Blockades, checkpoints and court action: fending off Brazil’s biofuel giants in the Amazon

For most of his 39 years, Josias Dias dos Santos, known as Jota, has endured displacement as a quilombola, a descendant of Black people once enslaved on Brazil's plantations. His community in Pará state was first forced out by violent loggers, then ranchers and miners, but the worst came with palm oil companies expanding into what is now Brazil's most deforested state.

Over the past two decades, palm oil companies producing biofuels and supplying global customers, subsidized by the federal government, have claimed ever larger tracts of traditional quilombola territory. The companies built mazes of fencing, guard towers and security checkpoints, sometimes cutting communities off from their family cemeteries.

Leaders who spoke out for land rights against toxic industrial waste were often jailed or gunned down in unprosecuted ambushes. Now quilombolas fear the second round of Brazil's presidential elections will heighten threats, with many saying a victory for Flavio Bolsonaro would make securing formal land recognition "impossible".

Violent displacement

Dias dos Santos was seven when loggers forced his family from their homes near an abandoned sugar mill where their ancestors once worked. The palm oil industry followed, encouraged by the government to acquire large tracts in northern Pará. Today, about 202,000 hectares near the Acará River produce palm oil for biofuels and foods.

Quilombola communities complained companies squeezed them from traditional lands and that toxic byproducts from palm oil production affected the Acará River with bloated, dead fish. Activists who led protests met violent ends—one leader was decapitated and dismembered; another shot 16 times in the back.

Community resistance

Tensions increased in 2020 when Brasil BioFuels (BBF) took over a large operation, building fences and watchtowers guarded by private security. The company filed over 1,000 police reports accusing quilombolas of threats and property damage. Unlike many Amazon displacement cases, the Acará quilombolas resisted with a human blockade.

In late 2021, BBF's security chief led armed men to break up a demonstration, tying protesters' hands and using pepper spray. Though Ferrari and another executive faced torture charges (still pending), the community pursued more radical resistance. On February 24, 2022, they padlocked BBF's main entrance and refused to move.

The blockade endured for months, with the community expanding checkpoints and building infrastructure from palm fruit sales. Courts have refused most BBF land claims and ruled the quilombolas have valid rights to much reclaimed land. They've also rejected eight of nine criminal charges against Dias dos Santos.

Corporate response

BBF's chief executive Milton Steagall portrayed himself as a job creator and environmentalist, rejecting claims the company stole land. Imagine that I'm being accused of something planted 10, 12 years earlier and I'm responsible for having planted it in an Indigenous area? Does that make sense? he asked.

By 2024, BBF struggled to pay employees and declared bankrupt. New palm oil companies now lease BBF's former plantations near the Acará community. BBF's lawyers maintained the company entered into existing cultivation and that territorial claims require individual examination.

The quilombolas' campaign marked their first victory against biofuel companies, with 2,300 community members gaining control of nearly 32,400 hectares. Yet conflicts continue across the region, with Tembé and Turiwara Indigenous communities facing another producer on 22,972 hectares.

Ongoing threats

Independent reports indicate at least four deaths, attempted murders, and 14 death threats in the region. The Acará community says victory is far from assured. Dias dos Santos fears for his life, traveling in three-vehicle convoys and using GPS tracking for security.

"I know that the risk of being killed is very high," says Dias dos Santos. Despite this, he remains confident: Our grandparents decided not to fight because they would die. Now, if we fight back, we run the risk of dying, too. But we have a mobile phone, where we can learn about our rights and report things. So we have a chance of staying alive.