Land of Black Clay

by Jose Louzeiro

  I looked at the lights of the hovels in the distant landscape as the wind wafted in, light and cool. What would Alice think of all this, or was it better to keep her out of it? I tried to sleep—impossible. A simple, objective idea was beginning to surface out of the morass of doubts in which I was entangled. Why not forget The Nation, stay in Sapé, and collect enough copy to write a book? Maybe that was the way. Naturally it would not immediately interest Judge Fernandes, Father Juliano, or Almeida. But it was a way of breaking the impasse. And if the book touched a chord, it could end up being more of an indictment than the stories in The Nation, and for a much longer time. Who reads yesterday’s newspaper, much less that of the week before? Why hadn’t I, usually so introspective, thought of it before?

  Upon arriving at the courthouse, I noticed the workers had stepped up their activity. Representatives of the Rural Workers’ Unions of Santa Rita, Cruz do Espírito Santo, and Alagoa Grande were participating. Many groups of people were conversing and new people were arriving constantly. Although it was late, after midnight, the courthouse’s interior lights could be seen ablaze from outside and two loudspeakers broadcast the jury proceeding to the crowd. There was a pause, and Judge Fernandes was heard.

  “I call Colonel Barros, accused by one of the witnesses as involved in the murder of the peasant Teixeira.”

  For an instant people’s voices lowered in light of such an unheard-of event. There was silence in the street. At first the workers could hardly believe it.

  “Colonel Barros is being arrested?”

  “What a tough guy that judge is!”

  “Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?”

  “So help me God.”

  I tried to thread my way through those who were pressed against the front entrance. Making my way into the spectators’ gallery, I could not see Alice. Colonel Barros was about sixty years old, with well-groomed graying hair. His face was calm and bore prominent features; his eyes looked serene. He was wearing a gabardine safari suit. I could make out a Cartier watch on his wrist and on his right hand a ruby ring set in gold. Though he had made known his displeasure at being there, investigated for a forgotten crime, he did not show irritation now. Quite the contrary: as soon as he sat down, a smile played on his face. Near him were Soares and Magalhães, who continued to present the defense case.

  Romão paced back and forth, trying to impress the jurors. He stopped in front of Colonel Barros.

  “This man is known for his ruthlessness. Eight out of every ten peasants have complaints against him and his enterprises. They complain of being cheated in their paychecks, of his treatment of them, and of persecution that often extends to their families.”

  “Objection, Your Honor!” bellowed Soares. “The learned prosecutor is introducing character evidence that has nothing to do with Teixeira’s death.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” said Romão. “Colonel Barros has planted terror in the Jungle Zone, particularly in Sapé and Alagoa Grande. His name is linked to the murder of farmworkers, to actions of the Lowland Group and even to the creation of new types of torture, like abacatada”—another word I had never heard before—“and the cabrocó system. Why, sir, do you have so many hired thugs, and where do they get the modern weapons they all have? Who were the men that you sent to ambush Pedro Teixeira in Café do Vento, men of whom Batista said, ‘They were doing their duty, for they liquidated a troublemaker, a guy who wanted to inflame the whole area’? You should know, Colonel, that the license plate of the Dodge van seen by three people in the vicinity of Batista’s house and his daughter’s on the morning of the murders was traced to Alvorada Plantation, your own property.”

  Judge Fernandes rapped his gavel a few times on the bench. He offered the floor to the defendant.

  Colonel Barros rose. He smiled.

  “I wish to make clear, without further ado, that I am here of my own free will. To show the distinguished judge, the learned prosecutor, the members of the jury and to all those present that I owe nothing to anybody. And he who owes nothing fears nothing. To accuse me of being linked to crimes and persecution is one thing. Everyone has the right to say what he pleases free of reprisal, although the communists insist that we live in a dictatorship. But if everyone can say what he wishes—if everyone can make whatever accusations he wishes—without the necessary proof, then I consider myself a victim and demand that this court take proper legal action. As far as I know, none of my employees was involved in the murder of Teixeira. I did not know that citizen, and I would not have wanted to, if only because I am an entrepreneur, preoccupied with my work—I am a creator of employment and wealth, whereas Teixeira, according to what I hear, spent his time promoting disturbances and causing strikes. He wanted to see the peasants poorer than they are so that he could win them over to communism. That’s all I know about him.”

