Cattle Rustling
and how to Catch the Thieves
(1135 words)
Our ranch neighbor
lives 60 miles (about 100 km) from our
house. A few years ago, his numerous,
some well-educated some outright stupid,
children, got him into financial trouble
through their real estate speculation. A
year after I had taken over the large
ranch enterprise we bought his 4000
square kilometers of ranch next to us
bordering on our land and left him in a
ten square kilometer plot with an
oil-donkey. He and his whole family,
thirteen children and numerous
grandchildren and great grandchildren,
now live off the income from the oil. He
is not poor, but he is no longer very
rich. He flies a Vietnam era Bell
Hue helicopters and lives in a
compound that is almost a small village.
We call him Pancho Villa,
in remembrance of the Mexican
revolutionary, because he flies around in
his helicopter with two colts 45 in his
holster and an Uzi machine gun on
the empty pilots seat next to him. His
real name is Jos Doroteo Arango
Armbula.
Some years ago, in
1992 he lost one of his grandchildren
through a kidnapping. The 14-year-old
girl, Anne-Maria Arango Armbula-de
Suiza, called "Ini"
was the daughter of his unsuccessful,
stupid and loud-mouthed eldest son. She,
as well as her German mother Brigitte,
from Aschaffenburg and her older
sister Arabella, often came to my
brothers ranch, have afternoon tea, ride
horses, play Polo or Squash with us and
go up in the hot air balloon with me. Ini
was beautiful and very bright, spoke
fluently English and German
besides Portuguese. She wrote
funny and clever stories for the local
newspaper in Goiania and
had her own radio program that was
transmitted twice a week. We all liked
her very much. Despite her young age, she
was also a terrific helicopter pilot,
being able to fly one of our small Robinson
22 two seat helicopters by the seat
of her pants. These small helicopters are
used for driving cattle and for
controlling individual herds. The pilot
and his helper are a new form of a
cowboy.
In the summer of
1992, cattle rustling was and still is a
big issue on our ranch as it is on other
large ranches. The people who steal the
livestock are well organized and usually
steal animals for which they already have
an order. Cattle is marked with a chip
and a label that is on one of their ears.
It is a bit like the piercing of an
earring. Some of them are still
branded..The chip and a plastic label has
all the data of the animal. The cattle
rustlers drive their large eighteen-wheel
trucks into areas that are remote and
often not well controlled by the ranch
managers. There they cut off the ear of
the animal and then heard them into their
large trucks. Then they drive the trucks
with forged papers of their load into one
of the towns, usually in another nearby
state where the “client” is
already waiting, having arranged a
purchase in a rigged public auction.
Sometimes the auction is dispensed with,
especially when the recipient is sure
that all the links to the original thefts
have been covered. Often the stolen
cattle go directly into small operation
slaughterhouses and then their meat ends
up in meat packers as half bodies of
cows.
When in the month
of August 1992, Ini had some
vacations and spent time with her mother Brigitte
Arango Armbula-de Suiza on my
brothers ranch, I suggested to Ini
that we could try and stop some of the
thieves by marking the top of the large
eighteen-wheel trucks with a bright paint
so that they could be identified before
they disappeared to some nearby towns and
sold our cattle cheaply. I had talked to
my chief pilot about it, suggesting that
we could fly our small helicopters over
the trucks when we were sure that they
were the actual vehicles of the thieves
and then empty some bright pain t on
their roofs. Ini was immediately
ready for the adventure.
Our chief pilot, a
Canadian with lots of flying hours, who
at the time was short of well qualified
pilots, though wanted to be absolutely
sure that Ini who had a Canadian
and a Brazilian license, was up to the
task and knew the risks. After initial
hesitations and a lot of flying with her,
the chief pilot agreed to the scheme. Her
mother also agreed that Ini was
allowed to go ahead with the project. The
idea was that Ini flew low over
the truck, starting from behind, so that
the driver and his crew could not see us,
and I then would empty a large bucket of
bright red, rapidly drying paint over the
top of the truck. That way the truck
could later be identified and stopped by
another group of my brothers people.
Apart from the required flying skills,
this was not without danger since many of
the thieves had Kalashnikovs,
illegal submachine guns, which they used.
The key was to approach the truck from
behind, empty the paint bucket and then
immediately turn off so that the driver
would not see us. Ini proofed to
be an incredible pilot and over ten days
of flying we identified 23 trucks with
our method. Only once did we endanger
ourselves, when the paint was released
late and covered the windscreen of the
truck. All the people driving and loading
the trucks were arrested and served
considerable time in Brazilian jails.
Two weeks later, on
the weekend, when Ini was driven
back by the driver and a security
contingent to her German boarding
school in Brasilia, she was
kidnapped on the road. The driver was
given a note to carry to her grandfather
and the three-security people were shot
death. The kidnapping had nothing to do
with our flying adventure. No one was
saying exactly what had happened and why
this abduction took place. Two weeks
after the abduction of the girl, her
finger was sent in a packet to the
grandfather. Three weeks later, they
found the girl's body on the main road in
the area, thirty-five kilometers away
from our house. Later it was said, the
abduction was done by criminals who were
after Pancho Villas money.
Though, my own security people who have
very good contacts in the area, told me
that it had been a business abduction.
This type of incidence is quit
disturbing.
The situation has
vastly improved, but such cases still
occur. Sometimes it is the drug or
smuggling business, but more often it is
about land or concessions and about
political rivalries. In spite of
everything, it is worth to live in Brazil
and the positive things are still much
greater than such negative incidents,
however sad they are on a personal level.
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