Reuters/Jamil Bitar

November 25 march in Brazil's capital organized by Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST).

“In April and May there could be a big struggle in this country,” João Pedro Stédile, an MST leader, told the Reuters news agency along the mile-long march through Brasilia.

Last spring thousands of peasants and rural workers, organized by the MST, carried out dozens of land occupations across Brazil. More than 10,000 families joined in the actions.

Landless workers in Brazil are trying to reverse one of the most unequal distributions of land in the world: 1 percent of the population of 175 million owns 40 percent of the land, and the poorest 40 percent of Brazilians own less than 1 percent.

In defense of their wealth and power, big landowners have expanded their use of private militias to terrorize peasants and rural workers into submission.

In 2003, 63 of those who organized and joined land occupations were killed, according to Catholic Church investigations. In 2004, 73 have been killed in the struggle for land, the highest number since 1996. That was the year of the Eldorado dos Carajas massacre, in which 19 rural workers were killed by the military police.

The Workers Party government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which took office in January 2003, has promised the “resettlement” of 400,000 landless peasant families during his four-year term.

The social-democratic regime hopes to achieve capitalist stability in this semicolonial nation through an increase in wealth for Brazilian manufacturers and agricultural exporters that will supposedly produce a trickle down of jobs and improved conditions for workers and farmers, thereby heading off a social explosion.

The president has tried to convince the rural population that land occupations are not needed to confront the big landowners, while demagogically identifying with the need for agrarian reform. “I do not imagine that in a country of this size, with the amount of land that it has, a violent occupation is necessary,” he said in June 2003.

The MST, which supported da Silva in the October 2002 election, announced a moratorium on land takeovers on Jan. 1, 2003, to coincide with the inauguration of the new president. It called off the moratorium two months later because of the failure of the government to act on its promises. At the time, the MST demanded land for 1 million rural families by 2006 as a first step in addressing the gross disparity in ownership.

Nearly halfway through da Silva’s term in office, the government has reportedly provided land for 100,000 families.

The November 25 protest of 8,000 in Brasilia was the largest demonstration of its kind ever held in the capital, organizers told Reuters.

Dozens of peasant organizations came together to protest the lack of government funding for resettlement onto unused land. The MST charged that Brazilian finance minister Antonio Palocci and other government officials had cut spending on social programs in order to meet demands by imperialist powers made through the International Monetary Fund to cut social services in order to continue having access to IMF loans. At $440 billion, the Brazilian debt is the largest of any semicolonial nation.

At a December 10 meeting of government ministers, the president boasted that the cuts in government spending would make the country less vulnerable to international financial crises, Bloomberg News reported. Da Silva said these cuts would lead to advances for Brazilian workers and farmers. “We are all filled with the feeling that Brazil’s time has come,” he said. “This is the time for development, for economic growth with generation of jobs, for distribution of wealth and social inclusion.”

Those seeking to make good on the government’s promises to provide land have often suffered a violent fate. On November 20, about 15 hooded thugs fired on an MST settlement of 250 landless workers in the Jequitinhonha River valley, 500 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro in the state of Minas Gerais. They left five dead, including a boy, and wounded 10.

The 80 families have been occupying the site since May 2002. Police have arrested three men for the crime, and are investigating whether a local large landowner had ordered the attack, according to media reports. MST members responded by organizing the takeover of property of the landowner in Bahia state.

The deadly attack on peasants in Minas Gerais came a day after the Court of Justice in the state of Pará refused to order a new trial for dozens of military policemen for their role in the April 1996 massacre of 19 rural workers at an MST settlement in Eldorado dos Carajas County. The ruling came after years of appeals for justice in the case by the MST.

“Although the hearing upheld the convictions of the officers who commanded the operation,” Amnesty International reported November 23, “it appears a further 128 policemen suspected of involvement in the massacre will never be tried for their part.”  
 
 
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