Silêncios que matam: o estupro como arma de guerra em conflitos agrários no Brasil e a ineficaz resposta jurídica

Abstract

This research analyzes sexual violence as a technology of power and an instrument of war in agrarian conflicts in Brazil, as well as the justice system's response to this violation. Based on a qualitative and ethnographic approach, grounded in a decolonial, black feminist, and critical legal theoretical framework, the work investigates argues that sexual violence is not a byproduct but a central mechanism for the expropriation of the body-territory and the maintenance of power hierarchies. The methodology involves the documentary analysis of a diverse corpus, which includes annual reports from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), institutional reports from the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, and opinions from internal affairs offices, focusing on the case study of the Kalunga quilombola community (GO). It is argued that the state's legal response, sustained by the coloniality of power and structural racism, constitutes an “architecture of impunity” that operates through penal selectivity, legal epistemicide, and bureaucracy as a technology of power. It is concluded that the ineffectiveness of the law in protecting victims is not a failure but a functional element for the reproduction of the socioeconomic order, and that the struggle for justice materializes in the capacity for resistance and the autonomous political praxis of the communities, which appropriate the fissures in the system to build their own coping strategies.