As mourners laid her bullet-riddled body to rest yesterday, environmentalists and colleagues of slain missionary Dorothy Stang seesawed between fragile optimism and angry skepticism over a question they had hoped never to consider.
Would the slaying of an American nun, who devoted her life to fighting land-grabbers and loggers in the Amazon, galvanize action and world opinion the same way that the killing of legendary Brazilian rubber tapper Chico Mendes did 16 years ago?
Officials and activists are already drawing comparisons between Mendes, a national hero here, and Stang. The 73-year-old nun was gunned down Saturday in the jungles of northern Brazil, a region beset by land disputes and growing lawlessness. Authorities say the Ohio-born Stang was ambushed by hit men contracted by a local rancher, just as Mendes was assassinated on the orders of a wealthy landowner he had opposed.
Both Stang and Mendes were beloved figures in the rural communities where they organized poor residents to stand up against the powerful economic interests that threatened their livelihoods. Environmentalists credit Mendes with focusing attention on the plight of rubber tappers and on the wanton destruction of the rainforest.
His death sparked international outrage. So too has the killing of Stang, whose kindly, gray-haired visage made newspapers around the world and who is being lauded as a martyr for the cause of sustainable development in the Amazon.
Some activists are cautiously optimistic that the tragedy will put pressure on Brazil to take firmer action in a region where weak government has created a bloody power vacuum.
"We're hopeful that the government will take a stand against the large farm owners, [who] have shown how they act," said Tarcisio Feitosa, a member of the Roman Catholic Church's land commission in Para state, where Stang worked. "It was a planned killing, and the government must show these land mafias in the region how it will address the situation."
Police were looking for at least three suspects in the killing: two gunmen and the man who allegedly hired them.
In Brasilia, the national capital, government ministers convened an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss options, which include dispatching a high-level task force to Para to monitor the investigation and to back up efforts to enforce toughened land-use regulations.
Brazilian media also said authorities -- stung by accusations of indifference toward Stang's reports of death threats against her and other activists -- would increase the number of police and environmental officers in the area and might call upon the army to help crack down on landholders who have improperly laid claim to swaths of forest.
In recent weeks, woodcutters and ranchers in Para have escalated their opposition to environmental-protection measures by blocking roads and waterways and threatening to close down ports. In response, the government quietly restored some suspended logging permits.
With Stang's slaying, however, officials have ample political cover to take a harder line toward loggers and speculators and to promote agrarian reform, environmental advocates say. "This can reinforce the Brazilian government's commitment to changing business as usual in the Amazon, especially in Para. It's as clear and tragic an illustration as you can imagine of the extent to which that region is a no-man's land," said Stephen Schwartzman with the New York-based group Environmental Defense. "The federal and state government remain absent. These are things that cannot be fixed in a day, but can be improved radically."
Schwartzman said he was encouraged by government plans to establish a group of sustainable-development reserves in Para's Terra do Meio region. Also promising, he said, is the governor's willingness to work with federal officials on preserving the forest, which loggers covet for its abundant supply of cedar and mahogany.
The problem often is collusion between corrupt local authorities and the ranchers and loggers, according to officials and environmentalists. More people die from land conflicts in Para than in any other state, and most cases go unresolved. The daily newspaper O Globo yesterday published what it said was a list of 40 activists that land grabbers had marked for death, including Stang. Yet another activist was shot to death yesterday in a disputed area.
Stang's goal was to have the area around Anapu, the town where she lived for more than 20 years, declared a sustainable-development reserve. She was on her way to a meeting with local settlers when two gunmen confronted her. Witnesses reported that Stang took out her Bible and was reading aloud from it when the men fired at least six bullets into her.
She was buried in Anapu yesterday. At least 2,000 people attended the rites in the small town, according to news services.
"If the government wanted to honor her memory, it would take them 15 minutes," said Nilo D'Avila, a Greenpeace coordinator. "They would [just] have to sign the two sustainable-development projects she was working for."
Other activists emphasize that preservation of the Amazon is a long-term task. After Mendes's assassination in 1988, Schwartzman noted, it was years before his associates assumed political power in the western state of Acre, where sustainable development is now widely accepted.