The Name of Death

BACK IN XAMBIOÁ in 1972, Júlio could not get to sleep. The boardinghouse bed, into which his five-foot-nine-tall body only just fitted, seemed to him even narrower and more uncomfortable. He could not get the scene he had witnessed that afternoon out of his mind. Shortly after lunch, soldiers and paratroopers from the Brazilian air force had hung the body of a skinny young man with dark hair and torn clothes head down from the branch of a tree close to the military camp set up on the Xambioá soccer field. The head was hanging only a couple of feet from the ground. A group of ten or twelve military personnel were mocking and insulting the dead man, kicking his face and neck. The body was swaying like a sack. Their kicks had already opened wounds on the man’s face. His left eye was so swollen it looked like a red ball. Passersby in the street looked on fearfully. Neither Júlio nor any of the locals knew who this poor victim was, but thought he must be a guerrillero. And they were right. As Júlio later learned thanks to Carlos Marra, the body was that of Bergson Farias, a twenty-four-year-old from the state of Ceará. A Brazilian Communist Party militant, Bergson had been captured and killed that same morning (Monday, May 8, 1972) by members of the Brazilian air force in the Araguaia rainforest.

IT WAS THE disfigured body of this young communist that Júlio was struggling to forget so that he could get an undisturbed night’s sleep. In vain. In the early hours he woke up several times breathing heavily and his body covered in sweat, less because of the fierce heat in Xambioá than due to the nightmares he had about Bergson’s body swinging from the tree. All this violence was too much for him. He could not bear to see any more scenes like the torture of José Genoino or the body of Bergson Farias being kicked in full view of anyone passing by in the street. He wanted to go home. He wanted to return to the quiet life of the village where he lived on the banks of the river Tocantins in Porto Franco. Above all, he wanted to return to Ritinha’s arms. The memory of her broad smile and always radiant look helped get him back to sleep.

It was already a little over a fortnight since Júlio had returned from the last operation in the rainforest when they had captured José Genoino. He was still sleeping in the boardinghouse. The good work he had done in the forest led police chief Marra to continue to pay for his lodgings. The town of Xambioá was in turmoil. Due to the military personnel who kept on arriving (it is estimated that during the Araguaia Guerrilla, almost four thousand troops were brought into the region), there was a shortage of everything. Food, drink, cigarettes, toiletries. All the best items in the town’s small markets were snapped up by members of the army, navy and air force. The three thousand or more local inhabitants had to make do with what was left.

In Xambioá, Júlio was constantly called on to work for the army. Among the tasks he was given, he least liked having to chop down trees to enlarge the area of the military camp and to create a landing strip for the Air force planes. His hands were already callused from spending hours wielding the ax. He also occasionally helped build the wooden huts that were to serve as clinics, lodging and sleeping quarters for the soldiers. However much he disliked this kind of job, he preferred to be there, in the town, than in the forest tracking down communists. The last thing he wanted in life was to shoot another man. In those days this was all that was talked about in Xambioá, apart from the episode of the guerrillero hanging from the tree—his body was only removed in the early hours of the following day when vultures were already starting to feed on the corpse.

This event had created a climate of fear in the population. Everyone was terrified at the cruelty shown by the military, which was precisely what the commanders of the operation intended, as Carlos Marra explained to Júlio at the police station.

“They need to understand that this can happen to anyone who aids the communists,” the chief told his men.

“What do you mean, chief? Does that mean they can kill people from the town simply because someone helps the communists?” asked Forel, whose family lived in Xambioá.

“Of course, my lad. Whoever helps the communists is acting against the people. And whoever is against the people will be treated as though they were a communist as well. That’s the only way we’re going to finish with this scum.”

Júlio listened in silence, fearful of Carlos Marra’s harsh words. He could tell that lots more terrible things were still going to happen in the region. That night, the police chief said he would pay for his men to “have some fun.” That was the expression Marra used to refer to the street known as “Vietnam,” Xambioá’s red-light district. It was a street of beaten earth with about ten wooden shacks lit by red lamps, where the attraction was women in scanty clothing and heavy makeup. Júlio was the only one in the group who had not yet taken advantage of the services offered by “the Vietnam girls,” as the prostitutes were called by their clients.

“There are all sorts of women there, Julão,” said the police chief, trying to tempt the boy to visit the street.

“I really don’t want to go, sir. Let me stay here, looking after the station,” said Júlio, who was not yet eighteen.

“You say the same every time. Today that won’t do. You’ll have to go with us,” Carlos Marra decreed.

This was the third or fourth time Marra had invited Júlio to visit “Vietnam.” Until now, he had always refused and stayed in the police station. On this occasion, however, he took advantage of the chief ’s insistence to go and satisfy his curiosity about what went on in those houses whose doors were always open, but which were covered with brightly colored curtains. In the end he, Marra, Forel, and Emanuel went. The street was packed with men. The military personnel strutted along in their uniforms, which seemed to attract the attention of the “girls” who smiled and waved to them. In one of the doors, Júlio saw a girl with light skin and blond hair smiling at him. She was wearing a tight, very short skirt that showed her sturdy thighs, and a red bra. Carlos Marra noticed them exchange glances and asked whether the boy wanted to meet the girl. “No, chief. I only came here to see what it’s like,” Júlio replied, just as he saw Emanuel and Forel being dragged into another of the houses by two women he thought looked ugly and old. Looking back, he saw the girl with plump legs was still watching him with a smile on her face.

