News and Updates: Agrarian Reform
The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) denied the appeal of the police officers convicted of killing 19 landless workers in 1996 in Eldorado dos Carajás (PA). The defense requested a mistrial, in 2002, but the ministers of the Court, unanimously, considered the legal formulation of the questions (questions about the crime) presented to the jury....
This August, the National Encampment for Agrarian Reform in Brasilia and mobilizations organized by the MST and by the movements of Via Campesina throughout the country secured important victories for the working class and reinstated agrarian reform on the agenda of both the government and society at large. In the federal capital, more than...
By Diego González | June 11, 2009 Along with the United States and Argentina, Brazil is now one of the strongest bastions of agribusiness on a global level. The world’s tenth largest economy, Brazil is now the nation which suffers the greatest inequality, on a subcontinent which, in its turn, experiences the greatest wealth gap. Just 1.6% of...
The struggle for land has more victims in the Brazilian countryside. This time, five workers were killed. The murders happened on the night of last Monday (July 6th), the Garrote settlement, located in the district of Santo Domingo in Brejo da Madre de Deus (PE). The national coordination of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra (...
The trial of the colonel of the Military Police of Pará who commanded the massacre of Eldorado de Carajás, Mário Pantoja de Oliveira, has been postponed once again. The postponement was granted by the Minister of STJ Laurita Vaz. In 2002, Pantoja was sentenced to 228 years imprisonment by jury trial in Belem. The crime was committed in 1996...
“If we silence ourselves, the stones will cry out” (Pedro Tierra) The Fifth Session of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) will rule this week on the appeal presented by Colonel Mario Colares Pantoja, one of the commanders of the Massacre at Eldorado dos Carajas, which asks to overturn the verdict by which he was condemned to 228 years in...
Dear Friends of the MST,
Including the 2009 May/June bimonthly, the Sem Terra Review has published 50 editions. For this reason, we would like to thank each and every reader for their support of the MST. This publication is an achievement, not only in the struggle for agrarian reform and for rural landless workers, but for the working...
The concentration of land in Brazil continues to be among the highest in the world. In the past few years, the agro-exporter model, based in agribusiness, not only compounded this concentration, but also aggravated the economic and social problems generated by it. For the sake of the monocultural farming of sugar cane for combustion, eucalyptus...
by Michelle Amaral da Silva - last modified 2009-04-16 11:50 Mobilizations throughout Brazil in memory of the 19 landless workers killed 13 years ago in the Massacre of Eldorado de Carajás are planned for the coming weeks. The National Day of Struggle, held in memory of 19 landless workers killed 13 years ago in the massacre of Eldorado de...
By Silvia Adoui From São Paulo, Brazil, NP Radioagencia Week of April 14 The Fazenda Puntumujú, in the extreme south of Bahia, was occupied by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST). Around 1.5 thousand families came, the morning of Wednesday, June 8, at the ranch belonging to the transnational company Veracel Cellulose, arguing that...