Though Stang worked in the area for many years, many said most of the death threats she received started coming after the government announced plans in 1998 to pave the Trans-Amazon Highway. The plan never materialized, but the announcement was enough to escalate long-simmering land battles, attracting speculators and loggers wanting a piece of the newly desirable real estate.
"All that announcement did was cause an influx of people," said Felicio Pontes Jr., a federal prosecutor for Para state, who is conducting the criminal investigation of Stang's death. "All of this land, which was never worth anything to anyone, was suddenly prime."
Doves fly over a memorial to Dorothy Stang outside the Supreme Court in Brasilia. Police suspect a rancher ordered her killing.
(Jamil Bittar -- Reuters)
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Paving roads is a complicated issue here that continues to divide people: Some contend that easier transportation could help ease poverty and improve health and education; others say the environmental costs are too great and those who would benefit most are wealthy business interests.
As it stands now, the red-mud highway, cut with deep ruts and difficult to traverse without an all-terrain vehicle, offers a variety of alternating scenes: dense forest, partially cleared pastures, thin-hipped cattle, rushing streams, still ponds, rolling hills and clouded valleys. In some areas, the land is dotted with tree stubs. Just outside of Anapu, a lumberyard sits beside the road, with long boards stacked outside, exposed to the town's frequent rains.
"In 1998 there were four lumberyards in this region right around Anapu," said Geraldo Magela, an agricultural technician in the town who worked with Stang to try to persuade local farmers to plant environmentally sustainable crops. "Now there are 25."
Loggers say they are being unjustly demonized. Jose Roberval de Souza, president of the regional lumber industry association, said most loggers work legally, plant trees to make up for those they cut and feel as discouraged as the environmentalists.
"If I live 100 more years, to 143, I won't live to see this problem end," said de Souza, adding that most loggers want the violence to cease.
The environmentalists see things differently. Paulo Adario, who heads Greenpeace's Amazon programs, said the vast majority of logging was illegal. The government estimated that about 8,880 square miles of land was deforested in the Amazon last year, a figure that Adario contends is low. But because the Amazon is so vast and difficult to traverse, enforcement of logging regulations is almost nonexistent, he said. And it's not just logging, he added; kidnapping, murder and physical intimidation have thrived in the jungle.
"Most people who commit crimes are never punished because the police don't have the capacity to go and get them," Adario said. "Life, at the end of the day, means nothing here."
But Stang's case prompted action. Army helicopters descended onto a clearing near several houses on the edge of Anapu this week. The soldiers -- 110 of them -- reached their jungle encampment by taking trucks to a footbridge spanning the Xingu River, crossing the river and walking into the forest under a canopy of leaves. They hung hammocks just a few yards from Stang's fresh grave, which had been bricked over and covered with flowers. They milled around the clearing with machine guns strapped to their chests, waiting as more troops showed up
A crowd gathered to watch the helicopters arrive, and some said they didn't understand what the temporary deployment of soldiers might accomplish. Many said they believed it was political theater -- a symbol, but little else.
"The army is not going to solve anything," said Antonio Prateado, an Anapu resident who stood with his 3-year-old son on his shoulders as the helicopters landed on Thursday. "How can they stop what is happening?"
Bruno Abreu, an agent with Brazil's federal police force, said the military and the police were making no promises that the violence would end soon.
"The main mission is
