On September 1, 2005, he was selected to lead the military contingent of MINUSTAH, the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, replacing his fellow Brazilian, Lieutenant-General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira.
State news agency Agência Brasil said Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira Da Matta Bacellar was the victim of "a firearms accident".
[6] In January 2011, diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released in the United States diplomatic cables leak, revealed that Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández suspected Bacellar had been assassinated by a group of Contras led by Guy Philippe, a former soldier and police chief and a Haitian anti-Aristide "rebel" leader that had been armed by the USA.
[7] The same cables also reveal that the contras, according to President Fernandez, had the mandate of creating chaos in Haiti and had even killed a Canadian and a Jordanian MINUSTAH member in the past and that the killing could have been a response to Bacellar's reluctance to use force in Haiti's shanty town Cité Soleil regardless of pressure from Washington and a pressure campaign by the Chamber of Commerce head Reginald Boulos and André Apaid, the latter a sweatshop king in Haiti and both main figures in the civic front named Group 184 that played a main role in ousting President Aristide in the 2004 coup.
On January 17, 2006, it was announced that Brazilian General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira would be the permanent replacement for Bacellar as the head of the United Nations' Haiti military force.