The order to kill Judge Joana Sarmento de Matos, of the Criminal Execution Court of Boa Vista, in the state of Roraima, came from the criminal organization First Command of the capital from inside the agricultural prison of Montecristo.He was scribbled at the lid of a táper seized during a cell record.The farmer Cosme Capistano da Silva is the following name in the list of objectives of the hitmen of the Boca do Acre region, in the state of Amazonas, where he is killed or dies from a few hectares.With the journalist Vinicius Rosa Lourenço, of Magé, a city in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro marked by drug trafficking and militias action, the attack occurred without notice or threat prior.Despite being in danger, they insist on their struggles in a country where the difference between life and death can be in a sentence, a newspaper holder or the fight for the land.Three lives threatened with death by murderers because they seek justice.They are almost hostage in their homes.

Brazil is a violent country.According to the Atlas of Violence 2021, carried out by the Institute of Economic Studies applied in collaboration with the Brazilian Public Security Forum, 45 were registered in 2019.503 homicides in the country, which corresponds to a rate of 21.7 deaths per 100.000 inhabitants.Or, what is the same, 124 murders per day.The World Health Organization considers that a rate greater than 10 deaths per 100.000 is an epidemic.That is, it spreads without control.As a comparison, that same year in Argentina there were 5 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants y en España solo 0,6.

Judge Joana Matos Lidia with the direct consequences of the overwhelming progress of the criminal factions in Brazil."Being a judge is already an activity that implies risks," he says.In a border state, "the situation worsens even more," he explains, referring to the drug trafficking routes that cross Roraima from Venezuela, Guyana and the Amazonian rivers.These routes aroused the interest of the first command of the capital, born in São Paulo, and the Vermelho, of Rio de Janeiro command, criminal groups that found in the medieval prisons and in the streets of the abandoned peripheries a fertile territory to grow, leavingA scar that crosses the country from north to south.Roraima, where the judge works, houses about 3.000 inmates in a space where just over 1 should fit.000.In the capital, Boa Vista, where an atmosphere of town was reigned before, murders are now committed with maximum cruelty: heads and curtured members, carbonized bodies.

Threatened with death by some of the largest criminal groups in South America, for six years Joana Matos only circulates around the city by armored car.The bulletproof vest has become a mandatory garment and does not go alone: since he leaves his house until he returns, at the end of the day, the judge is escorted by two police officers armed with assault rifles.Your routine is limited: no restaurants, park walks or meetings with friends at the bar."At first it was difficult, but the human being adapts to everything," he says.It is a rigid security plan, created so that its name does not join the statistics of judges killed by organized crime (there are no official data on the total number).

The dynamics of violence in the field is different and almost as old as the country itself.Brazil went from the hereditary captains, during the colony, to the contemporary estate, whose main characteristic is the great concentration of land.In this scenario, yesterday's leaders have been transformed, with a patina of modernity, in the businessmen of agribusiness.But they still use the same usual violent methods.The life of Cosme, a slave child in the rubber plantations of the Amazon who became a farmer and agent of the Pastoral Commission of the Earth (CPT), mixes with the history of the fight in the field.He always defended the little peasants, which aroused the wrath of the great landowners of the region and quassed that his name was on a paper handwritten list with the objectives of the hitmen.Two of his friends were also on this list: they were killed.One was hit seven shots;to the other, 15.

Cosme's situation is no exception.According to CPT data, from 2011 to 2020.The number of conflicts on Earth in 2020 was the highest in the entire historical series monitored by the CPT since 1985, when the conflicts report in the Brazil field began to be published.The commission itself has seen 12 of its members over the years, and the case of greatest impact was that of Sor Dorothy Stang, the missionary born in the United States who was the target of hitmen in 2005 in the city of Anapu, in the state of Pará.In Boca do acre, where Cosme was born and grew up, life is worth a few hectares of land.

The journalist Vinícius Lourenço, 40, lives threatened after denouncing a plot of nepotism in the City of Magé, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.The reaction to his report occurred in a habitual language in La Baixada Fluminense, a region marked for years by political violence: six shots against the car that led the night of August 17 of this year.He was about to run the same fate as three of his friends bloggers and political activists of Magé, who were killed to defend an idea or make complaints.Since then, Lourenço has had to set up a kind of bunker watched by cameras 24 hours a day to continue working...and living.His "strength", as he tells him.

Vinícius wakes up every morning with the great fear that at any time the hitmen "return to finish what they started".Brazil is a hostile country for journalists.Only in 2020 they murdered two, they kidnapped two others, 32 were physically attacked and 34 received threats, according to a report from the National Federation of Journalists.Taking into account all indicators of violence against press workers, there has been a 105% increase in aggressions against these professionals, according to the entity's data.The government of Jair Bolsonaro, with its constant verbal attacks on journalists, has contributed to worsen the situation.

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