“You want that girl, don’t you? Let’s go there. You can have her,” said Marra.

“No way. Let’s go there right now,” said the police chief, tugging at the boy’s arm.

Without another word, Marra went into the shack where the girl was. Taking her by the hand, he ordered:

“Stay with my friend. Look after him right away, and I’ll settle everything with you later.”

Seeing Carlos Marra come in, a tall, rather stocky woman about five feet seven with blond hair under a headscarf came out from behind a counter covered in blue tiles. Júlio saw the chief greet her politely, bowing slightly to kiss her right hand. Another two women were chatting on a dark-colored sofa with the stuffing coming out.

The girl told to look after Júlio sat him down in an armchair and sat sideways on his lap. He did not know what to do, or where to put his hands.

“Did you know you’re very good-looking?” she went on, stroking his face and arms. He looked down and smiled, embarrassed.

The girl leaned forward until her face was touching his, and began caressing his chest. He felt he was doing something wrong, but was enjoying the way she was stroking him. He became aroused. Still sitting on his lap, she began to move her hips, and the smile did not leave her face. With one of her hands, the “girl” caressed his face, neck, and ears. With the other, she began to stroke him intimately. Júlio recalled when Ritinha had touched him in the same way. But with her it was different. Ritinha did not have a sly face like this one, nor red lipstick or those provocative clothes that seemed to be dancing in his lap. He could not understand why, but the impression he was doing something forbidden made him even more excited. The girl was rubbing herself so much against him that Júlio could see her panties. They were black, the same color as her skirt. He could not control himself any longer, and roughly pushed open her thighs.

“Let’s go to the room,” she said, taking him by the right hand. The boy glanced over at the police chief, who was still deep in conversation with the woman who appeared to own the place. Marra smiled at Júlio and gave a slight nod of the head, as if approving the girl’s decision. The two of them walked toward the back of the house along a corridor no more than five feet wide, lined with doors made of planks. They went into the last one on the left. Everything was very dark, with only a yellow lamp lighting the room. The girl made him lie down on the bed, the only piece of furniture to be seen. Júlio smelled a dreadful stench. It was so awful he opened his eyes and raised his hand to his nose in disgust. Through the cracks in the planks he could hear noises and groans coming from the adjoining room. Stretching out on top of him, Cibele—as she said she was called—undid her bra. Without stirring, he watched as she removed his trousers and underpants in a single movement. He was nervous, unable to move, but still very excited.

The girl’s body seemed to slide over his. She began to kiss his neck, then moved down to his chest, stomach, and finally down there. His uncle Cícero had told him to ask Ritinha to do this, but he had never had the courage. He never thought he could feel such pleasure. His whole body was shaking. Cibele sucked him hungrily. Thirstily. He still had his eyes closed. By now Júlio was panting. A shiver ran down his spine and he gave a deep moan. Cibele withdrew her mouth and pressed down on him with rapid up-and-down movements, until the boy almost fainted.

“You bet!” he replied, still panting and feeling weak. As he regained his strength, he saw Cibele pick her bra up from a corner of the room, straighten her hair, put on her sandals, and adjust her miniskirt. She handed him his trousers and underpants. He dressed quickly, and they both went back to the main room.

“But you were in there for less than ten minutes. Was it good, Julão?” Marra continued.

The reply came with a vigorous nod of the head. Carlos Marra took a swig from his glass of beer and asked the owner how much it would be.

“That’s too much. I’ll pay five,” said the police chief, taking a five-cruzeiro note from his pocket and laying it on the counter. The woman took the money without a word. Júlio was puzzled that Marra paid the same as it cost him to have lunch in Xambioá for those few minutes with Cibele. He had loved what the girl had done to him in that stinking room, but still thought the lunch was worth more. Marra wanted to take him to get to know other houses in the street, but he preferred to go back to the boardinghouse to sleep. Not without first asking God for forgiveness for lying with that kind of woman. He felt dirty. While Ritinha was probably at home awaiting his return, he had just had sex with a girl who charged for it. He could not deny that he had enjoyed, really enjoyed, what he experienced in the bed with Cibele. But he was determined he would not do anything like that again. And yet that night he fell asleep thinking he would like to have Cibele there in the bed beside him so that she could do all that over again.

In the days that followed, Júlio’s routine never varied. He woke up early—always before seven o’clock, ate two buns with cheese and a Coca-Cola in the corner bakery, then went on to the police station where Carlos Marra would tell him what he had to do that day. Over the past three weeks, this had meant presenting himself at the military camp to help in whatever way they asked. On this particular morning, Carlos Marra told him that, in two or three days’ time, they would be going out again on another operation tracking down guerrilleros in the jungles of Araguaia. He also said he had received a message from Júlio’s uncle, Cícero Santana.

“About time too. It’s been a month more or less since I last saw my uncle,” the boy replied.

On May 10, 1972, Júlio, Carlos Marra, Emanuel, and Forel left Xambioá for another foray into the rainforest. They spent six days combing the region in search of communists and warning the local population to collaborate with the army’s work. They did not capture any members of the revolutionary movement, but the police chief declared himself content with the contacts they made with the locals. Marra stopped to talk with them at each house they came across on the way. He distributed clothing, tools, medicines, and at the same time threatened them that if they did not help the armed forces catch the guerrilleros they themselves would be arrested and tortured.