  “Do you know Batista?” persisted Romão. “He declared in this trial that he belongs to the Lowland Group. Teixeira is said to have been condemned to death in a meeting of that organization at which you were present.”

  “Batista—a person I’ve known for years—cannot be sure of what he says. First, there is no Lowland Group. There is no headquarters, there is no record of it, and I know of no one who belongs to it, despite the prosecutor’s insistence that I do. What I do know—and let me be clear here—is that Teixeira had enemies among the very terrorists with whom he was apparently involved.”

  “But for a criminal conspiracy to exist,” Romão pressed, “it need not hang a banner on the wall. Otherwise outlaw bands would be the stuff of fiction. I say the Lowland Group does exist. According to Batista, you attended its meetings.”

  “Then prove it, with photos if possible,” said an annoyed Colonel Barros. “I said and will repeat: I have no occupation other than as regards my plantations. Agriculture takes up my entire time: the harvest, the machinery, and a payroll of hundreds of employees. I am the biggest individual taxpayer in this state. For this reason alone I deserve more respect from the prosecutor and from this court.”

  “I suggest the defendant be spared these questions of a personal nature!” Soares demanded loudly.

  The judge did not react. It was as if he had not heard the defense objection. Romão continued.

  “This court is not interested in knowing whether you are a millionaire or if you pay heavy taxes. At issue here, Colonel Barros, is your guilt or innocence of the assassination of Teixeira, married to Noé Batista’s daughter Elizabeth. Before the crime there was a meeting in Batista’s house among various members of the Lowland Group. Even if you could not have attended, your emissary did, one Gilvandro Henrique José Gaspar. And it was there that the decision was taken: Teixeira would be killed in an ambush. Elizabeth’s brothers knew about this verdict. If you sent a representative to this meeting, how can you say the Lowland Group does not exist?”

  “I cannot help but repeat that I do not know of the existence of any such organization. Once again I say that never, in all my life as a businessman, have I involved myself with bandits and terrorists. I know of no Gilvandro, nor of any meeting to do away with Teixeira. What I do know and do say, for whomever cares to listen, is that Chief of Police Luiz de Paula on one occasion came to tell me that a Teixeira, along with other members of the Peasant League, was planning to burn canefields on Alvorada Plantation unless I agreed to pay a Christmas bonus in advance, which was a demand of theirs at the time. I ordered Paula’s information checked out and the threat was confirmed. I asked the state government for police reinforcements and some were sent to the plantation in plainclothes. Maybe those are my gangsters.”

  “Your Honor,” said Romão, “I have nothing further.”

  Colonel Barros sat down. A court employee walked over to him with a glass of water. Judge Fernandes noticed the act, considered stopping it, and decided to overlook it. After all, the man’s importance could not be underestimated. Just to have him there bef
ore him was itself a great victory.

  “Your Honor,” began Soares, “the learned prosecutor is trying to cast suspicion on Colonel Barros. But he lacks the proof that would elevate his words above mere rhetoric. To bring a man of Colonel Barros’s stature before this court on the basis of mere gossip is a most serious matter. A court should not tolerate such a thing….”

  “Counsel, please dispense with your commentaries. The court knows how to evaluate such matters.”

  “I do not wish to criticize the court, Your Honor. But I am confused about the prosecution’s accusations, given that it has no proof to buttress its charges. True, we all know that Batista testified that the colonel sent a man to represent him at the alleged meeting. He said there was a citizen there, by the name of Gilvandro, who was a friend of Colonel Barros. But we all know that friends are a dime a dozen. And nobody can stop someone from passing himself off as my friend or the court’s, much less one of Colonel Barros, who is so revered in this state and in this country.”

