pedro Fazendeiro and Nêgo Fuba?”
“The state of Paraíba needs to show the country that we’re not a band of savages. Here, if people show an interest in democracy, human rights will be able to assert themselves
. We detest the local oligarchic regime. I refuse to be a judge in a district in which two plantation owners have the gall to mete out justice by force and coercion. The cases I’ve reopened involve a question of principle. Either I can carry out my judicial duties or I can declare judicial power dead, tear up my diplomas and throw away all these books. But I am sure that the community of Sapé supports my decision, and I do not fear threats, whether they come from hoodlums and gangsters or from the land barons themselves, who to this day believe they’re the owners of this township and its neighboring regions, like Cruz do Espírito Santo, Santa Rita, and Alagoa Grande.”
“Don’t you feel a bit alone, sir, in facing all these trials?”
The judge drank a little more cashew juice and smiled.
“I’m no hero. It just happens that I have a job to do. I studied law and became a judge. I’m doing nothing more than defending those who historically have been sacrificed. I’m referring to the farmworkers, an endangered species without a doubt.”
“After so many years, how do you plan to reopen the cases?”
“I ordered Police Chief Juarez Cordeiro to pursue his investigations. But even being a judge, I was surprised to learn no probe had ever taken place until last month. The inquiry began—badly enough—by locating the bodies. But the police reports contain declarations of people who are unidentified or used false names. Yet the chief tried to foist these reports on me as if I were a neophyte in such matters. Now he wants out of the assignment so he won’t have to fulfill his duty. I want these investigations done or the police chief of Sapé at the time of these crimes will be indicted.”
“And who was the chief?”
“None other than the current state assemblyman Luiz de Paula, elected by the conservative Social Democratic Party. An important member of the Lowland Group, a brotherhood that fostered and underwrites what they call the Syndicate of Death. Similar to Rio and São Paulo’s death squads. Except that here they specialize in liquidating farmworkers who try to organize a union—farmworkers possessing a certain level of information, who demand higher pay and enforcement of agricultural labor-relations laws.”
“Tell me about Colonel Barros, the plantation owner.”
“He’s a bandit who should be in jail. He’s the grandee responsible for the misery and corruption of the countryside, here in Sapé and in almost the entire Jungle Zone. There’s the eyewitness testimony of more than 200 people whose relatives he’s killed. Not directly, of course. The executions are carried out by hirelings.”
“And the state government, what does it do?”
“Nothing. Colonel Barros was a man of the 1964 coup. He got guns from the army to defend ‘democracy’ against Moscow’s communists. Except that he only defended himself, tripling his personal fortune, and never returned the arms. Nor were they ever re-requisitioned by the military, from which it can be inferred Colonel Barros has friends in high places.”
“And how about you, sir? How do you protect yourself?”
“Through the constitution, tattered though it may be. I think we have stalwart citizens here who will help me punish the gangsters and their bosses. I refuse to accept the concept of Sapé as no-man’s-land, controlled by a half-dozen malefactors. As long as I’m the judge—they’re trying to transfer me—I’ll do everything I can so that the trials succeed. I already ordered the jail reinforced so that the detainees will continue to be held securely.”
“Are you going to Thursday’s rally, sir? Is Father Juliano one of the movement’s spokespeople, or am I mistaken?”
“Father Juliano is one of the brave defenders of the farmworkers. Were it not for him, I don’t know what would have become of Sapé, what with so many poor people here, many of them dying of hunger and disease. He devotes his life to fundraising campaigns. He came up with the idea of the rally, helped by a great woman, Alagoa Grande’s union leader Margarida Maria Alves. She’ll also be there in the market square, where the rally will take place.”
“What’s the rally’s objective?”
“We’re going to change the farmworker’s work situation with this rally. We hope to draw the attention of the authorities in Brasília and also of the national news media.”
The maid brought more cashew juice, this time well-iced. The judge lit a cigarette somewhat nervously. For a moment we forgot the interview. I was beginning to think that all this, at least on my part, was becoming irritating. What kind of story would it make, these off-the-cuff questions and answers? It was impossible to evaluate the facts just from the judge and Father Juliano’s opinions. They were telling only what they knew. They spoke of cruelties but didn’t provide details. And even if they did so, it would be their experiences, not mine. Dangerous or not, I’d be on the right journalistic track only when I plunged head-first into the mindset of that agrarian region. It was urgent to find that track and the passageway to danger—the things Andrade didn’t know and didn’t want to know. How could I get the story without getting myself into a fix? I drank a little more cashew juice. The judge showed me some news clippings glued to business-size stationery he’d been collecting in a filing cabinet.