“I’m sure that if these people got to hear of any movements by the communists in this region, we would soon know about it,” he said, when the group was heading back to Xambioá.

TWO DAYS AFTER their return to the town, Júlio was at the police station waiting for orders from Carlos Marra, when four soldiers came in with a prisoner, hands tied behind his back. It was the afternoon of Thursday, May 18, and the prisoner was the boatman Lourival Moura, a dark-complexioned man with black, curly hair aged around forty and five foot nine. One of the soldiers explained that he had been collaborating with the guerrilleros. The boatman said that was not true, that he had never helped any communist. He was silenced by a punch to the stomach.

“Throw this bastard into the cell, chief. We’ll be back later to get him to talk,” said the man who was apparently in command of the others.

“Of course, lieutenant. These people are all the same. They start by saying they’ve done nothing, but they soon spill the beans,” replied Carlos Marra.

He told Júlio that from then on it was his responsibility to keep an eye on the prisoner. This meant he was to stay in the station when Marra and his men were not there—mainly at night. The lad would therefore have to sleep at the station. From Marra’s conversation with the lieutenant, Júlio learned that Lourival had been arrested because he was accused of helping the guerrilleros, buying them supplies and ammunition, and even lending his boat for the transport of rebels. The boatman was thrown into an empty cell measuring thirteen by thirteen feet.

That same night, Júlio was on his own at the station when two men in army uniforms came to interrogate the prisoner. Marra had told him he was going to pay a visit to “Vietnam” and that he would be back later to see how things were going. Júlio handed the key to the cell to one of the soldiers and stood at the front door to the station. Within a few minutes he began to hear shouts that soon became increasingly terrifying. He thought perhaps he should go back in to see what was going on, but decided it would be best to stay where he was. It had nothing to do with him: his job was simply to remain in the building whenever Carlos Marra was not there.

“Tell the chief that tomorrow night we’ll be back to carry on the interrogation,” said one of them.

Júlio waited until the soldiers were out sight and went in to see how the prisoner was. He found Lourival on the floor of the cell, in his underpants, with cuts on his legs and bruises on his face. Hearing someone open the door, the boatman muttered:

“They said they would cut my whole body if I don’t tell them where the people from São Paulo are hiding. But I don’t know that, lad. I don’t know.”

News that the boatman was in jail quickly spread through Xambioá. Lourival Moura lived and worked in the region, and was known as a quiet man. The day after his arrest, four youngsters who worked with him went to the police station. They wanted to see how Moura was, but Marra refused to permit it. He said that only family members could see the prisoner. Less than an hour later, Lourival’s son, a lanky fourteen-year-old, appeared in the doorway of the station. He had brought a hammock and a pot filled with rice, manioc flour, beans, and roast meat.

“My mom got me to bring it for my dad,” said the youth, eyes fixed on the ground.

“Leave it there, I’ll make sure he gets it,” said Marra, pointing to the desk.

“Kid, your father is the worse for wear. It’s nothing serious, but I can’t let a boy like you go into his cell. Leave the things there on the desk and I’ll have them sent in to your father right away,” said the chief, motioning to Júlio to go and take the hammock and pan from the boy.

“That’s not possible today. Tell your mother you’ll be able to talk to your father. If she wants to come with you, I’ll let both of you talk to him.”

As the prisoner was in the station, Carlos Marra allowed Júlio to go back to sleep in the boardinghouse and sent for two soldiers to spend the night guarding Lourival.

On Saturday, May 20, Júlio woke up anxious to see how the prisoner was. He didn’t know why, but he believed Lourival was telling the truth when he swore he had nothing to do with the guerrilla. In fact, he was wrong about this. As he was to learn later, the boatman did collaborate with the communists.

Júlio reached the station around seven thirty in the morning. Two soldiers were chatting while they waited for the arrival of Carlos Marra, who had promised he would be there by eight. They told Júlio the prisoner had spent a good night. He went to the cell, and saw Lourival curled up in a corner, covered by the hammock his son had left. He had apparently not been tortured again.

Shortly before lunchtime, the boatman’s son and wife reached the station. The chief himself met them.

“That’s true, but I forgot today is Saturday. You’ll have to forgive me, but visits to the station are only permitted from Monday to Friday.”

“Sir, you yourself told my son we could come to talk to my husband today—”

“I know, and I’m very sorry. But you have to understand…it’s the regulations. I can’t let any visitor talk to prisoners at the weekend. Come back on Monday, and I promise that you and your son will be able to talk to Lourival.”

“We’ll be back on Monday morning, okay?” said the boatman’s wife as she left.

She never saw her husband alive again. That night, Carlos Marra and his men went to have fun with the women in “Vietnam.” Júlio was relieved to have been chosen to stay in the station, guarding the prisoner: he still could not forgive himself for having betrayed Ritinha. He did not want to go with that kind of woman again, however pleasurable Cibele’s caresses had been. On his own in the police station, he felt important. Seated in Marra’s chair, he could hear Lourival groaning. He considered going to see how the prisoner was, but thought it wiser to obey Carlos Marra’s orders: he had told him not to go to the cell “for any reason.”

Around midnight, the police chief, Forel, and two soldiers arrived. They were all drunk. They were talking in loud voices, smiling exaggeratedly and reeking of rum.

“Poor thing. He must be suffering a lot. We’ll put an end to that as quickly as we can,” said Marra, going toward the cell at the back of the building.