  I listened to these exchanges without much energy to take notes. I had never witnessed such a charged jury trial. Faced with the newspaper problem, I wasn’t sure where to start over. And I was worried about Alice—where could she have gone? Judge Fernandes rapped his gavel sharply.

  “Colonel Barros, counsel, is in this courtroom because he is a defendant. The testimony of Mr. Batista contained statements that incriminated him.”

  Colares asked to speak and stood up before the jury box. “With the court’s leave, I’d like to call Chief of Police Juarez Cordeiro, reserving the right to recall Colonel Barros.”

  The atmosphere in the spectators’ gallery was growing tense. More people were coming in. The police kept a tight lid on things, searching two men and finding a .38 caliber revolver on one of them. He was taken outside. Cordeiro threaded his way through the crowd, making his way to the front of the room, where he sat down opposite Colonel Barros.

  “Chief, how long have you known the colonel?”

  “Since arriving in Sapé, some fifteen years ago.”

  “In all that time, how many crimes have you solved that were committed by hoodlums working for the colonel?”

  “Objection, Your Honor! The learned counsel for the defense is presuming facts not in evidence,” urged Magalhães.

  “Sustained!”

  “I’ll rephrase it, Your Honor. Chief, since you’ve assumed your duties, how many murders of peasants have been solved in Sapé?”

  “Half a dozen, if I’m not mistaken,” said Juarez Cordeiro, smiling slightly. “Usually the peasants fill themselves up with cane liquor on weekends. They fight among themselves and often their disorderly conduct ends up in homicide. Some are caught in the act, while others manage to escape and can’t be found.”

  “And the murders of Teixeira, Fuba, Euzébio Ribeiro, Evaldo Martins de Oliveira, and Turíbio de Paixão, all union leaders, all heads of families, people admired in the community? You’re the chief now. How do you explain similar crimes from ’62, when the chief was Mr. Luiz de Paula, to ’82, and yet the police haven’t solved a single one?”

  “Well, now you’re talking not about plain disorderly conduct, as I was discussing, but something more serious: terrorism among them. Generally people who get involved with unions thirst for power. They want to take command positions, which causes rifts to start appearing, and it leads to killings. In most cases they’re professional hits. The Sapé police aren’t equipped to solve such cases—we can’t track every investigation,” concluded Cordeiro.

  “Lie! It’s a lie!” yelled an angry-faced elderly woman.

  “Silence or I’ll clear the courtroom,” warned Judge Fernandes.

  The woman tried to regain her composure, and a friend undertook to take her out of the room. Romão paced back and forth.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Chief Cordeiro’s testimony is frivolous if not downright false. Maybe he came here to throw a monkey wrench in our work.”

  “Objection!” roared Soares once again.

  The judge ignored him and signaled for Romão to continue.

  “When I asked about the number of peasant murders in Sapé and the surrounding area, it was because we have a list of cases dating from ‘64, the time that Fazendeiro and Fuba were killed. After them many other farmworkers, union members or not, have wound up being killed. To dispel any doubt that the jury may have, I call the union leader Margarida Maria Alves.”

  A few people applauded. Judge Fernandes asked for silence.

  “The deaths in ’66, ’67, ’68, ’69, ’75, ’79, ’81 and ’82 come to fifty-two in Sapé alone,” Alves testified. Among them are Euzébio Ribeiro, Evaldo Martins de Oliveira, and Turíbio de Paixão. The other names are all on this list, which was compiled by the Rural Workers’ Unions in Santa Rita, Sapé, and Alagoa Grande.”

  Romão took the list and handed it to one of the jurors, who passed it along to the others. Alves continued on her feet.

  “I would tell his honor Judge Fernandes, Mr. Romão, and the jury that just outside the courtroom are fifty-two mothers and wives of the murdered farmworkers on the list I just presented.”

  “I move the court to have those persons appear,” suggested Colares.

