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Arrests in Nisio Gomes murder case follow the “Dying for Land” project | Beneath the Boom

Major arrests in Nisio Gomes murder case follow “Dying for Land” project

July 20, 2012

Since the UBC International Reporting Program’s “Dying for Land” video ran on The New York Times website, Brazil’s federal police have arrested 18 people in the high-profile murder of Nisio Gomes, the Guarani tribe leader whose story was detailed in the video. Of the 18 arrests, 10 were made just days after the video went live. An article from Times correspondent Simon Romero on the Guarani tribe’s struggle to reclaim their ancestral land accompanied the video project.

The program spent nine months reporting, researching and producing the video in a collaborative effort with the Times.

Original New York Times article:

ARAL MOREIRA, Brazil — The gunmen emerged from pickup trucks at dawn, their faces hidden in balaclavas, and stormed into an encampment surrounded by a field of soybean plants near this town on Brazil’s porous frontier with Paraguay.

Witnesses said the men then shot Nísio Gomes, 59, a leader of the indigenous Guarani people; loaded his corpse onto a truck; and drove away.

“We want the bones of my father,” said Valmir Gomes, 33, one of Nísio’s sons, who witnessed the November attack. “He’s not an animal to drag away like that.”

Continue reading at the Times website.