Brazil: MST Occupation Denounces Land Grabbing and Latifundium

Featured image: Houses of 300 families organized by the MST, Glebe 223 of the Sálvia Farm. Source: AND database.

A Nova Democracia reports that on June 5th, approximately 300 families organized by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) occupied Gleba 223 of the Sálvia Farm, located in Planaltina, an administrative region of the Federal District in Brazil. The action aims to denounce land grabbing, the expansion of latifundium, and land speculation plaguing the territory.

The federal government has declared part of the Sálvia Farm as an area of ​​public interest for agrarian reform purposes. However, despite the formalization on paper, there has been no actual advancements, which prompted the peasants to take the initiative to occupy the land through direct action.

Some of the families present in the occupation have a long history of resistance, having experienced the wrath of big landlords and repressive forces. The violence and terror against those struggling for land is a widely documented structural pattern.

Yet Luiz Inácio’s government continues with a demagogic discourse that does not translate into concrete actions for peasant families. In contrast, the federal government maintains a multi-billion dollar flow of resources to the large-scale agro-exporting latifundium.

AND mentions that, faced with the State’s planned abandonment and the violent offensive of the big landlords, the rural masses have sought the path to independence to guarantee their survival. The Brazilian newspaper states: “Movements such as the League of the Poor Peasants (LCP) and the Union of Communities in Struggle (UCL) demonstrate, through combative occupations, land reclamations, and people’s tribunals, that the conquest of democratic rights and land will not come through conciliation with the ruling classes, but through combative struggle and independent organization of the masses. This process recognizes that latifundium is the basis of the semi-feudal relations that still hinder the country’s development.”

Additionally, the LCP calls on the peoples of the land to organize their own self-defense groups to respond, in the same proportion and caliber, to the criminal attacks perpetrated by gangs of goons and big landlords who attempt to expel the people from their legitimate territories.