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.
In the early hours of Wednesday, about 200 police officers took a violent action and raided the camp Antônio Irmão in Itaquiraí, Mato Grosso do Sul (MS).
The police had no warrant, but invaded the camp and entered the homes of the encampment, searched families and seized material for working in the fields.
The camp has 670 families, including 'brasiguaios' who were expelled from their lands by large landowners in Paraguay and Brazil and who live on the border of both countries.
Four hundred landless families occupied, early on Monday (March 21), the Fazenda Palermo, in the city of São Borja, Rio Grande do Sul. The landless require that the state government finalize the expropriation of the area to settle 54 camped families. They also demand that the federal and state governments immediately settle all of the thousand landless families camped in the state.
The women of Via Campesina held a National Day of Women’s Struggle in light of March 8 - International Women’s Day – to denounce the
extreme gravity of the situation in the Brazilian countryside.
By Maria Aparecida
In continuation of the National Day of Struggle of Women, in São Paulo, about 600 women that paralyzed the highway Cônego Domênico Rangoni, have occupied on the afternoon of Thursday (March 3), the headquarters of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) in São Paulo.
