Brazil: One Thousand Peasant Families Resist the Police Siege during Land Occupation
Featured image: Peasant families occupying land in Pará. Source: A Nova Democracia
On the 1st of May, one thousand peasant families occupied land in Pará in order to pressure the government into ceding the land to them and guaranteeing their right to said land.
The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) denounced that the occupation triggered a siege from police, big landlords and goons. The siege lasted 48 hours, and blocked the access to the land, preventing the entry of water and food until May 3.
MST denounces in a note that the State government “under the justification of defending the so-called right to private property, sent an unproportionate detachment of Civil and Military police” to intimidate the peasants.
The conflict took place within the context of increasing concentration of landless peasant families. The Land and Freedom camp in Pará, gathers more than five thousand families which were evicted from different parts of the region due to mining. Meanwhile, the federal government announced the investment of R$ 70 billion in mining, causing an increase of informal work related to low salaries and exploitation.
As the newspaper A Nova Democracia states: “Before these conditions, more families are finding themselves without housing or means of support, making the struggle for land an alternative to live and work.”
However, the state of Pará, together with Rondônia, tops the statistics of murders in the land conflicts in 2025, amounting to seven murders. The figures show that 77% of the executors of these crimes were big landlords.
You can read more on the increase of violence in the Brazilian countryside in the following article:
