Meet the Journalist Who Revealed a Rancher’s Journey from Amazon Assassin to Rural Right- Wing Politician
These images are of the same man - Darci Alves Pereira, back when he was a confessed murderer in the Brazilian Amazon and recently as a local leader in the right-wing political party of former President Jair Bolsonaro. You’ll learn in the webcast below how his past lay hidden until a journalist dug in, and how Brazil’s rural conservatives are fine with what has been revealed.
On the left Darci was showing federal police in Xapuri, in the westernmost reaches of Brazil’s portion of the Amazon River basin, where he hid on December 22, 1988 and fired the shotgun blast that killed Chico Mendes. Mendes was the 44-year-old leader of the movement to protect the region’s rain forests and their inhabitants from an invasion by cattle ranchers and road projects. (Learn more about Mendes in my book The Burning Season and a post below).
Darci was convicted of murder and sent to prison along with his father, Darly, a rancher with a renowned violent streak who was convicted of ordering the assassination. They served three years, escaped and were separately recaptured years later, serving out sentences that were ultimately shortened.
Then time passed and Darci Alves moved 1,500 miles east to Pará, an Amazon state with politics dominated by ranchers and big farming interests. He left headlines and notoriety behind - until February 27th.
That’s when Cristiane Prizibisczki, an enterprising journalist at the environment-focused news site O Eco, confirmed a late-January tip (stories) that Darci, using the political and religious persona “Pastor Daniel,” had won the presidency of a local chapter of the PL, the far-right-wing party of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
She discovered paperwork confirming Darci’s position and began sifting for more evidence on social media. If you poke around even now on X/Twitter or Instagram or Tiktok, there’s plenty, including this January 27 X post from a compatriot of “Pastor Daniel”, Rogério Barra: “Ownership of PL MEDICIÂNDIA with Valdilene Lambert and Pastor Daniel. Together, we will change the history of the municipality and further strengthen the right in Pará!”
Her story did something rare. Within hours, Valdemar Costa Neto, national president of the Liberal Party, had X-posted an acknowledgement of the situation and the removal of Darci Alves Pereira from both his position and the party. He even wrote, “I thank the press for bringing this important fact to my attention”:
Journalism that matters
I invited Prizibisczki to join a Sustain What webcast to discuss the case and the persistent power of Bolsonaro’s “Bible, beef, bullets” message in rural Brazil and especially the Amazon. Even better, she reached out to Angélica Mendes, Chico Mendes’s granddaughter, who has a biology Ph.D. and is president of Comitê Chico Mendes, an organization pursuing forest conservation, rights for forest dwellers and climate progress.
In exploring how Brazil’s hard right wing is enlisting disaffected rural populations, our conversation will resonate more than a little with what former President Donald Trump and allies have been trying to do in the United States.
Watch here on YouTube or on LinkedIn, Facebook and X/Twitter - and please do me a favor and SHARE the video or this post. I’ll also post it on the podcast platform here over the weekend.
Chillingly, Angélica Mendes said that the burst of publicity back in the Amazon around the O ECO story and PL reaction was largely in support of Darci Alves Pereira. On local news sites, she said, “Most of the comments are about the hero who killed Chico Mendes.”
What’s so important about M?
I also urge you to read a great El Pais essay on this strange saga by Eliane Brum, an extraordinary journalist and commentator who lives on the fringe of the Amazon and explains why Darci Alves Pereira’s transition from murder to power in a small Amazon town matters:
[T]o truly understand Bolsonaro’s influence, we need to look beyond the major cities of the southeast and focus on smaller communities like Medicilandia, a city of 27,000 along the Trans-Amazon highway. This is where Darci Alves Pereira, known for the murder of environmentalist Chico Mendes, now lives and continues to support Bolsonaro….
The murderer’s choice of this Amazon city to launch his comeback tour is astonishing, but fitting. Medicilandia is named after Emílio Garrastazu Médici, a general and president known for the most severe human rights violations of the Brazilian dictatorship, including the destruction of thousands of acres of Amazon jungle. This city is now indelibly associated with Bolsonaro, Bolsonarism and “Pastor Daniel.” It’s an identity that is sure to outlive Bolsonaro himself.
“The trouble always starts during the burning season”
A rubber tapper carrying on the work of Chico Mendes said this as we bumped along a dirt road toward a confrontation with a chain-saw crew in 1989 and I immediately knew it was the title of the book I was working on. Here’s a podcast and post reprising my learning journey reporting on Chico Mendes’s life, death and legacy back in 1989 and 1990:
Thanks for reading, watching and subscribing to my output (and contribute financially if you can). And please share this post with at least one friend who cares about Amazonia but is unsure what to do.