State of Pará has the highest incidence of recorded conflicts according to the CPT. This chapter considers three of the most prominent massacres of Rural Land Users and Defenders that took place in Pará State over the last decade – Pau D’Arco, massacre of 10 landless workers; the Baião Massacre, where six rural workers and land defenders were murdered; and the killing of Amazon defenders José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria Do Espírito Santo. These massacres help illustrate the nature and scale of some of the crimes, but are but three of hundreds of acts of violence committed in the state of Pará.

The evidentiary material in this chapter include audio-visual timelines and 3D reconstructions of crime scenes by INTERPRT, forensic evidence from case files, photographs, video and audio interviews with victims’ families, community members, and CPT lawyers representing the victims’ families collected by photojournalist, Martin Middlebrook, for Climate Counsel.