Forel and the two soldiers went with him. Júlio preferred to stay in the doorway to the station, praying nothing bad would happen. The street was deserted. No one apart from the occasional drunk coming back from “Vietnam.” He heard Lourival cry out desperately. His cries were so loud that one of the passersby looked toward the station with a horrified expression on his face. Júlio did not know what to do. He was curious to see what was going on in the cell, but at the same time was sure he would not like what he saw one little bit. He did not want to witness any more torture. If he could not help the poor prisoner, better to leave at once.

“Chief, can I go and sleep at the boardinghouse?” he shouted, leaning on the doorframe.

Júlio walked to the partition separating the main room from the cell and repeated what he had said. Lourival’s cries sounded even more disturbing.

“I’m very tired and dying of sleep. You know I always wake up early. Can I go back to the boardinghouse to sleep?” he said.

That night, Júlio was so worried he could not close his eyes. He tossed and turned in the bed, sat up, got up. He was so upset that he left his room before daybreak and went to the back of the boardinghouse. He sat on a wooden crate lying in the midst of the pigs and chickens that the landlady kept. He could not get Lourival’s cries of pain out of his head. He was ashamed of not having tried to intervene to help the boatman. He knew his opinion wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the chief, but at least he would not have been such a coward. His throat was dry, and so on his way to his room he turned on the faucet about two feet off the ground on the muddy wall. He knelt and drank water until he was no longer thirsty. He went back to bed, and was lying there when he saw the first light of day filtering in through the cracks in the wooden door. It must have been around six on Sunday, May 21.

Carlos Marra had said he should only appear at the station at eight o’clock, but Júlio did not want to wait that long. He remained stretched out on his bed for what he thought were another thirty or forty minutes, then got up. He put on his trousers and shirt, and washed his face at the same faucet. He did not even stop at the bakery where he usually had his breakfast, simply asking the man who served him what time it was. Ten past seven. When he got to the police station, he found the door locked. Going around the back, he tried the rear door. It was also shut. He returned to the front and hammered on the wood.

Forel opened the door just enough to spot the youngster and give him a five-cruzeiro bill.

“Go to the bakery and spend this on bread, cheese, and butter. And bring a pot of coffee. Tell them it’s for the chief,” said Forel.

He was back again in less than ten minutes. He put the bag with what he’d bought on the chief ’s desk and went quickly and nervously down to the cell. Lourival’s body was hanging two feet from the ground, tied upside down by the chest to a wooden beam, wearing only his underpants. His bulging eyes looked as if they had been painted red. There was a purple swelling the size of an orange on the left side of the boatman’s face. There were long red stripes on his stomach, which Júlio guessed had been made by him being beaten with the end of the broom he could see thrown into a corner of the cell. Frowning, Júlio’s mouth dropped open in horror when he saw several cuts on Lourival’s legs. Some of them were still bleeding. The dead man’s hands were tied behind his back. Júlio considered taking the body down from this improvised gibbet, but thought it best to do nothing. He went back to the main room. Forel was eating French bread with cheese and butter. He had a glass of coffee in his left hand.

“The prisoner is dead back there in the cell. Were you the ones who did that to him? Was it the chief who had the poor guy killed?”

“I don’t know anything, Julão,” Forel said, taking another bite of bread.

Júlio made himself a sandwich, with plenty of butter and a generous slice of cheese. He opened the bottle of Coca-Cola by putting the top on the edge of the desk and hitting it as hard as he could. He had learned to open bottles like that with his uncle Cícero. Forel was eating his second bread stick when Carlos Marra and Emanuel arrived. Seeing the chief come in, Forel and Júlio stood up, both of them holding their sandwiches.

“It’s great you’ve already bought food,” Marra said. “Emanuel and I are dying of hunger. We’ve been with the military until now.”

Carlos Marra sat down in his chair, took a swig of coffee, and began to eat the bread and cheese. Júlio really wanted to ask who had done that to Lourival, but was afraid he would be reprimanded. He was standing silently in a corner of the room drinking his Coca-Cola when Marra seemed to guess what he was feeling and thinking.

“You’re very quiet. You haven’t said a word since I arrived. What’s the matter?”

“Chief, when I left here last night, the prisoner was alive. When I arrived this morning, I found he was dead,” said the boy.

“He killed himself, Julão. He was so afraid of going to jail for having helped the communists that he decided to kill himself.”

Júlio knew Carlos Marra was lying, but he did not want to annoy the chief any further with his questions, so he pretended to believe the version that the boatman had committed suicide. Shortly after Marra arrived, Lourival’s wife and son entered the police station. The boy was carrying a pot wrapped in a stained cloth. The wife was a sturdy woman just over five feet tall, with a round face, thin lips, and small eyes. She was wearing a headscarf. When he saw her and the boy come in, Júlio quickly left the station, eyes on the ground. From outside, he heard Lourival’s wife saying she wanted to see her husband and would not wait a day longer. Marra said a tragedy had occurred: Lourival had committed suicide. Júlio heard his widow shout desperately: “You killed my husband! Murderers! Murderers!”

Without raising his voice, Carlos Marra took her to task, saying she could be arrested for contempt of authority but that he would not do so simply because of the pain she must be suffering. Júlio was glad he was outside the station: he could not bear to be called an assassin by the boatman’s wife. She was insisting that she wanted to see her husband’s body. Marra said that was impossible.“Only after we have carried out the autopsy,” he explained. Sitting on the ground in the street, Júlio could hear everything. He knew why Marra did not want to allow the dead man’s family to visit the cell. Anyone who saw that smashed body, hanging head down and with his hands tied behind his back, would realize he had been murdered. After arguing with Marra for ten minutes, Lourival’s wife and son left the station. The widow was sobbing and howling as she clutched her son, who was about six inches taller than her.

