Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil

The recent screening of a Mongabay video before Chile’s Supreme Court has intensified international scrutiny of the killing of 26-year-old Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara in Brazil 2019 — a case for which no one has yet gone on trial in Brazil.
Alfredo Falcão, the Brazilian federal prosecutor leading the case, said he hopes the international exposure, part of a workshop for UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago, will put pressure on the Brazilian judiciary to schedule a long-awaited federal jury trial.
The trial of Paulo’s case is expected to set a legal landmark as the first killing of an Indigenous land defender to go before a federal jury; it was escalated to that level because it was considered an aggression against the entire Guajajara community and Indigenous culture.
Prosecutors plan to use excerpts from the Mongabay video and accompanying articles in the trial, whose schedule remains undetermined pending an anthropological report on the impacts to the Guajajara people as a result of Paulo’s killing.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Karla Mendes is a fellow.

SANTIAGO — The screening of a Mongabay video at Chile’s Supreme Court this month is expected to help prosecutors in a landmark case against impunity against the killings of Indigenous people in Brazil.

The video centers on the killing of 26-year-old Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara in an alleged ambush by illegal loggers in the Brazilian Amazon. Four and a half years since the incident, the case still hasn’t gone to trial in Brazil, even as clamors for justice continue to get louder. In Chile, the video was in the spotlight as a key case for the workshop “Environmental crisis: The role of the judicial system to ensure safety of the critical voice” at the Supreme Court on May 2 as part of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago.

Paulo was a member of the “Guardians of the Forest,” a group of Indigenous Guajajara in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory who risk their lives protecting their ancestral land against illegal logging, hunting and other environmental crimes amid the lack of government enforcement in the region.

In the past 20 years, 53 Guajajara individuals have been killed in Maranhão state, with none of the perpetrators ever being tried, according to the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), an advocacy group affiliated with the Catholic Church. Of this total, 24 were killed in the Arariboia territory, according to data from CIMI; six were guardians like Paulo, the Guajajara people say.

The trial of Paulo’s case is expected to set a legal landmark in Brazil as the first killing of an Indigenous land defender to go before a federal jury. It was escalated to that level because prosecutors made the case that his murder represented an aggression against the entire Guajajara community and Indigenous culture. In most cases, killings are considered crimes against individuals and are tried by a state jury.

As Mongabay reported in November 2023, the only pending issue to scheduling the trial was an anthropological report of the damages to the Guajajara people as a result of the killing. Alfredo Falcão, the federal prosecutor leading the case, said at the time that he expected the federal jury trial to begin in the first half of this year. But getting the anthropological report ready has taken longer than expected.

“The trial can’t go beyond this year!” Falcão told Mongabay in a phone interview. “I even think it’s past time.”

He welcomed the international exposure the case is garnering through the screening of Mongabay’s video in Chile, saying this is key to pressuring the judicial system in Brazil to speed up the start of the trial. “It’s striking [the video] being shown in Chile’s Supreme Court,” Falcão said, adding it would have “spectacular” repercussions. “National and international eyes are focused on this case and it is hoped that the trial will take place within a reasonable time frame, later this year.”

Otherwise, Falcão said, “I wouldn’t rule out taking the matter to international courts if there is an undue delay,” referring to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. “To take it to the Inter-American Court, we would have to show that the national justice system is having some obstacles to doing its job, and the delay in the trial can be one.”

A key voice in Mongabay’s video, forest guardian Laércio Guajajara, a witness to and survivor of the attack that killed Paulo, said publicizing the case beyond Brazil should help put pressure on the justice system to do its job and speed up the trial to punish the perpetrators. “I think the more it’s publicized, the more pressure justice will get from supporters around the world,” he told Mongabay in a voice message. “What I hope is that those responsible for Paulo’s murder pay for it. We don’t want to have conflicts with anyone, we don’t want to lose any more guardians.”

Screening of the video in the court. — The screening of a Mongabay video before Chile’s Supreme Court for the workshop “Environmental crisis: The role of the judicial system to ensure safety of the critical voice” as part of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Conference in Santiago. Panelists from left: Ricardo Perez Manrique, justice of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; Giovanni Salvi, former attorney general of the Supreme Court of Italy; Karen Kaiser, senior vice president and general counsel of the Associated Press (moderator); and Karla Mendes, Brazil-based investigative reporter for Mongabay. Image ©️ Poder Judicial de Chile.

Following delays to get a quote on how much it would cost to compile the anthropological report, the latest snag is now getting a judge to release money from a judicial fund to pay for it, Falcão said. In an emailed statement to Mongabay, Maranhão’s First Federal Court, where the case is pending, said it issued on May 28 an order requesting statements about the proposed expert fees from the Federal Public Ministry, Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency Funai, and the defendants’ lawyers. “In order to carry out the expert opinion,” the court said, “66 days will be needed, according to the expert’s proposal,” adding that “as such, there is currently no way of predicting the date on which the jury will be held.”

Falcão called for the anthropological report to be wrapped up soon, given the “good news” that there’s already a list of federal jurors approved for the trial, which is considered “the hardest thing” for this type of case.

Falcão said he’ll use excerpts from the Mongabay video in the trial, including the testimony of Paulo’s father narrating the impacts of the killing on his family. Also expected to be presented at trial are clips of Paulo’s interview of his “death foretold,” nine months before his murder, to this reporter and to documentary filmmaker Max Baring for a 2019 documentary film we shot for the Thomson Reuters Foundation (whose news platform was renamed Context in September 2022).

“It’s important to show both,” Falcão said, “this idea of distance, which I want the jurors to understand in terms of saying that all these articles are done in the most impartial way possible and in relation to the conflict and the suffering of the Indigenous peoples.” Regarding the 2019 documentary film, which won four international awards, Falcão said “it’s not just time distancing, but something you did before you had more contact with the case.”

Falcão said the written articles will also be key to the case. “Beautiful article. Very well written: with historical data of the community, with technical things, but, at the same time, without losing the emotion. That’s called talent!,” he wrote to this reporter in a phone message right after the publication of the article about the trial in November 2023.

He said he’s also considering showing some excerpts of the screening at Chile’s Supreme Court to showcase the international outreach of the case, which was streamed nationwide by Chilean TV channel Poder Judicial Chile.

During the panel, this reporter announced that she’d use the majority of her speaking time to screen the 10-minute video, “to give voice to those who usually are not heard.” After the presentation, many compliments were received, including from co-panelists Ricardo Perez Manrique, justice of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and Giovanni Salvi, former attorney general of the Supreme Court of Italy.

At the UNESCO conference, Paulo’s case was also featured in a data-driven workshop led by the Pulitzer Center, where we exposed the November 2023 story and an upcoming data-driven investigation linking violence and environmental crimes in Arariboia.

Banner image: Forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in an alleged ambush by loggers in the Brazilian Amazon. He posed for this photo showing a bullet found in an illegal logging camp in the Arariboia Indigenous Territory on Feb. 1, 2019, nine months before his death. Image by Karla Mendes/Mongabay.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, where Karla Mendes is a fellow.

Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and a fellow of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network. She is the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here.