In 2015, environmentalist Raimundo dos Santos Rodrigues was murdered in an ambush inside the Gurupi Biological Reserve in Brazil’s Maranhão state, where he served as a member of the advisory board.A local rancher, who was illegally logging inside the reserve, orchestrated the killing.Rodrigues’ wife Maria survived the attack but has spent more than 10 years living in another state in a government protection program.Maria experiences a contradiction in her new life: She had to be made invisible by the state to survive the state’s failure to investigate and prosecute socio-environmental crimes.
At around 1 a.m. on April 29, 2026, in a courtroom in Maranhão’s Bom Jardim district, Judge Philipe Silveira da Cunha publicly decided the fate of former military police officer Francisco da Silva Sousa.
“The defendant is sentenced to 35 years and four months in prison, to be served initially in a closed facility,” he announced into the microphone. Judge Cunha stood before the defendant, jurors, prosecutors and defense and prosecution lawyers under the white lights of the courtroom, ending a trial that had lasted more than 16 hours since it began the previous morning. The 66-year-old former police officer went straight from the courtroom to prison.