News of Lourival’s death spread through Xambioá. Everyone said that the boatman had been killed by Carlos Marra and his men, but the police chief didn’t seem to care what was being rumored. On the contrary. That night he sent Forel to “Vietnam” to tell people that, yes, Lourival had been killed by the army with great cruelty. To demonstrate how ruthless he and his friends could be, Forel described Lourival’s death in great detail. He told them for example that before the boatman was finished off they had used a pair of pliers to tear out all his fingernails—something that Júlio had not seen. Forel said that the same treatment and the same death awaited all those who collaborated with the guerrilleros or simply withheld information that could help the military capture them. The official version about Lourival’s death that Marra announced publicly was different. According to him, he had committed suicide. The motive: fear of being sent to jail for having helped the communists. “Lourival kept on saying that he preferred to die rather than be sent to prison,” Marra said.

Júlio spent the whole night thinking about the boatman’s death. How could the police chief, Forel, and Emanuel be so cruel and violent? The men with whom he had become accustomed to spend day after day tracking through the jungle, talking, eating, and sleeping together, were not only capable of killing someone but, even worse, did not show the slightest remorse. He had already felt the weight of taking a person’s life, and although that had been nine months earlier, he was sure his sense of guilt for that crime would never stop troubling his soul. That night, before he fell asleep, he asked God to deliver him from this hell. He was exhausted from seeing so much horror and violence. He wanted to go back to the peace and quiet of his village in Porto Franco on the banks of the river Tocantins. When he prayed like this, he could never have imagined he was only three weeks away from committing his second killing.

MARIA LÚCIA PETIT DA SILVA was a twenty-two-year-old woman, five foot four and weighing around 100 pounds. She had shoulder-length auburn hair, an aquiline nose, and dark eyes with a slight squint. Trained as a teacher, she worked in a primary school, the Escola Aviador Frederico Gustavo dos Santos, in São Paulo. Toward the end of 1969 she joined the Communist Party of Brazil. Her family and friends said her greatest dream was to help educate the children of Brazil’s poor interior. At first working as a volunteer, she was soon chosen to go to Goiás state. She was happy: this was exactly what she wanted. In January 1970, she went to the south of Pará state, and then moved to help with the guerrilla’s social work in the Araguaia region. She spent most of her time teaching children to read and write, and explaining to young people and adults what the guerrilla was fighting for. She always claimed that the struggle was for social equality in Brazil. She often said it was unacceptable to live in a country where a few had so much and so many had so little. Her lessons and speeches were full of affection; she was always good-humored and very close to the children of the region. In this way she won the friendship and respect of all the towns in Araguaia where she worked. She was frequently asked to be the godmother of newly born babies.

A few days before she died, she had received one such invitation. A farmer known as João Cocoió had asked her to attend the baptism of his two-month-old son. She accepted, not suspecting that this same man would betray her to the army.

This was in early June 1972. The military was putting the inhabitants of the Araguaia region under all kinds of pressure to help them capture communists. Violence was one of the means most frequently used by the army to force the local inhabitants to denounce the presence of guerrilleros. The soldiers killed their animals—horses, oxen, and chickens—beat up whoever they felt like, and even burned the farmers’ crops and houses.

João Cocoió, a man of around forty, married and the father of three children—including the newborn baby María Lúcia was to be godmother to—had already received this kind of warning from the army when his manioc plantation was set on fire by half a dozen soldiers. He was afraid of placing his family in danger, and so that the army would leave them in peace, he decided to betray the presence of the group of which Maria Lúcia was a part in the region known as Pau Preto, in the south of Pará.

As they could not appear in the towns for fear of being identified and arrested, the guerrilleros usually asked local inhabitants to buy supplies, tobacco, and ammunition for the rebel movement. João Cocoió had been given the task of going to Xambioá to bring cigarettes, beans, rice, coffee, and ammunition for the communists. When he reached town, before he even bought these supplies, he went straight to the police station and told Carlos Marra everything. Standing in a corner of the station, Júlio overheard the conversation between Cocoió and Marra. The peasant farmer spoke for no more than ten minutes. He did not have the information the chief considered most important: the exact location of the revolutionary camp. But Carlos Marra shifted in his wooden chair and bent forward, elbows on the desk, when he heard Cocoió say he knew where three of the guerrilleros would be on the morning of June 16.

“I came to town to buy some things they wanted. We agreed they would pick them up at my house early on Friday,” said Cocoió, who was sitting opposite the police chief, shuffling his feet nervously.

Cazuza was the alias of Miguel Pereira, from Pernambuco. Aged twenty-nine, he died in Araguaia in September 1972. Mundico was Rosalindo Souza from Bahia, aged thirty-three. He was killed a year later, still fighting with the guerrilla. Maria Lúcia, Cazuza, and Mundico belonged to the detachment of guerrilleros whose base was in the region of Pau Preto, about two miles from João Cocoió’s house.

“Good,” said Carlos Marra. “Go and do what they asked of you here. Act as if I knew nothing about it. Don’t change anything you agreed with the communists.”

