[02/02/06] MST News: In Rio Grande do Sul, pesticides and shooting used against Landless families

Encamped MST families in the municipality of Nonoai (RS) marched yesterday to the public prosecutor’s office with accusations of violence that had been carried out by gunmen of a ranch in front of the encampment. An agricultural plane belonging to the rancher Alberto Ângelo Tagliari, owner of the Real Ranch, was used to spray pesticide over the families while gunmen fired on their shacks. The MST handed over photos and bullets, proving the accusation.

The roughly 500 families who are camping alongside the highway (RS-040) for three months are asking the court to provide security. Marcelo José da Costa Petry, the prosecutor in the municipality, said that he was going to investigate the case and that there may be apprehension of the weapons and jail for those accused. The Military Police also advised that it would send a biochemist to the camp to investigate if there were traces of chemicals on the shacks. The ranch area has around 2800 thousand hectares and Tagliari has another 52 thousand hectares of land in the country.

Ivanir Loureiro of the MST encampment coordinating body says that the presence of the attempt against the encampment is a common fact in that region. “Here, in truth, this has been going on for a while. Gunmen terrorize families and children. Around 8:00 a.m., a plane began to spray poison on top of the shacks, with gunmen shooting at people from the top of a truck, he said yesterday. According to reports from another person in the encampment, Givanildo Poncio, around 15 gunmen, divided into two trucks, shot more than 100 times against the encampment.

However, according to the rancher’s lawyer, Mauro Machado, the plane was contracted to put “recommended non-poisonous defensive‿ on the planted area because the ranch employees were prevented from applying it with a spraying machine last Monday. The landless state that the plane had been spraying the area for an hour, including the encampment and flying low over the shacks. “This is not the only case; they are doing this a lot‿, emphasized Poncio. The people from the encampments are doing a survey to verify if there are people who were made ill by the poison. The son of a small farmer neighboring the ranch had to go to the hospital.

Reintegration

Besides what happened, the encampment is going through ownership re-integration, issued by the Department of Roads. The request had already been denied by Judge Lisiane Marques Pires, of Nonoai last year. On that occasion she also put together an agreement in a public hearing between the Landless, the government agencies and City Hall for water to be taken to the people in encampments that would suffer from evictions if they were displaced to another area. However, Lisiane went on vacation and the substitute judge, Eduardo Coelho Antonello Benites, went back and overthrew the agreement, specifying that ownership of the encampment area should be reintegrated.

For the MST legal staff, Coelho’s decision shows the relationship of the judge to the local ranchers. The slow pace of land reform also aggravates the situation. In 2005, fewer than 161 properties were targeted by the federal government for settlements of the state’s families.

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In Portuguese -
This article can be accessed in its original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1569.htm