Paid in Blood

In 2013, rural workers occupy the Santa Lúcia Farm in Pará, at the border of the Amazon rainforest, where 200 landless families turn pastureland into small farms. In May 2017, a civil and military police operation surrounds the settlement, known as the Jane Júlia Revolutionary Area. Ten workers are killed, and no police officers are injured. As relatives confront the authorities over the bodies, one grieving man points out, "My uncle was shot only in the face. If it was a shootout, why was he only shot in the face?"

Fernando, a surviving rural worker, describes the morning of the attack, explaining that it was 7 a.m. And raining heavily while they sat under a tarp drinking coffee. Instead of making arrests, the officers arrived shouting, "Police! Don't run, or you will die," and immediately opened fire. Fernando recounts how his close friend Bruno was shot and fell on top of his legs just ten minutes after hugging him and asking to share a blanket for the night. Following the massacre, Fernando and the other survivors enter the Witness Protection Program.

A year later, at a memorial for the ten victims—including a murdered friend named Jane Júlia, lawyer José Vargas Sobrinho Júnior addresses the workers. Vargas explains that he took up their legal representation because Jane was his friend, and he urges the community to keep the Santa Lúcia case alive. Because of his involvement, Vargas is enrolled in the Human Rights Defenders Protection Program; after someone kills his dog and breaks into his house, his wife and daughters relocate far away. He notes that indirect threats frequently reach him through mutual friends, warning, "Tell that lawyer guy, that when the dust settles, we'll kill him."

Fernando eventually leaves the protection program and refuses an offer to relocate elsewhere, returning instead to farm his plot at Santa Lúcia. Another survivor also leaves the program and returns to the settlement, staying in a hammock beside Fernando's bed while recovering from the trauma of the rainy morning attack. Meanwhile, a preliminary human rights report indicates that the victims at Santa Lúcia were beaten, tortured, and executed at close range. Although a state court grants the temporary arrest of all 13 police officers involved in the deaths, all of the accused officers later remain free.

When the court moves to enforce an eviction order against the 200 families occupying Santa Lúcia, Vargas and the workers travel to a hearing at the Court of Justice. Speaking in the courtroom, Fernando defends his livelihood and connection to the soil: "All I want is to work the land. And that place is where I belong. I didn't die there, but I almost did. I bled on that land." That night, the judge lifts the eviction order and schedules a judicial inspection of the farm.

Back at the settlement, Fernando builds a fish pond, tends to his trees, and speaks about his past life working in wealthy households in Brasília before returning to the countryside. As Jair Bolsonaro campaigns for and wins the presidency, promising to classify Landless Movement actions as terrorism, tensions persist around the farm. Vargas explains to a journalist named Ana that prior to the 2017 massacre, private security guards had been attacking the workers' camp, leading to an asymmetrical conflict after a farm security guard was killed. The pending eviction order is subsequently suspended again due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the morning of January 1, 2021, police officers raid Vargas's home and arrest him on a murder charge. Vargas's lawyer, Marcelo Mendanha, explains to Ana that the charge stems entirely from a WhatsApp audio message found on a colleague's phone regarding a missing client named Cicero, in which Vargas jokingly said, "We made Cicero disappear to sort it out easily." Although the colleague responded with laughter and the case has no connection to land reform, the prosecutor—who also worked on the Pau d'Arco massacre case, treats the remark as a confession.

With Vargas in custody, Fernando tells Ana about a mysterious helicopter flying over the farm and relays a warning from a dismissed officer: the accused police are planning to eliminate the witnesses at the farm so there can be no trial. After 25 days in prison, Vargas is placed under house arrest with an ankle monitor. Shortly afterward, Fernando sends a message stating that he has sold his plot and is leaving for Redenção the next day because of the threats: "I've been living on the edge. I've been anxious and worried, so it's better if I go away."

Hours after sending that message, Fernando is executed at the farm with a shot to the back of the head while tending to his chickens. Under house arrest, a grieving Vargas questions whether his legal work caused the deaths of Jane and Fernando, and he records a statement warning that if he dies in an apparent suicide or robbery, "it will be their doing." Ana hands Fernando's recorded statements detailing the police threats over to Police Chief Antonio Mororó, while the defense attorney for the charged officers denies any police involvement, claiming the rural workers were "career criminals" killing each other.

The police investigation into Fernando's death ultimately ignores the evidence regarding the officers' threats, and terrified by the murder, the remaining massacre survivors flee the settlement and refuse to testify. After one year, Vargas's house arrest is lifted, and he returns to Santa Lúcia for a community meeting, telling the gathered workers, "And if they did this to make me stop practicing law, they'll have to kill me." As latestnetflix.com notes in its coverage, the murder charges against Vargas are dropped after filming ends, and while one man is convicted of killing Fernando in what police conclude was a robbery where nothing was taken, the officers charged in the 2017 massacre remain on active duty with no trial date set as the government begins legalizing the settlement in 2025.