Porto Velho/RO – After two years of the murder of the sertanista Apoena Meireles, the feeling in the National Foundation of the Indian (Funai) in Porto Velho is of longing. On the Friday afternoon, 6th, the Indians that are housed in the headquarters of the entity they had a ritual and danced in honor to the sertanista. They also believe that the financial difficulties that they are facing would not be happening if Apoena was among them and they complain that the Brazilian justice in not punishing the responsible for the murder.
The searches for the author of the crime were suspended more than one year ago and the case is stopped because the murderer, fugitive, reached the majority. In the Childhood and Youth court it cannot be obtained more details on the process.
Apoena Meireles was employee of Funai and was killed with two shots in the thorax, after reacting to an assault, inside one of the agencies of the Brazil Bank in Porto Velho, on October 9th, 2004. Passed the shock, rumors and distrusts, now, the Indians say that the only thing that they want is that justice is done.
The indigenous leader Orlando Karitiana believes that the death of Apoena was treated with negligence. The Brazilian justice disappoints us a lot, it was not done justice by the death of Apoena, as well as for the murder of many other leaders “, he says. In Brazil it doesn´t have justice. It only exists for the rich ones”, he uncover himself.
Indian blood
The sertanista Apoena Merireles was considered as an example and he had good relationship with Indians of all the etnias. For them he fought for better life conditions and motivated so that they never forgot his cultures and traditions. “Apoena lived in the middle of the Indians because he liked it, not because it was necessary. I think he had Indian blood”, believes Raimundo Nonato Karitiana.
When the Federal Police began the investigations on the 29 prospectors´ slaughter, in the reservation Roosevelt, 500 kilometers from Porto Velho, in April of 2004, Meireles went to Juína in Mato Grosso, to talk to the cacique Cinta-larga Big Dad. The indigenous leader determined the other leaders of the etnia in Rondônia that they assisted the sertanista and helped him to lessen the crisis between Indians and no-Indians, generated by the exploration of diamonds. The case was just an example of the respect that Apoena enjoyed with the indigenous people.
Ores
On the day he was murdered, Apoena had arrived from Brasília and would have gone to the Roosevelt reservation, in Espigão do Oeste town, where he would talk to the Indians Cinta-larga to ask them to wait for the liberation of the mine. He was one of the responsible for the mine to be closed. In the place there is a great bed of diamonds where 29 prospectors had been executed in April of that year. For those reasons it was cogitated at that time of the murder, that Apoena have been execute by an interested group in the ores and non armed robbery, as the police unmasked soon after.
Assault
The adolescent that fired Apoena, 17 years old at that time, was still arrested. He explained that tried to assault the sertanista to get money to buy drugs. He was a middle class youth and everybody was frightened with the banality by which the sertanista had been died.
The youth was retired to the House of Temporary Internment four days after the crime, but by judge´s Ênio Salvador Vaz order, from the court of the Childhood and Youth of the district of Porto Velho, he was transferred, on the 23rd of the same month, to the House Família Roseta, institution that assists chemical dependents and he ran away on December 27th , 2004. He would have left peacefully by the side door and ran to the bush in the bottom of the land.
Popularization
One of the largest difficulties that the police found at that time was the fact that they could not publish the youth´s picture for treating of a crime as he had not reached the majority. It had never been published his picture and the police doesn´t have idea of his whereabouts. The case continues without solution, a sad verification for the Indians. Whites don´t imagine what represents the loss of Apoena for us. If he was here certainly we would be dancing for some good thing”, says Orlando Karitiana.
Investigation
The Counselor of the Association of Etno-environmental Defense Kanindé, Ivaneide Bandeira charge a more deeply investigation” on the causes of the death of the sertanista Apoena Meireles. She considers that two years after the murder has already passed and the investigations were restricted to the armed robbery hypothesis. The fact of Apoena be involved in the investigation on the illegal mine of diamonds in Roosevelt´s Indigenous land should have provoked a larger interest for the causes of the murder. He had important information and one day before dying he said, in a meeting with the Suruí people that intended to dismount the frauds that existed in the Roosevelt Reservation”, she affirmed.
Ivaneide Bandeira also charges justice for the killer, who escaped from Rondônia, taking unknown direction. She cannot discard the hypothesis that behind the murderer there was great people with interests in the exploration of diamonds “, she points out.
Difficulties
The Indians in Rondônia and in the South of Amazonas unchained a series of protests during last week to press the Federal Government to liberate resources for Funai of the Capital. The highway 230 was blocked and the headquarters of the organ in Porto Velho was occupied by Indians. The debts of Funai, that get to R$ 600 thousand, impede the agricultural production in the villages. This way, many people have been living with difficulties.