About 300 families from the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) occupied the Globo Suinã farm, in the town of Agudos, São Paulo state. The occupation demanded that public land be used to create settlements for the families who had camped in the region for years.
The site, which covers approximately 850 hectares, is part of the Monções Colonial Nucleus, a set of lands acquired by the federal government in 1909 for colonization purposes. The territory occupied today was leased by the federal government to the sugar-alcohol Brazilian company Zilor Energia e Alimentos, headquartered in the town of Lençóis Paulista.
According to the MST, "although the lands of the Monções Colonial Nucleus have already been proven to be public and part of it has been earmarked for the creation of the Zumbi dos Palmares Settlement, in the town of Iaras – where 437 families currently live – there are still around 40,000 hectares being grabbed by companies, including foreign ones."
Brasil de Fato asked Zilor Energia e Alimentos for a statement. The company said the farm "has colony houses and productive sugar cane land cultivated by Agricultural Partners", and it is looking for "more information to clarify the facts about this occupation.”
Day of struggles
The occupation is part of Red April, a set of actions on the national day of struggle that the MST organizes every year in the same month in which the Eldorado do Carajás massacre took place, in 1996. This year, the motto is "Occupy to feed Brazil".
The occupation in Agudos, as well as other actions carried out by the MST this Monday (15) and throughout the week, is taking place at a moment when popular rural movements criticize the lack of federal government policies aimed at agrarian reform.
In addition to demanding a bigger budget for the area, the MST is calling for farmers' access to credit and public policies to be made less bureaucratic and for the settlement of 65,000 families living in camps across the country.
"It's been a year and four months of Lula's third administration, and we believe that the government has taken several initiatives for the population as a whole, but it is still far behind in the agrarian issue," said Margarida Silva, from the national coordination of the MST.
