Beneath the family television stands a collection of trophies and a photo showing a smiling Haroldo Betcel sporting a football jersey. Smiling back at him is his widow, 41-year-old Cleia Betcel. The photo was taken a month before her husband’s murder.
Five years ago Betcel was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver in retaliation for defending water resources in Tiningu, a village on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of Pará.
Tiningu, whose pastel-coloured houses are home to 300 inhabitants, was originally a quilombo, a settlement founded by black fugitives from slavery. For two decades, this region’s fertile land has been settled by numerous farmers, known as fazendeiros, who grow cereal crops.
Cleia Betcel with a photo of her husband. One of the most outspoken villagers on the issue of water rights, he was murdered in September 2018
The five natural water sources – rivers, streams and creeks – that supply Tiningu increasingly attract farmers seeking larger parcels of land, leading to a fierce struggle over water. Betcel’s widow recalls when tensions began to appear in the village. “When a fazendeiro who settled in Tiningu decided that the water source we used belonged to him, my husband reacted – because water belongs to everyone,” she says.
The fazendeiro – a fish farmer named Silvio Tadeu – claimed ownership of a water-access point previously used by the community, including the health centre, that he said was on his six-hectare (15-acre) property. Villagers say that the farmer also banned children from swimming and bathing in the streams he now considered his own.
This posed a problem for the residents, who had long used water communally. Ademil Martínez Riveira, Haroldo Betcel’s uncle and president of the Tiningu Association between 2014 and 2018, says the community raised funds to build a 6-metre-deep microsystem to supply groundwater to the public water point.
However, the residents say Tadeu and other landowners ignored the community’s claims on the water. Things came to a head when Betcel’s wife, a nurse, told him that a worker on Tadeu’s ranch, Doriedson Rodrigues da Silva, cut off the water to the clinic “once or twice a week”. With the nearest hospital 28 miles away, it posed a serious threat to patients.
Betcel confronted Rodrigues da Silva, to no avail. The arguments became more frequent until September 2018, when, after a football tournament, Rodrigues da Silva attacked Betcel, stabbing him in the back. He died on the way to hospital.
Ademil Martínez Riveira, Haroldo Betcel’s uncle and former head of the Tiningu Association, warns that the struggle for water in a nearby village ‘mirrors the situation we could find ourselves in if we don’t keep fighting’
“I tried to tell him several times to stop getting into trouble,” says Cleia. “Here, disputes over natural resources are delicate, but he couldn’t help it.”
Her husband’s name appears on a list of 1,335 environmental defenders killed between 2012 and 2022 in Latin America, according to Global Witness. That means, on average, a defender is killed every two or three days. Latin America is the most world’s most dangerous region for those defending the environment.
Five hundred people attended Haroldo Betcel’s funeral, and he became a symbol of resistance. The police arrested Rodrigues da Silva in 2021 for another murder and he was tried for both crimes. In February last year he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The conviction did not end the conflict over water resources, however. After the community’s claim on the water-access point Betcel had fought for was rejected by a judge, the villagers had to use their ingenuity to create another system to get drinking water.
Tiningu residents cleaning a water barrel. Since their access to water has come under threat from landowners, the villagers have had to take even more care of the remaining sources
Alissa Mota, who was born in Tiningu, says Betcel’s violent death motivated her in turn to defend her village’s access to water. Now, every three months, the 21-year-old trains a group of about 10 volunteers to take care of the microsystem. Miles of pipes now connect a water source in the hills to the toilets, taps and health centre in Tiningu village; Mota checks the connections one by one to avoid leakages.
“Some in the community do not even remember [Haroldo Betcel] was killed for defending our water. I believe it is a legacy we must continue,” she says. “We cannot be cowards; we young people must protect our village. Without this collective work that we do, we would no longer have access to water.”
Daily life in Tiningu. Villagers have set up a pipeline to connect a water source in the hills to residents’ toilets, taps and the health centre
Although she left Tiningu to study in the nearest city, Santarém, about 50 miles away, Mota returns every weekend. She is part of a group of young people, including several of Betcel’s former football teammates, who have mobilised around the Tiningu Association to continue fighting for water.
But the fight is only getting harder. In the past four years, the once-dense forests surrounding the village have been cleared into a vast green prairie used to grow genetically modified soya beans, needing lots of water and pesticides. The communities are overrun by enormous farms, which are legally only allowed to cultivate 20% of their land – although this law is barely enforced.
Around one of the watersheds, one tree after another has died. “It’s all polluted around here because of the fazendeiros surrounding the village and the intensive cultivation of soya beans,” Mota says.
She is also concerned about the two streams in the village. They are stagnant and cloudy, where crystal-clear water once flowed.
The lands that surround Tiningu and the villages of the Indigenous Munduruku have suffered heavy deforestation in recent years as a growing number of soya farmers came from other Brazilian states
One of Tiningu’s neighbouring towns, Açaizal, is at the forefront of this conflict over water. The Indigenous Munduruku people who live there have borne the full brunt of an accelerating soya-bean rush. “It mirrors the situation we could find ourselves in if we don’t keep fighting,” warns Riveira, Betcel’s uncle and former Tiningu president.
Several hundred hectares of farms have been established around the small community. Açaizal’s inhabitants live with the stench of pesticides sprayed on land that used to be theirs.
Manoel da Rocha, an Indigenous leader representing five communities including Açaizal, is constantly on alert, receiving several public threats from the region’s biggest farmers. In June, his deputy entered a property to check on deforestation; two farm employees threatened to kill him.
“Our rivers pass through the community of Açaizal, and if no one stops the big landowners, we won’t have any more water, and we won’t be able to bathe,” Mota tells a meeting of Açaizal leaders.
One of Tiningu’s water sources. When the land was bought by Silvio Tadeu, one of his workers allegedly cut off the pipes carrying water to the village and health centre several times, fuelling conflict with the community
Since October 2018, and thanks to legal action taken by Betcel’s association, the Tiningu community’s land tenure has been officially recognised as descendants of people who had lived there after escaping slavery. As the federal constitution of Brazil guarantees the right of permanent and non-transferable possession over traditionally occupied lands, this is an important first step towards having the precise boundaries of their land demarcated and legally recognised.
This will allow the quilombola community to become owners of the territory and prevent the fazendeiros from settling or buying land in the Tiningu area without a collective agreement.
If their legal battle is successful, the people of Tiningu could expropriate Tadeu’s land, as well as that of other farmers in surrounding areas, in exchange for financial compensation provided by the state. They hope to recover 15 plots of land covering the most important water points.
The community organises weekly football tournaments to raise funds for legal fees, improving the water systems and helping villagers in need. Wenesow Mota, Betcel’s best friend, is determined to keep fighting. “They thought we would lower our heads, but a few of us will not,” he says. “Now we have done all the legal procedures to obtain the demarcation. We just need a state that dares to give it to us.”
On 20 November 2023, Black Consciousness Day, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announced a “racial equality” plan that involves completing the demarcation of quilombola lands, which he defined as “payment of a historical debt”.
Children playing in an igarapé. ‘I was born here,’ says Alissa Mota, ‘and I want my children to be able to live here like me one day’
The people of Tiningu hope that their struggle might finally be over. “Many of the inhabitants will be pushing for our lands to be protected by law finally,” Wenesow Mota adds.
But some villagers are resigned to the idea that nothing will change, and just want to sell their land. “Some think the battle is already lost, and they have already abandoned the village, but not me,” says Alissa Mota, who decided to study agronomy to contribute to the survival of her village. “I was born here, and I want my children to be able to live here like me one day.”
This report was supported by the Journalism Fund
