Thousands of Amazon peasants flocked to the funeral of a U.S. nun on Tuesday and vented outrage that Brazil's government has only acted to stem rising violence in the rain forest after the murder of the renowned foreign activist.
Traveling on mud-clogged jungle roads, they joined politicians and activists to honor missionary Dorothy Stang.
The 74-year-old was shot dead by hired gunmen near this jungle town on Saturday after she fought for decades to protect the rain forest and its people from illegal loggers and ranchers.
Some 930 miles (1,500 km) to the south of Anapu, government ministers held an emergency meeting in the capital Brasilia to try stop halt in areas of Para like Anapu county, which is fast becoming known as Brazil's "Gaza strip".
The government said it would dispatch army, air force and police units to Para state -- an area twice the size of France, which has Brazil's highest murder rate in land battles.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered the action after an outcry by international human rights groups at Stang's murder and U.S. pressure to find her killers.
Land activists attending Stang's funeral found that hard to stomach. They have watched hundreds of rural workers shot in recent years without a single action taken.
Police said another landless leader was murdered in Para state on Tuesday. Daniel Soares da Costa, head of a settlement in southeast Para, was shot dead by gunmen.
"Sister Dorothy, she is a North American, a nun, so there is massive reaction, and that hurts us very deeply," said Xavier Gilles, a Roman Catholic human rights worker, as peasants and land settlers held up placards reading "Dorothy: your blood calls for justice" and "Amazon Justice for all."
Stang's killing has drawn world attention to lawlessness in regions like Anapu, an area the size of Wales, where guns have become a means to acquire land and hold onto it.
Lula's ambitious settlement plan -- which is behind target -- has inadvertently fanned the violence. He has promised land to 400,000 poor families to shrink income inequalities.
That encouraged settlers from Brazil's poor north to travel along the Trans-Amazonian highway and claim adjacent areas as settlements with help from activists like Stang.
Brazil had its worst rural violence in 13 years in 2003, Lula's first year in office, as landowners hired gunmen to prevent peasants occupying areas they already claimed.
Peasants have taken up arms as well. Ranchers accused Stang of supplying guns to small farmers in Anapu -- a claim her Roman Catholic order the Sisters of Notre Dame called "absurd".
"You either resolve the question of land settlement in that region or watch it turn into a real Gaza strip," said Roberto Buzato, president of the Brazilian Order of Lawyers, a nationwide group that monitors rights issues.
Cabinet chief Jose Dirceu said Stang's murder was a reaction by landowners to growing government presence in the region.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Stang was murdered despite constant warnings to authorities she faced death threats.
Brazil only solved about 7 percent of murder cases in land battles between 1985 and 2003, the CPT says. Police in rural areas are often allied to landowners, activists say.
"There is so much violence in Para because ranchers and big farmers know they can normally get away with it," Gilles said.