Verdelândia - Minas Gerais, Brazil, 2018
Maria and Sula are a couple full of life, movement and stories. Their walls and bookshelves are decorated with many portraits and photo-paintings of family members, as it is with most of the houses of grandpas and grandmas. But there’s also something very specific and valuable: some of the many tributes that Ursulino Pereira Lima received for his bravery in being part of the group of peasants known as “Posseiros de Cachoeirinhas”, who fought against the excesses and violence of the military government in the 1960s and 70.
In April 1967, through military arms and bullets, big farmers took over the lands at Cachoeirinhas (currently located in the municipality of Verdelândia, North Minas Gerais), mainly populated by poor peasants. An authoritarian and truculent action, this episode became known as the Posseiros de Cachoeirinhas Massacre. The military threatened and persecuted people, invaded their lands, burned their houses, destroyed their crops and tortured and murdered dozens - some are still missing today. Those who survived were left homeless and landless and had to hide in the woods, where they faced hunger and the measles outbreak, which killed more than 60 children. But the peasants did not surrender.
They organized the resistance through the “Posseiros de Cachoeirinhas” group. This group included Sula, his family and so many other friends and neighbours, who fought against the military and big landowners to secure their rights to their land, their freedom and to live with dignity. Little by little, they retook the territories that were stolen from them by big farmers. Those territories are today enjoyed by their children, grandchildren and other peasants. The retaking of land was never concluded, though. To this day, descendants of the Posseiros de Cachoeirinhas continue to fight for what is rightly theirs: the memory of their tortured, murdered and missing family members and the lands from which they should have never been expelled.
Learn more at the Truth Commission in Minas Gerais.
