Small Farmers in Pernambuco Need Your Help
Under the Brazilian Constitution, landless families have the right to occupy arable land that is not being used in order to grow food to feed themselves.
Under the Brazilian Constitution, landless families have the right to occupy arable land that is not being used in order to grow food to feed themselves.
Representatives of the State Secretariat for Human Rights, the State Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and the Ombudsman of the Department of Social Defense visited, on Tuesday (July 3, 2012), the Gregório Bezerra encampment in the city of Altinho, rural Pernambuco (PE).
The visit had as its main objective to present the results of several investigations open to punish acts of violence.
The camp has been the scene of systematic violence by gunmen hired by landowners of the farm Serro Azul, owned by Luis Reis, since April last year. Since the beginning of this year, the landowner has become even more violent and verbal threats and intimidation came to blows.
On March 22, Reiss beat Eraldo Alves da Silva, known as Seu Antonio, a landless workers in the encampment, while he was kept under the barrel of a gun, accompanied by two gunmen.
By Jose Coutinho Junior
The Minister of Agrarian Development (MDA), Pepe Vargas, in an interview with Carta Maior declared the decrease in the coming years of the number of families settled pursuant to agrarian reform.
The minister also claims that the number of families living in the encampments has decreased. For Alexandre Conceição, from the National Coordination of the MST, the statements mask the reality of the Brazilian countryside.
Check out the interview with the Página do MST:
Dear Friends of the MST,
On behalf of my brothers and sisters of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, I salute you.
I write to tell you about the grave threats we are facing here in Pernambuco, Brazil, and ask for your help.
Relying on the absence of the state and on the collusion between judicial powers and local police, farmers in Pernambuco are intensifying violence against Landless rural workers in Pernambuco.
During the reoccupation of the Rio dos Santos estate in Bom Jesus das Selves in Maranhão last Saturday (25), a pregnant woman of six months was knocked down by estate owner and land thief, José Osvaldo Damião. She ended up losing her baby.
An elderly man of 72 years was among other workers assaulted by the landowner and his gunmen.
The year is ending and again we have the feeling of accomplishment for all the struggles, activities, and alliances that we’ve built and engaged in with all the various sectors of the working class. In another difficult year we had to carry out great struggles against agribusiness that continues its offensive against our lands, natural resources, and public investments.
Military Police (PM) resorted to fierce and brutal measures on Wednesday May 18 in their efforts to clear a section of land in the Nova Esperança neighourhood in Barra do Riacho, Aracruz. The Nova Esperança neighbourhood was formed following the occupation of an area in the Barra do Riacho district, and it now contains 330 families (1,600 inhabitants), among which 550 are children.
By Maurício Hashizume
MST occupies an area of 1,000 hectares on the border of Ceará and Paraíba
April 7, 2011
By Marcelo Matos
Fortaleza, Ceará
Da Página do MST
About 80 families organized by the MST encampments in Ceará and Paraíba, occupied the Gravatá farm, which has 1,000 hectares in the municipality of Mauriti.