Brazil: Crumbs against the “Red April”
This month, President Luiz Inácio (PT) made some actions toward the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in an attempt to stop “Red April,” a period during which the MST carries out land occupations to pressure the government. On March 7, he visited the Quilombola camp, Campo Grande in Minas Gerais, where he announced the expropriation of land for 800 families. Four days later, he promised to allocate R$ 750 million from the budget for purchasing food from family agriculture and for the Land Reform Fund. However, this amount is R$ 3.4 billion less than what was allocated to latifundium through the ‘Plan Safra’.
Among the expropriated lands is the Santa Lúcia farm, the site of the Pau D’Arco Massacre in 2017, where 10 peasants were murdered by police, and whose perpetrators have yet to be convicted. As A Nova Democracia reports, Luiz Inácio’s strategy aims to counteract his decline in popularity since February and reduce MST occupations during “Red April” in order to lessen conflicts with big landlords.
In early March, the MST carried out occupations in several states of Brazil, including Bahia, Espírito Santo, Ceará, Paraná, and Rio de Janeiro, primarily focusing on unproductive lands, except for an occupation of an area belonging to the company Suzano in Espírito Santo. The movement criticized Luiz Inácio’s government, pointing out that they are already in the third month of the third year of his term, which Lula called “the harvest year,” and emphasized the need to advance in expropriations, arguing that the budget allocated for land reform is insufficient. This is not the first time the MST has criticized the government; at the end of last year, its leader, João Pedro Stédile, expressed his dissatisfaction with the “incompetence of the government” and rated the government’s response to the agrarian issue as a 3 out of 10. His statement reflected the MST leaders’ fear of the radicalization of the struggle for land, especially in the context of confrontations between peasants and paramilitaries of “Invasão Zero” in Jaqueira, Pernambuco.
Despite the government’s attempts to improve its image, its practices continue to show a commitment with the latifundium. The expropriations have been deemed “insufficient” by the MST to meet the demand for land reform. In 2023, there were 2,203 agrarian conflicts recorded, the highest number since 1985, with 31 murders, most related to the struggle for land. In the first six months of 2024, there were 1,056 conflicts, indicating a concerning trend.
The Avá-Guarani indigenous people in Paraná were attacked by armed goons at the service of big landlords, and in the Northern region, two peasants were murdered in one month. In the Northeast, 135 families were evicted from the Marielle Franco occupation by court order, with the intervention of police forces. “This act once again highlights the alliance between the judiciary, police forces, and private interests to the detriment of the rights of the people.” stated the Solidarity Committee with the Struggle for Land (COMSOLUTE).
A clear example is the struggle of Barro Branco’s peasants, which are continuously attacked by the paramilitary group “Invasão Zero”, including murder attempts:
