Brazilian Government

by Cliff Welch

[Ed. Note:  This article is from NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2011 and is part of a special issue on Lula’s legacy.]

Until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victorious 2002 campaign for president, Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) had consistently supported a radical definition of agrarian reform. Seen as a crucial tool for building socialism, agrarian reform would weaken the ruling class fragment that secured its power by controlling large swaths of Brazilian territory and help pave the way for the victory of a PT-controlled government. In the years before he was elected president, Lula went out of his way to participate in land occupations, marches, and forums organized by the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and other peasant groups. He visited jailed leaders like José Rainha

By Vanessa Ramos

An additional survey from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) suggests that food insecurity is higher in rural than in urban areas.

While 6.2% and 4.6% of households in urban areas had moderate or severe levels of food insecurity, respectively, in rural areas the figures were 8.6% and 7%.

In the early hours of Wednesday, about 200 police officers took a violent action and raided the camp Antônio Irmão in Itaquiraí, Mato Grosso do Sul (MS).

The police had no warrant, but invaded the camp and entered the homes of the encampment, searched families and seized material for working in the fields.

The camp has 670 families, including 'brasiguaios' who were expelled from their lands by large landowners in Paraguay and Brazil and who live on the border of both countries.

Four hundred landless families occupied, early on Monday (March 21), the Fazenda Palermo, in the city of São Borja, Rio Grande do Sul. The landless require that the state government finalize the expropriation of the area to settle 54 camped families. They also demand that the federal and state governments immediately settle all of the thousand landless families camped in the state.

By Maria Aparecida

In continuation of the National Day of Struggle of Women, in São Paulo, about 600 women that paralyzed the highway Cônego Domênico Rangoni, have occupied on the afternoon of Thursday (March 3), the headquarters of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) in São Paulo.

Farmers call for the immediate expropriation of the old power plant Ariadnópolis, who has for years blocked the process in INCRA and the

The MST is demanding justice and is calling for the killers of farmers Vanderlei das Neves and José Alves dos Santos to be punished. Both were brutally murdered in ambush on the farm Pinhal Ralo, 16 January 1997, in the city of Rio Bonito do Iguaçu (PR).

“The MST regards the case as one among many which, in more than a decade, have left 19 rural workers dead in Paraná. They are political crimes, committed by the latifúndios [large landed estates] and agribusiness,” reads a release from the Movement.

Below is the release from the MST of Paraná.