Disputes between farmers and squatters explode in Brazil June 7, 2024
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Jun 6, 2024
- 3 min read
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Disputes between farmers and squatters explode in Brazil
Planaltina (Brazil) (AFP) - In the heart of the Brazilian cerrado, Adonilton Rodrigues works on a small plot of land he illegally occupies as part of a movement fighting the country's long-standing land inequalities.
Deep-rooted tensions over who controls the land have increased as the country's increasingly powerful agricultural lobby fights these occupations both in Congress and in the countryside.
“Without occupation, there is no pressure, and without pressure, we have no land to produce,” said Rodrigues.
He is a local leader of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), which has been occupying land across the country for 40 years.
The group, a powerful symbol of the country's left, says it only occupies land that is unused, subject to legal disputes, or where the owners are accused of modern slavery
However, the agribusiness lobby, which increased its political power during the government of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, is on a mission to crack down on the occupations.
Congress, which is now home to a powerful “ruralist caucus” that defends agricultural interests, is studying a proposal that would exclude occupiers like Rodrigues from receiving government benefits.
The MST “is a property invasion factory”, Congressman Alberto Fraga, from Bolsonaro's Liberal Party, told AFP.
He said that if the occupations don't stop, the party will present a bill to classify them as “terrorism”.
Walking a tightrope
Leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has long been an ally of the MST and, during his first two terms in office (2003-2010), financed land allocations that benefited more than 600,000 families, according to the Agrarian Reform Institute (Incra).
The MST has threatened new land invasions in protest at what it sees as a lack of action by the government to speed up land reform
Since returning to power, Lula has launched a program to provide new land to some 300,000 families or regularize the land they occupy.
But Lula has been walking a tightrope between his former allies and the political reality of Congress, where his party does not have a majority.
He has been accused of making too many concessions to the agricultural lobby, such as signing a bill that relaxes the rules on the use of pesticides.
“Congress today is a stronghold of the extreme right,” said Ceres Hadich, national coordinator of the MST, adding that part of the body is connected via an “umbilical cord” to agribusiness and big landowners.
Brazil - a major exporter of soy, meat, and corn - has “one of the highest concentrations of (agricultural) land on the planet”, said Sergio Sauer, a professor at the University of Brasilia.
Colonial-era land inequalities have left 61% of the vast nation in the hands of a small percentage of landowners, preventing many small farmers and indigenous communities from entering.
And the conflicts are becoming more intense.
The Pastoral Commission, linked to the Catholic Church, recorded more than 2,200 violent episodes on disputed land in 2023, ranging from threats to murder, destruction of property, and evictions. This was the highest number since records began in 1985.
The murder and the militia
The recent murder of a Brazilian indigenous leader involved in the occupation of ancestral lands in the northeastern state of Bahia highlighted the growing aggression against the occupiers.
A large group of landowners and ranchers banded together at the beginning of 2023 in Bahia under the name “Zero Invasion” to protect their properties from occupation.
The group is being investigated by the police for the murder of the indigenous leader and has been classified as a militia.
One of its leaders, Luiz Uaquim, denied the group's involvement in the murder.
“We are facing a criminal group that invades properties, destroys everything,” he said in a statement on Instagram.
“We are working together with the parliamentary fronts to put an end to these invasions once and for all.”
For farmer Rodrigues, the landless have no other option.
He lives with 80 other families on 17 hectares (42 acres) that they began occupying in 2012 on the outskirts of the capital Brasília.
The land is part of a 1,700-hectare farm and has been the subject of a decade of legal litigation.
"Justice is very slow, isn't it? And the issue of agrarian reform doesn't move forward if there isn't a struggle for the land,” said Rodrigues.
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