Brazilian Rancher Faces Trial in U.S. Nun’s Death

BELEM, Brazil – A rancher goes to trial today in the killing of an American nun whose death while trying to save the Amazon rain forest now threatens to strip away the impunity of the region’s often violent elite.

Vitalmiro Bastos Moura is one of two ranchers accused of ordering the 2005 killing of 73-year-old Dorothy Stang, a naturalized Brazilian originally from Dayton, Ohio.

She spent the last 23 years of her life in Anapu, a hardscrabble town on the edge of the Trans-Amazon Highway, where she helped build schools and taught settlers to defend their rights and to respect the rain forest – earning the enmity of powerful men who hoped to exploit it.

She was slain by six bullets at close range on a muddy patch of road deep in Para state.

The gunman, his accomplice and an intermediary have been convicted in Ms. Stang’s death, but Mr. Moura is the first alleged “mandante” – mastermind – to stand trial.

“If Moura is convicted, ranchers will think twice before ordering this kind of killing,” said Jose Batista Afonso, a lawyer with the Roman Catholic Church’s Land Pastoral, which defends the land rights of the poor.

Prosecutors allege Mr. Moura and rancher Regivaldo Galvao offered the gunmen 50,000 reals – about $25,000 – to kill Ms. Stang over a patch of rain forest that she wanted to preserve and the ranchers wanted cut down for pasture.

The case drew international attention and comparisons to the 1988 killing of environmental activist Chico Mendes. Shortly after the killing, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered the army into the region, suspended logging permits and ordered large swaths of rain forest off-limits to development.

“The international attention to the case has forced the government to move quickly, which has been very good,” Tim Cahill, of Amnesty International, said from London.

Brazil has one of the world’s widest gaps between rich and poor, with 3.5 percent of landowners holding 56 percent of the arable land, and the poorest 40 percent owning just 1 percent. Those inequalities have proven explosive.

Mr. Galvao, who is considerably richer and better connected than Mr. Moura, was freed from jail while his pretrial motions wind their way through the courts. No trial date has been set.

Ms. Stang’s brother, David, said he felt confident Mr. Moura would be convicted.

“I feel Brazil will do Dorothy justice,” he said. “This is not about revenge. This is about justice for the poor.”

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