“If we succeed in capturing those three, I promise you will be well rewarded.”

When the farmer left the station, Marra signaled with his right hand for Júlio to come over to the desk.

“Julão, be careful. I need to know everything that man does here. Everything. If he stops to spit, I want you to tell me. Understood?”

“Understood, chief. Don’t worry. But let me leave now, before he disappears,” said Júlio, rushing out of the station just in time to see Cocoió turn the corner. The task proved much easier than Júlio had expected. First the farmer went into a grocery store. Júlio watched from a distance through the piles of goods on wooden shelves. He saw the man leave carrying a sack containing beans, rice, coffee, and five or six packs of cigarettes. From there, Cocoió headed for one of the two stores that sold guns in Xambioá. It was in a small kiosk that measured at most eighty-six square feet. There were no corridors or shelves that could help hide Júlio from the man he was following. It was little more than a counter, behind which a white-haired old man—who Júlio calculated must be as old as his father’s father—served the customers. The weapons and ammunition of all kinds were kept in cabinets behind the counter. No one could get to that side. Júlio sat on the bare earth that was scorching from the heat of the sun, taking cover behind an army jeep parked some five yards from the gun store.

He followed Cocoió until he left town and disappeared into the forest on a brown horse. Less than ten minutes later, Júlio was back at the gun store. From a quick conversation with the white-haired old man, he learned that the farmer had bought two boxes of bullets for a .12 rifle and three boxes for a .38 revolver. He went back to the police station feeling proud of himself. He was sure he’d done a good job. He even knew that Cocoió had stopped at Alberto’s bar and ordered a beer, but had not drunk the whole bottle, only two glassfuls, and then left. He was sure Carlos Marra would congratulate him on a job well done. And so he did.

“Very good, Julão. You’re getting better and better at this,” the chief said after the youngster had given him a detailed report.

THREE DAYS LATER, after almost four hours’ march through the forest, Júlio, Carlos Marra, and three soldiers arrived at João Cocoió’s house. Forel had also been chosen by the police chief to join the operation led by the army, but he had contracted leishmaniasis and was in bed with leg ulcers and a high fever.

Cocoió’s house was made of wood with a palm roof. There was no furniture apart from five benches the farmer himself had made, five hammocks, and a fire. His wife and children weren’t there: aware there was a strong possibility there would be a clash and a shoot-out between the soldiers and the communists, Cocoió had sent his family to his mother-in-law’s in Pau Preto. That night, while they were all eating rice with roast chicken, Cocoió asked if they would allow him to leave: he did not want to see them capture the guerrilleros. The man apparently in command of the soldiers saw no problem with that, but Carlos Marra insisted he stay.

“Be a man, Cocoió,” he told him, sitting on one of the benches with his plate on his knees and his belly hanging out.

“I am a man, chief. It’s just that I don’t want to be here when all hell breaks loose,” Cocoió replied.

“Well then, you’ve left it too late. Hell began here a long time ago,” said Marra, his mouth full of rice. He went on:

“And don’t even think of disappearing in the early hours, do you hear me? We might need you here tomorrow morning.”

On the morning of Friday, June 16, 1972, Júlio was awakened by Carlos Marra pushing the hammock he was sleeping in. When he opened his eyes he saw it was still dark. The chief wanted them all up and on their feet as early as possible. By the time the first rays of the sun began to light up the forest, Júlio, Marra, the three soldiers, and Cocoió were sitting on a log outside the house. Apart from the farmer, they were all armed. The soldiers had 7.62mm assault rifles that were used exclusively by the army and which Júlio had never seen before. But he was happy with his own weapon. Carlos Marra had his .38 revolver tucked into his waistband. He always kept it with him, even when he went to have fun in “Vietnam.”

The plan was to capture the three communists alive when they came to Cocoió’s house to pick up the goods he’d bought for them in Xambioá. Júlio was pleased he would not have to kill anyone, yet at the same time was worried he would have to witness more torture as he had when José Genoino had been caught two months earlier.

The group lay in wait for the guerrilleros in the midst of dense jungle. In their dark green uniforms, the soldiers seemed to merge with the undergrowth. Júlio was still hoping he could get clothes like that. Especially the boots. He was admiring the thick, long-sleeved shirt of the soldier beside him when he saw three people walking toward them about forty yards away. He threw a stick at Carlos Marra, who was five yards to his right, and pointed in the direction of the communists. The police chief had made it very clear: if there was an exchange of gunfire, the first shots had to come from the soldiers. Only after that could Júlio fire. As a precaution, the lad trained his rifle on one of the guerrilleros. He was starting to enjoy this kind of job. It gave him a strange feeling of power to know that someone’s life was in his hands. All he had to do was pull the trigger, and the poor guy would be dead. But he would not do that: he had promised God he would never kill anyone again.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a series of explosions that terrified him. Shots from 7.62 rifles tore through the undergrowth, the sound echoing all over the forest. Júlio saw the three guerrilleros start to run back into the trees, away from Cocoió’s house. He noticed that the smallest of the three communists had been wounded and was escaping with difficulty, trailing one leg. The other two, who were slightly ahead, came back to help their injured comrade. The soldiers carried on shooting. The trees, some of them almost ten feet in diameter, helped protect the rebels from the bullets. The two unharmed guerrilleros started firing at the soldiers. One of them put his arm around the injured rebel to help, in a desperate attempt to escape. The other rebel went on firing his revolver.