“In 1982,” he said, “the fury of the powerful already was being unleashed against Paraíban magistrates. Reinaldo de Azevedo Silva, electoral judge in the city of Itabaiana, decided that the Social Democrats’ candidate was ineligible to participate in the mayoral election due to irregularities in his candidacy. You can guess what happened. He took three slugs from gangsters paid by people who wanted their candidate in the race at any cost. That’s how they treat us around here, young man. But I’m not as peace-loving as Azevedo. Just look at the company I keep.”
Judge Fernandes showed me a .45-caliber pistol.
“They won’t kill me empty-handed.”
“That forces the court to fight at close range, on their terms. An unequal situation, if I may say so.”
“In the Jungle Zone everything’s different, my dear Jorge Elias. As a judge, I have to be a detective, clerk, police chief, minister of justice, and, occasionally, the law’s executioner. Except that the latter duty inures exclusively to the detriment of the poor, who are the least guilty. There are no rich criminals in Brazilian prisons, but in the most sophisticated cities at least a few rich have to account for themselves on occasion; they’re even photographed by newspapers and seen on television. None of that happens here. Can you imagine a child, relative, or employee of one of those landowners in Sapé’s police station being deposed before a court reporter? Quite the contrary: it’s the police chief himself who goes to them, wasting the state’s gasoline, pretending to look for suspects, asking them obsequiously if they’ll make some small statement about the murders they’ve committed. Without a real effort the inquiry can’t proceed. Months after these peregrinations, the same police chief, Cordeiro, will say that the inquiry never was concluded because the principals implicated couldn’t be located or simply wouldn’t explain their conduct.”
“Judge Fernandes, at least two people have used the word cabrocó as a synonym for cruel punishment. What does that term mean?”
“A cabrocó is one who has been crippled after being doused, day after day, by successive hot and cold water discharges in a sugar mill washing tank. The victim is bent over—arms tied below the legs. Those who survive—usually as raw flesh—are wrapped in banana leaves by their family. When the wounds dry the victim becomes rigidified and twisted, a monster. There used to be an old cabrocó in the market square. He lived on charity. He was punished following a land dispute.”
The judge wound up inviting me to have lunch. He didn’t like to eat alone. We sat at the table. The agile and silent maid placed the food in front of us: veal hash, giblet stew, greens and cooked sweet cassava. For dessert, we had pineapple on a platter garnished by ice cubes.
“Where are you staying?” the judge asked. “I ask because there are no hotels in Sapé.”
“At the Juca Inn.”
He gave me a look of incredul
ity, and smiled nervously.
“It’s impossible! Did you come to Sapé to report or commit suicide?”
“Why?”
“If one of the thugs who stay there discovers you’re a journalist, you’ll be done for. That place is an inn in name only. The Juca Inn’s guests are farmworkers who don’t have anyplace else to go, and gangsters who keep them in their gunsights. Last week two peasants were killed in one of those tiny rooms. Chief Cordeiro said the crime resulted from a drunken brawl. The victims’ friends said they weren’t the drinking type. Recently they’d joined the Sapé Rural Workers’ Union.”
“I looked for the best place. There wasn’t any other choice.”
“You’re giving me an idea,” said the judge. “The house next door is ours, and it’s closed up. It has furniture and everything else a person might need. If Jandira agrees to fix you meals, you could be my guest.”
For the first time the maid smiled and showed some cheerfulness.
“What have I done to deserve such a favor?” I asked, satisfied with the solution to a problem that was worrying me more and more.
“Jandira, give him the keys. He’ll be our neighbor.”
Chapter 4
Drenched in sweat, the driver again wiped his face with a cloth, refolded it, put it on the dashboard, and continued driving down the dusty township road. It was eleven o’clock on a sunny, windless morning, and the canefields stood straight and tall.
Workers moved about on the land, almost all wearing hats made of carnaúba or canvas. The driver accelerated the old Corcel down a narrow hillside road and through a turn, the bald tires sliding on the gravel. As the driver fought the wheel, he came alongside a tractor pulling a disabled truck laden with twenty-two tons of cane. Altering his expression, he screwed up a smile as he leaned out the window and told a joke to the tractor driver, who stared blankly at him through rivers of sweat.
Land of Black Clay Page 4