“The Angel of the Trans-Amazonian”
ister Dorothy Mae Stang had worked for nearly 30 years to organize poor families near Anapu, and fought to protect the large areas of pristine jungle nearby.
On February 13, 2005, thousands of settlers in bare feet or on motorcycles crowded the TransAmazon highway to accompany the coffin of Dorothy Stang, a 74-years old Amaerican nun slain the day before in the environmental fragile region she defended for 30 years. Sr. Dorothy’s body was brought to the diocesan center of Altamira, where a first funeral took place and where people crying for justice followed Sr. Dorothy’s body through the streets. The following day, a funeral Mass was celebrated in Anapy, where Sr. Dorothy was buried on a church-owned land near the river, where she had created an environmental project for small farmers.
Sr. Dorothy was gunned down Saturday, February 12, at the Boa Esperança settlement, where she worked to organize some 600 poor families. She also fought to protect the large areas of pristine jungle nearby. Federal Human Rights Secretary Nilmario Miranda has said, “In this region, fighting for human rights is a high-risk occupation.” And Fr. Dario Maso, a Xaverian Missionary who came to know Sr. Dorothy while working in the Prelacy of Altamira in the 80’s, says that “she was a person of firm faith, a courageous and determined religious woman… She was and remains a real and inspirational example of dedication to the poor and to the Kingdom…”
Sr. Dorothy was a native of Dayton, Ohio, and belonged to the order of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She had lived and worked in the Amazon region since the early 1970’s, focusing on organizing and educating peasant groups about issues that included land tenure and the economic and environmental benefits of avoiding deforestation. She was a spokesperson for the Sustainable Development Movement with a capacity for leadership as big as that of Chico Mendes, the internationally known rubber-tapper leader whose death in 1988 sparked worldwide outrage.
Anapu, a hardscrabble town of 7,000, sits in the so-called “arc of destruction” – the logging frontier encroaching steadily on the rain forest’s southern edge. The region attracts settlers from Brazil’s poor, arid northeast. Many take jobs clearing brush and get caught in an endless cycle of debt. Others work as hired gunmen in a region where life is cheap.
The profits go mainly to loggers, illegal ranchers and land barons, who frequently flout laws requiring that most of the forest be left standing, and who forge land titles to expel poor settlers and gain access to the lucrative timber.
At the beginning of this year of 2005, responding to new government regulation of land use and ownership, loggers blocked highways and rivers, burned buses, threatened to pollute rivers with chemicals and warned that “blood will flow” if Mr. Da Silva’s government did not suspend decrees they found objectionable.
Sr. Dorothy worked for the Pastoral Land Commission, the Catholic Church’s arm that fights for the rights of rural workers, peasants and defends polemic land reforms in Brazil. “The hatred of ranchers and loggers respects nothing,” the Commission said in a statement. “The reprehensible murder of our sister brings back to us memories of a past we had thought was closed.” The commission reports that about 1,380 people have been killed in land conflicts in Brazil since the mid-1980’s.
The hatred of ranchers and loggers respects nothing... The reprehensible murder of our sister brings back to us memories of a past we had thought was closed.
First victims of this situation are the indigenous poor who are expelled from their lands, in the midst of violence and conflicts. “We’re all incensed, but at the same time we’re also very afraid,” said Ana Paula Santos Souza, a leader of the Movement, a peasant group with which Sr. Dorothy worked closely. “Sister Dorothy was an American citizen and a nun, and even with all that prominence, she was still killed publicly. What does that mean for the rest of us?”
Many are asking why the government didn’t do more to aver her death. “The death of Sister Dorothy was a crime foretold,” said Bishop Jayme Chemello, president of the Catholic Church’s Brazilian Episcopal Conference.
Witnesses said Sr. Dorothy read passages from the Bible to her killers before they shot her. One witness said she pulled the Bible from her cloth bag when she was confronted and held it up to her attackers and said, “This is my weapon,” and started reading from the Beatitudes. Her killers listened, took a few steps back and fired at point-blank range.
The witness of Sr. Dorothy has placed her among the martyrs of the faith and of charity. Her assassination will no smother the prophetic cry for justice and peace. Her life and death is seed and symbol. One of those peasants of Anapu said it best: “They have cut down Sr. Dorothy, but her seed did not die; it’s already coming to birth.”
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)