Júlio was in a panic. He had never felt his heart beat so wildly. He felt certain that at any moment one of the bullets could hit him. This was the first time he had been in a shoot-out of this kind. Marra looked across at him and shouted something he couldn’t hear properly above the gunfire. The chief repeated, louder still: “Bring one of them down. At least one of them.”

Without knowing why, Júlio thought it would be better to shoot the communist who had already been wounded. Kneeling down on the leaf-strewn earth, he took up the position he always adopted when he had to shoot. He put his left knee on the ground and rested his right elbow on the other leg. Closing his left eye, he took aim at the right shoulder of the wounded guerrillero. He remembered the day he had shot José Genoino. The scene was identical: the undergrowth blocking a good view, the rebel trying to escape, his own heart racing, his breath coming in short gasps. The pressure of making sure he did not miss. He enjoyed that. He waited for the precise moment and pulled the trigger. Even before the bullet hit the target, he saw there would be a disaster. Because of the leg wound, the injured communist leaned slightly to the right and bent his knees. These movements meant that the shot aimed at the shoulder in fact hit the left side of the rebel’s head. The body fell to the ground and lay without moving. Júlio realized what had happened, but hoped against hope he had not just killed another person. All the pain and confusion he’d felt on the day he murdered Amarelo came back to torment his soul. He soon realized, though, that there was no need to go any closer: he knew he had killed the guerrillero. He was sure of it. And so right there, in the midst of the rainforest, he began to pray the ten Hail Marys and twenty Our Fathers that he believed would bring him a divine pardon. He saw the other two rebels running away desperately. Marra and the three soldiers went up to the body sprawled in the undergrowth. Júlio stayed where he was, kneeling down, throwing away the rifle with a strength he didn’t know he possessed, and praying with an equally unsuspected fervor.

He was still praying when he heard Marra calling him. Against his will, he went over to where the body had fallen. The ground beneath the corpse’s head was drenched with blood. As he approached, he heard one of the soldiers say: “It’s a woman.” Júlio felt even guiltier. For reasons he himself could not explain, he thought that killing a woman was worse than taking a man’s life. The dead guerrillero’s face looked serene. Her eyes were still open. Her clean-cut features and short shoulder-length hair made her look even younger than her twenty-two years. She was wearing dark gray canvas trousers, and a blue long-sleeved shirt.

“You shouldn’t have killed her, Julão. I told you not to kill her,” Carlos Marra said in a solemn but quiet voice.

“I know, chief. I didn’t intend to kill anyone, but when I fired, she moved to one side and the bullet hit her in the head.”

“It’s not a problem,” said one of the soldiers whom Marra called “lieutenant.” “It could even be a good thing, to show these communists we’re not here to play games. Either they give up their idea of revolution, or they’ll die one by one.”

Júlio was scared of this man and his harsh words. Carlos Marra ordered him and another soldier to carry the body to Cocoió’s house. Júlio took the guerrillera by the ankles, the other lad grabbed her by the wrists. A stab of pain ran through Júlio as he touched the young woman’s body. Her eyes were still wide open and it was as if she were staring at him, condemning him for what he had just done.

At that moment, Júlio recalled the day he had killed Amarelo, in August 1971. On that occasion, his victim’s eyes had also stayed open after death. Now he felt very strange having to carry the lifeless body. His hands broke into a cold sweat. He had never spent so long with a corpse. He felt like vomiting. He wanted to be free of the body as quickly as possible. It was almost three hundred yards’ walk from the forest to Cocoió’s house.

After that, two of the soldiers stayed with the dead guerrillera, while Marra, Júlio, and the lieutenant returned to Xambioá.

They reached town at around two in the afternoon, and went straight to the army base. From there the lieutenant sent a helicopter to fetch the two soldiers and the body. During the whole trek back to Xambioá, Júlio stayed silent. His heart was heavy, and he felt the same nausea and unease he’d experienced the day he had killed Amarelo. He even refused the rice and jerked meat they’d brought from Cocoió’s house to eat on the way back to town.

As soon as the helicopter took off, Carlos Marra and Júlio headed for the police station. When they arrived, he heard the chief say he understood why the youngster was so silent and downcast. No one could be happy at having killed a woman. But that was part of their job. Their mission was to wipe out the guerrilla, and Júlio was showing he was an increasingly important part of that operation’s success. They talked for twenty or thirty minutes. When he left the station, Júlio felt less tense. He was almost convinced he had done what had to be done. Unlike the events surrounding Amarelo’s death, in Araguaia he was working for the army, in the midst of a war. It was completely different from killing someone for a handful of money and a few kilos of rice. He was trying to convince himself of this when he saw the air force helicopter roaring through the sky on its way back from the jungle. He knew the body of the woman he had killed only a few hours earlier was on board. At that moment it occurred to him that he did not even know her name. He immediately thought it would be better never to know: it would be one less name weighing on his soul.

He walked back to the boardinghouse, with a quick stop at the bakery where he bought two bottles of Coca-Cola, four bread sticks, and a half pound of cheese, in case he felt hungry later. For now, all he wanted to do was lie down and sleep, to forget the hell he had just been through.

