Shawn Blore
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sb@shawnblore.com
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Tel:(55) 21-8102-4706
Shawn Blore
Journalist
sb@shawnblore.com
www.shawnblore.com
Tel:(55) 21-8102-4706
Shawn Blore
Journalist
sb@shawnblore.com
www.shawnblore.com
Tel:(55) 21-8102-4706
Justice in a water world: The law of the Amazon jungle
By Shawn Blore | The Independent
In a remote corner of Brazil, at the mouth of the world's largest river, a judge and her legal staff journey by boat to serve the isolated rainforest communities. Shawn Blore reports from Macapá
Douglas Engle Photo |
MACAPÁ -- It's a small pig, probably no more than
20kg, but as the sheriff lifts it over his
shoulder and sets off down the boardwalk
it lets out a high-pitched scream that scatters
parakeets from the palm trees and brings
residents of this Amazon fishing village
to their doorsteps. The screeches continue
as the pig is set down carefully in the bottom
of a motorboat, and the sheriff zooms off,
twisting and turning through narrow back
channels to arrive at a small dock at the
village of Vila Progresso, where the courthouse
rides at anchor.
"That may be the first time I
ever had
to order the arrest of a pig,"
says
Justice Sueli Pereira Pini, presiding
judge
of the justice boat, a single-room
courthouse
located on the top deck of a riverboat,
afloat
in a channel of Bailique archipelago
at the
mouth of the Amazon.
Boat, court and judge are all part
of a programme
called Itinerant Justice, which Judge
Pini
created in 1996, when she was 36 years
old,
to bring the structure and services
of government
to the isolated rainforest communities
of
the state of Amapá. Often forgotten
even
by Brazilians, Amapá sits on the north
bank
of the mouth of the world's largest
river,
just to the south of Surinam and French
Guyana.
As special courts co-ordinator for
the state
capital, Macapá, Judge Pini's jurisdiction
covers just one county - but in this
vast
and sparsely populated state, the single
municipality of Macapá covers more
than 6,400
square kilometres. The county includes
numerous
communities at the far end of precarious
dirt roads, and other small towns and
villages,
notably those in the Bailique archipelago,
accessible only by water. For residents
of
these isolated communities, the time
and
cost of a trip to the capital can often
put
conventional legal services out of
reach.
For towns with road access, the itinerant
justice programme has the justice bus,
a
courthouse on wheels, which makes the
rounds
of the county's smaller communities,
often
holding audiences in the town square.
For the more than 6,000 inhabitants
of the
Bailique archipelago, though, there's
the
justice boat, an old-style Amazon riverboat
with a judge and legal staff on board,
which
every other month makes the 200km journey
downstream to the islands, where it
spends
a week hearing cases and issuing judgments.
On this particular day, the seizure
of a
small and voluble pig is first on Judge
Pini's
list.
The animal was seized as payment for
debts
incurred by a fisherman who had been
buying
goods from a local grocery shop on
credit.
In the heat of the early afternoon,
it lies
resting in the shade in the bottom
of the
motorboat, waiting to be claimed by
the store
owner and blissfully unaware of the
legal
furore surrounding its formerly tranquil
existence. The case, says Judge Pini,
is
the sort of small commercial dispute
that,
if not resolved peacefully through
state
authority, could eventually escalate
into
a violent local feud.
Even so, the "pig as payment" case
is but one of numerous actions heard on board
the boat during its stay in the archipelago,
and not really what the judge would like
her programme to be known for. In the short
recess after lunch, she's already receiving
some ribbing from courtroom colleagues. One
of the legal secretaries pulls out a law
book and begins flipping through for possible
precedents for pig-napping. A prosecutor
suggests the little porker be given the death
penalty, and served up that night in a barbecue.
The working day on the justice boat began
at about 6am, half an hour or so after first
light. Prosecutors, sheriffs and legal secretaries
flop out of their hammocks and begin clearing
the decks of personal gear. Long wooden tables
are put in place, upon which the courthouse
clerks have set up laptops and printer and
a stack of neatly sorted legal files.
Medical teams have set out for the
day. In
addition to bringing the law, the justice
boat also delivers social services
to these
remote islands. A dentist comes along,
equipped
with portable dental chair and all
the accoutrements
necessary to insert fillings or take
out
teeth. There's also a doctor and a
pair of
nurses, and an outreach worker from
the municipal
water company who wanders from hut
to hut,
showing villagers how to use their
government-supplied
water purifying systems.
Very soon the first of the day's legal
petitioners
are arriving on board, either pulling
up
alongside in their own canoes and motorboats
or making their way along the wooden
boardwalk
that links the houses and shops in
this small
riverside village. Cases already lined
up
for the day include several child-support
disputes. Amapa state, where the average
woman will give birth to 3.1 children
in
her lifetime, has the second highest
fertility
rate in Brazil. In Macapá county, about
25
per cent of those children are born
to teenage
mothers.
Also on the docket is an alleged incident
of sexual assault, an accusation of
cattle
rustling and another of duck theft,
a dispute
over land boundaries, and a request
for the
judge to perform a wedding. One of
the innovations
of the Itinerant Justice programme
is that
judge and court are competent in a
variety
of areas of the law, be it family,
commercial
or criminal matters.