  “Absurd!” replied Soares. “How are we going to prove that they are indeed related to the names the witness has provided?”

  “All of them, Your Honor,” said Alves, “have brought documents to prove their degree of relation.”

  The judge called over two police officers to have the women brought in. They walked in one by one, filing past the jury box. Colonel Barros looked at them with an impatient air. Cordeiro plainly didn’t like the demonstration one bit. Each woman announced her name, that of the victim, and the date of the crime. A court employee collected their documents and handed them up to the judge.

  “There will be a twenty-minute recess,” the judge declared, rising from his seat.

  In the press room I found Alice. She was typing up a quantity of information she’d taken down earlier.

  “Hey! I’ve been looking for you. You missed the best part of the trial,” I said.

  “I figured as much. But I got some great notes. I only believe what I’ve written down, because I heard the witnesses say it. Do you know what a man named Jocelan Brasil said, much to Soares’s dismay? That Colonel Barros’s gangsters would get hold of the peasants’ daughters and help themselves to them. He brought in his own daughter, sixteen years old, who was raped by the colonel’s men four years ago. She also said he went to the police station to demand a corpus delicti examination from Cordeiro, but he refused, saying the girl was already a prostitute when the gangster had relations with her.”

  “What was the gangster’s name?”

  “Some guy named Galho Dentro. But the one who grabbed hold of the girl was another nicknamed Ticuca.”

  “And the police chief?”

  “He called Jocelan a liar and a drunk. He testified that he would stir up trouble when he got drunk. Once he beat his daughters, including the one who got raped. He ended up demoralizing the poor guy so much he started crying in the courtroom.”

  “Did Judge Fernandes do anything?”

  “He excused the witness and told him he would be recalled.”

  “Huh. Things are taking a serious turn then. Too bad my newspaper’s off the story.”

  “Off?”

  “Just look.”

  Alice opened the newspaper and looked for the story. She couldn’t find it easily.

  “That one there. Two columns and a picture. That’s it.”

  “What happened?”

  I showed her the full-page ad from the Northeastern Sugarcane Planters’ Association.

  “Money. They paid them off!”

  “And you—what are you going to do?”

  “Don’t know. I’d like to get away for awhile, figure it out. Want to take a walk?”

  “Aren’t you scared? I’ve already heard a lot of talk about you
r other stories.”

  “We’ll only walk on hoodlum-free streets….”

  Alice gathered her papers and smiled.

  “So you don’t know what you intend to do?”

  “Not yet. My first impulse was to quit the paper and find another that would let me report.”

  “Do you think that would be easy?”

  I shook my head in the negative.

  “What about television?”

  “They don’t even want to hear the word ‘peasant.’ They’re without friends, Alice. Father Juliano, Judge Fernandes, Almeida, Alves, me, you—we’re all members of Don Quixote’s family. We’re quite literally quixotic!”

  “Why so much pessimism?”

  “I’m confused. I need money. If they don’t reimburse me for what I spent last week it’ll be hard to continue.”

  “Hah! You sure sell out easily.”

  I looked at Alice, feeling like giving her a shake. Didn’t she understand, or was she trying to turn me into a hero?

  “I’m not selling out, honey. I’m trying to think about a real issue. If the newspaper doesn’t send money, that’ll be it—do you think it could be otherwise?”

  “I think it could.”

  “How, Alice?”

  “I’ve been looking for my father for five years. I wander everywhere. I spend money and wind up disappointed. Even so I’ve never quit. Or do you think I’m rich, with some big landowner relative?”

  “How do you manage?”

  “Everywhere I go I look for some kind of work, whatever I can get. Sometimes I help sew; I’ve been an adult teacher many times. As soon as I save a bit I head out again. That’s how it’s worked.”

  “You’re quite frugal.”

  “It’s just a matter of spending less and finding roots in the community. There’s a lot of work that can be done here.”

  “How do you know? You just got here.”

  “I have relatives in Sapé. I could be a teacher, help with union work, or edit the church newsletter for Father Juliano.”