It’s 1983 in Ilha do Cardoso State Park, at the southernmost tip of São Paulo state in Brazil. Within a year the country’s military dictatorship will be gone, though no one knows it yet. For now, it sends low-flying warplanes roaring over the sleepy fishing community here. On the ground, the terror is amplified by the arrival of Navy personnel threatening to arrest residents who own small farms and giving everyone 24 hours to leave the 13,600-hectare (33,600-acre) conservation area. The military’s actions four decades ago were on behalf of the Forest Institute, a government agency that no longer exists but whose environmental policy was based on removing all human occupants from state parks. Between the creation of Ilha do Cardoso State Park, in 1962, and the end of the military regime, in 1984, the 400 families living on the island faced constant intimidation to leave. Yet many from this community of Caiçaras, a traditional fishing peoples, could trace their family lines here back to the 19th century. The process of clearing the park was finally blocked in court thanks to the actions of Dutch clergyman João Verbeek, also known as João Trinta, from the Cananeia parish and a member of the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission. Ultimately, it was the fierce resistance of the Caiçara community of Cardoso Island that allowed them to remain on their ancestral territory. The Perequê River, between the communities of Pereirinha and Itacuruçá, in Ilha do Cardoso State Park. Image by Luís Patriani. Four…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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