Cases are heard in a tiny closed cabin,
the
only one on the ship with air conditioning.
The first case of the day is a child
support
action, launched by a 19-year-old mother
who wants the father of her seven-month
old
daughter to start making support payments.
She hasn't seen the father since she
became
pregnant, she says, and the only support
he has provided consists of several
packets
of nappies and some milk, delivered
by the
boy's mother. The father, a nervous
and boyish-looking
20-year-old, makes a long and somewhat
convoluted
speech to the effect that the girl
trapped
him into getting her pregnant, that
the baby
is her problem, and that, anyway, he
hasn't
got any money.
Brazilian family law is draconian.
Support
payments are set at half the minimum
monthly
salary (140 reals, about £35 per month)
and,
if the father fails to pay, the judge
has
the power to order his arrest. Justice
Pini,
however, sees her role as counsellor
and
enforcer in equal measure. For the
law to
work far out in the wilderness, she
believes,
judges have to be flexible.
The first thing she wants is to see
the baby.
The mother holds it up and Judge Pini
coos
over her for a few moments. A mother
of four
herself, the judge has a soft spot
for infants.
"However you feel about each other
now,"
she tells the couple, "at some
point
you clearly had a relationship, and
this
little baby is the fruit of it. Both
of you
have to start thinking about her now."
She asks the father how much he thinks
he
can pay. R$10 (£2.50) at the most,
he claims.
Fine, the judge says. Let's settle
on R$40
(£10). "And," she continues,
"I
want you to deliver the money yourself.
Stop
hiding behind your mother. This little
girls
needs you in her life." She also
orders
the boy to take custody of the girl
two weekends
a month. She'll be back in two months
to
check to see that he's complying. Flexible,
it appears, does not mean supine.
Court cases continue throughout the
day.
Meanwhile, on the upper deck, a team
from
the Macapá civil registry is helping
people
who have lost or misplaced their documents.
This is another of the services offered
by
the justice boat, and a critical one
in a
country where even the most basic interaction
with government often requires two
or more
pieces of identification.
One of the people needing new ID is a fisherman,
Francisco Almeida da Souza, who pulls up
to the nearby dock in four-metre covered
sailing canoe. The tiny enclosed cabin is
his only home, which he shares with two dogs
and all his cooking and fishing equipment.
He lost all his documents some years back
when his boat overturned in a storm. In the
more civilised parts of Brazil, someone in
Mr Da Souza's predicament could spend weeks
re-establishing an identity. Here, frontier
conditions lead to frontier speed. Date of
birth and some back-up records establish
that the man is who he says he is, and in
less than half an hour the old man is once
again a documented citizen. Satisfied, he
strolls back to his own little boat, hoists
his animals aboard, carefully washes and
dries each of their paws, herds them into
the cabin, and once again sets sail.
Late in the afternoon, the sheriff
takes
the seized pig and drops him off with
his
new owner. The justice boat then sets
off
for the village of Livramento. Located
on
a narrow tidal channel, at low tide
Livramento
is isolated from the nearest navigable
waterway
by some 800 metres of slippery mudflats.
Rather than hold court on the boat,
the judge
opts to set up in the village community
centre,
an open platform set on stilts above
the
mudflats, with a palm frond roof to
keep
out the sun and rain. It is here that
the
judge hears her case of the day, a
quintessentially
Amazon land dispute. The three people
involved
own adjoining ranches on the downstream
tip
of a nearby island. Over the past few
years,
silt deposited by the river has increased
the size of their island by several
dozen
hectares. All three ranchers are claiming
this new land as their own, and all
three
have stocked the new ground with buffalo
in support of their claims.
The judge has brought along a land title
expert who has surveyed the new land and
brought back his report. However, before
revealing his findings, the judge allows
the ranchers to make their arguments, which
are loud and emotional and mostly seem to
revolve around who put up the first lengths
of fencing. Judge Sueli listens until it
seems the men are tiring, and then makes
her own pitch for a settlement.
"The report I have from my land title
expert," she tells the ranchers, "shows
that none of your cases are particularly
compelling. In addition, there are discrepancies
and ambiguities in the boundaries of your
existing lands." So, she continues,
you can proceed with the claim, in which
case I will have to order a full re-survey
of everyone's land, which will be expensive
and quite possibly yield unwelcome results.
Or we can settle this now, by agreeing to
divide up the new land equally. Such is the
tone of sweet reason in her voice that the
three men agree to go along.
The judge's last and happiest task of the
day is a wedding. The couple are in their
late 20s and already have one child, but
with the nearest courthouse so far away have
never had the chance to become legally man
and wife. Dressed in a simple white gown
and trailed by a crowd of children and legal
staff from the justice boat, the bride strolls
down the boardwalk and beneath the palm frond
roof to where the groom and judge await.
Someone has put out a cassette-player in
special preparation for the waterside wedding.
And, before long this far-off community with
no electricity at the edge of the Amazon
rainforest is filled with the lyrics of Celine
Dion's "My Heart Will Go On".
Shawn Blore is a Freelance Correspondent
based in Rio de Janeiro