FOR ALMOST TWENTY years, the body of the young guerrillera remained buried and forgotten in Xambioá cemetery, in Tocantins state. It was not until April 1991 that it was exhumed, when a commission made up of relatives of those killed or disappeared in the guerrilla, members of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, and experts from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) traveled to the town and recovered Maria Lúcia’s body from the pit it had been thrown into. It had been buried without a coffin, wrapped in a parachute regiment nylon parachute. The specialists from Unicamp, led by the pathologist Fortunato Badan Palhares, director of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the time, found traces of the clothing, shoes, and accessories Maria Lúcia was wearing at the time of her death. The 0.20 bullet cartridge she had in the back pocket of her jeans was still intact.

One of those who had access to this new information was Laura Petit. Three years older than Maria Lúcia, who was the youngest in the family, Laura had given herself the mission of discovering what had happened to her sister, whom the army simply described as “disappeared” in their official version of events, as they did with all the rebels killed during the period of the guerrilla. When Laura learned that the remains of her sister had been dug up, wrapped in a nylon sheet like an animal, she could not help thinking that the same might have happened to her two brothers, Jaime and Lúcio, both of whom were also in the Araguaia guerrilla. In fact, they were both killed as well in the jungles of the region, in combat with the army. Jaime died in December 1973, aged twenty-eight, and Lúcio in April 1974, at thirty. As of today, Laura Petit has only managed to recover the mortal remains of Maria Lúcia; there is still no information as to where Jaime and Lúcio were buried.

The exhumation was only the first step in the identification of Maria Lúcia Petit da Silva’s body. Back in São Paulo, Laura Petit was determined to devote all the time and effort necessary to find out if the remains the Unicamp specialists had removed from the Xambioá cemetery really were those of her sister. This was to prove a much slower and more painful process than Laura could ever have imagined. For five years, she divided her time between working as a teacher and whatever actions she thought necessary to find out if those remains were Maria Lúcia’s. She lost count of the number of occasions she went to Unicamp to try to talk to the pathologist Badan Palhares and press him to speed up the resolution of the case. On one of these occasions she sat in a room in the Department of Forensic Medicine from three in the afternoon to ten o’clock at night, but had to return home without even getting to see the expert.

The months and years passed, and Maria Lúcia Petit’s remains were still forgotten, bundled in plastic bags on a shelf in the cold storage at Unicamp. In the end, it was thanks to Laura’s persistence that one vital piece of evidence to identify the guerrillera’s remains was uncovered. At the end of April 1991, she got in touch with the dentist Jorge Tanaka, who had treated Maria Lúcia shortly before she set off for Araguaia.

Authorized by the Unicamp Department of Forensic Medicine to examine the dental arch of the remains recovered from Xambioá, Tanaka confirmed that it did indeed belong to Maria Lúcia Petit. However, the dentist’s analysis had to be confirmed by Badan Palhares and his team, and this only took place five years later.

ON THE MORNING of May 15, 1996—almost twenty-four years after Maria Lúcia’s death—the specialists from Unicamp called a press conference to announce their conclusions from the analyses conducted out on the remains of the guerrillera, laid out on a table covered with a blue cloth in a university lecture hall. On the left-hand side of the room, photographs of Maria Lúcia before and after she died were displayed on a wooden panel. Among the thirty or so people present were journalists, photographers, filmmakers, as well as friends and relatives of Maria Lúcia. Laura Petit was in the front row, holding hands with her mother, Dona Julieta, who was never able to accept the fact that she had lost three children in the guerrilla. Scarcely more than six feet in front of them, the pathologist Badan Palhares discussed the remains and their findings. He had a graying beard and was wearing a knee-length white coat.

In a clear, steady voice he picked up several bones from the table and explained that they were indeed part of the remains of Maria Lúcia Petit da Silva. Holding the young woman’s skull in his hand, Badan Palhares used a white spatula to point out the exact spot where the fatal bullet had hit the guerrillera. Laura felt her mother squeeze her hand. Glancing at Dona Julieta, she saw she was sobbing silently. The thirty pages of the experts’ findings (fourteen of them consisting entirely of photographs) concluded as follows:

WE CAN STATE THAT THERE ARE INDICATIONS THAT THE BONES ARE OF A PERSON OF THE FEMALE SEX.

THE TOP OF THE FEMUR WAS QUITE SLENDER, AS WERE THE NASAL CAVITY AND THE EYE SOCKET. THESE INDICATIONS LEAD US TO THE CONLCUSION THAT THIS IS THE SKELETON OF A WOMAN.

THE PROTUBERANCES OF THE BREASTS ARE CLEARLY VISIBLE.

As to the causes of death of Maria Lúcia Petit, the document stated that the young communist had been killed by two gunshot wounds: one to the right thigh, fired by a 7.62 rifle, and the other to the head, “in the left parietal bone, typical of the passage of a projectile from a firearm, with a trajectory from low to high and from back to front”—the shot fired by Júlio Santana.

This scientific evidence led to the very first identification of a communist killed in the Araguaia guerrilla. Even today, Maria Lúcia Petit is the only person from the rebel movement who died in combat with the armed forces to have had her body exhumed and identified, although it is estimated that close to sixty communists were killed in this guerrilla. Aged eighty-six, Dona Julieta Petit is still mourning the loss of her youngest daughter and two sons.

Following the conclusion of the case, Maria Lúcia’s mortal remains were handed over to the family, who buried them in Bauru Cemetery, in São Paulo. The army never revealed the names of the men who killed the young communist on that morning of June 16, 1972. Júlio Santana never knew the name of the young woman he killed in his second homicide. Even today he considers it better that way. It is one name less to trouble his soul.