On Thursday morning (13), around a thousand women from the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese) occupied an area belonging to the Suzano Papel e Celulose pulp mill in the city of Aracruz, in the state of Espírito Santo.
The action aims to denounce the environmental impact caused by the eucalyptus monoculture established by the world’s largest pulp producer. The MST initiative is part of the traditional day of struggle female militants organize every March. This year’s slogan is “Agribusiness means violence and environmental crimes, women’s struggle stands against Capital.”
The militants say they have no plans to leave the area and are demanding from Suzano and Brazil’s Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA, in Portuguese) that the company comply with an agreement signed in 2011, according to which it must set aside 22 areas under its possession for agrarian reform.
The sun was rising when the peasant women blocked off part of the ES-445 highway with burning tires and opened a banner that read, “Eucalyptus doesn’t make a forest; it feeds nobody.” Wearing MST caps and chintz clothes, they entered the area, which is 11 kilometers from the factory.
At around 6 a.m., private security agents from the Souza Lima company arrived in the area. So far, military police agents have not arrived in the occupied area.
“Espírito Santo is going through a very difficult moment due to the expansion of eucalyptus monoculture, which started in the 1960s,” says Eliandra Rosa Fernandes, from the national leadership of the MST in Espírito Santo, referring to the installation of the pulp mill companies Aracruz Celulose, Fibria and now Suzano.
“This company [Suzano] has been the reason for the violent removal of fellow quilombolas [whose ancestors were Black enslaved people who managed to run away] in the municipalities of Pedro Canário and Conceição da Barra,” says the MST leader. “In this region, there are Indigenous peoples too. The Tupiniquim and Guarani Indigenous villages are near the pulp mill. Also, here we are, small farmers and landless workers who have been fighting for survival for 40 years now,” she explains.
“Suzano poised our land, changed the course of the rivers, contaminated our waters and killed our people. Therefore, our struggle is very important,” Fernandes said.
A historic clash
The dispute between the world’s largest pulp producer and the grassroots movement is an old one. Between February and April 2023, the MST occupied three Suzano areas in the extreme south of Bahia and another in Espírito Santo, also in the municipality of Aracruz.
For eight days, 1,500 rural workers occupied the company in Bahia, while 200 rural workers did the same in Aracruz, Espírito Santo. Both occupations were dismantled after a court decision to repossess the land, but with the creation of a working group with MST representatives, Suzano representatives and the Ministry of Agrarian Development to resolve the conflict.
Since then, however, not a single landless family has been settled on any of the 2.7 million hectares Suzano controls in Brazil. According to the movement’s calculations, 100,000 families could be settled on this land. This is the number of families the MST says currently live in encampments across the country.
The commitment the MST is pressing for was signed 14 years ago, as a result of complaints about the damage eucalyptus monoculture caused in the region. The damage, according to the movement, has only increased over this period.
BdF asked Suzano for a position but had not received a response by the time this news story was published. It will be updated if the company makes a statement.
Green desert
In the area between northern Espírito Santo and the extreme south of Bahia, a large part of the arable land has been under the control of large pulp producers for about 30 years. Suzano incorporated almost all of it in 2018. In 2024, the company’s net revenue reached US$ 8,13 billion.
Large-scale eucalyptus production uses pesticides – including aerial spraying – and, according to the MST, has triggered a water crisis in the surrounding areas.
“As our water sources are commercialized, poisoned with pesticides, and our forests are being destroyed to expand monoculture, this agribusiness model directly violates society as a whole,” says Débora Nunes, from the national leadership of the MST.
“What agriculture model does society want? What kind of food does society want? What does society want for our resources and natural assets? A protected environment guarantees the existence of this generation and the ones to come. Agribusiness only sees the environment as profit: our water, our land, our trees, our forests. We need to summon society to debate and confront it,” says Nunes.
In the day’s manifesto, the landless women present their actions as “A way of collective confrontation against the order and disdain of agro-hydro-mining-business.” They demand “that this model be held accountable for its crimes against humanity and the environment.” They also defend “Popular agrarian reform” as a “viable alternative to the current destructive model”.
