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Terra nas Nossas Mãos

"It is incumbent upon the Republic to expropriate for social interest, for purposes of agrarian reform, rural property which is not performing its social function, against prior and fair compensation in agrarian debt bonds with a clause providing for maintenance of real value and redeemable within a period of up to twenty years as from the second year of issue, and the use of which shall be defined in the law."
- Article 184 [Agrarian Reform], the Brazilian Constitution

About the Landless Workers Movement (MST)

The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra (MST, the Landless Workers Movement) is the largest social movement in Latin America. It emerged as a response to social and economic disparities in Brazil, where less than three percent of the population owns two-thirds of the arable land. Unfortunately, much of this land is not even used productively.

Sixty percent of the country's farmland lies idle. In an attempt to address this inequity, the Brazilian Constitution states that land ought to serve a social purpose. In the face of government inaction, hundreds of thousands of landless workers have demanded that Brazilian constitutional law be upheld and that unproductive land be redistributed to those who would cultivate it for the benefit of a wider community.

In 1985, with support from the Catholic Church, hundreds of families used lawful tactics to take over a fallow plantation in the south of Brazil, successfully establishing a cooperative in that area. Two years later the Brazilian government gave these families title to the land. Many others have followed suit, since peaceful, legal land occupations have proven to be the most effective, if not the only way to call the attention to these landless families' economic needs. Since 1985, much progress has been made in the rural workers' struggle to acquire their own land. Two hundred and fifty thousand families have won titles to more than fifteen million acres. Yet this number is meager relative to the 4.8 million families who live in poverty while they await widespread Agrarian Reform to be implemented.

In the meantime, those rural workers who seek to force the government to implement its own laws face a dangerous paradox. Once the rural workers stage a land takeover, INCRA (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform), the government body which is responsible for the procedures on land reform, does not allow the families to work the land until they win its title. The government doesn't want to increase the value of the land before they compensate the former owners for its loss.

Yet the rural workers cannot leave the land to seek temporary work elsewhere because this would weaken their pressure on the government, thereby putting their objective of gaining title to the land at risk. In order to remain encamped, the MST families must find a way to meet both the requests of the INCRA as well as their physical needs. This is no easy task since the whole land title process lasts more than two years. Despite generous donations of clothing and food from supporters, supplies often dry up before the MST members succeed in their campaign. To make matters worse, MST workers must deal with the owners of the land they occupy.

Although the MST engages in peaceful occupations in accordance with Constitutional law, several farmers have used violence in an attempt to expel the landless families from their estates. In 2000, the newspaper Jornal do Brasil reported that of the 1,207 rural crimes committed, only 85 were prosecuted and a mere 8 defendants sentenced, meaning that 93% of the crimes related to Agrarian Reform are still awaiting justice, including the Massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás.

"Nelson Massini, an expert in medical law from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) concluded yesterday that 10 of the 20 corpses from the slaughter at Curionópolis were killed at point-blank range. Four bodies were found with short-range bullet wounds in the forehead. The rest of the bodies showed signs of being severely beaten before being killed."
Zero Hora, (popular Brazilian newspaper) April 20, 1996

MST's history is rife with struggle and loss. More than 1500 landless workers have been killed in the last 15 years and reactionary violence against them shows no sign of abating. Landless workers and MST leaders are continually subject to attacks from large estate owners, hired-gunmen, and in the case of Eldorado dos Carajás, from military police. The massacre at Eldorado dos Carajás, in the northern state of Pará, demonstrates that while the government affirms the citizens rightful claims to the land, these same officials may not protect the underprivileged as they exercise these legal rights.

On March 5, 1996, thousands of landless workers voted to stage a non-violent occupation of the Macaxeira estate in Eldorado dos Carajás. Encouraged by promises from the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), the government body responsible for awarding land titles, the MST followed though with the occupation. The president of the Land Institute of the state of Pará, Ronaldo Barata, promised to send food and medical supplies to the workers at Macaxeira within the week, and to assist the thirty-five hundred landless families involved in the occupation. The peasants had every reason to be hopeful.

The 30-day deadline passed. Neither food nor medicine was delivered to the camp. The workers did not receive title to the land. Frustrated by the discrepancy between government policy and political realities, the workers resolved to march to the state capital, Belém, 800 kilometers from the Macaxeira estate. In all, approximately 1500 workers embarked upon a journey that was intended to raise public awareness of their plight, but which in the end became mired in violence of tragic proportions.

Hungry and exhausted, the landless workers rested on the third day of the march. Without resources to continue, the workers reevaluated their situation. They decided to blockade the highway and ask the government to provide food and buses to transport them to Belém. On April 16th, Major José Maria Pereira de Oliveira agreed to deliver 10 tons of food and 50 buses to carry the workers to Belém, in order to begin negotiations with the Superintendent of INCRA. Encouraged by the promise of dialogue, the workers dismantled their blockade and camped along side of the road. They waited in vain for the supplies to arrive.

The next morning, military police lieutenant Jorge Nazaré Araújo dos Santos unilaterally terminated the negotiations. He announced that neither food nor transportation would be provided. In protest, the landless workers resurrected their blockade.

At 4:00 pm, 155 military police surrounded the landless workers. Hours later, nineteen workers lay dead, while sixty-nine were seriously wounded. Newspaper accounts and eyewitness testimonies note that the military police fired at point blank range. Both the MST and experts from the University of Campinas assert that the military police also fired the first shots. The military police deny this charge. Autopsies indicate that the majority of victims died after they were taken into custody.

Despite dubious legitimacy, a trial for the massacre was convened in August of 1999. The MST attorneys claimed that Judge Ronaldo Valle systematically restricted the powers of the prosecution by, among other things, prohibiting the introduction of plenary documents gathered within the legally prescribed period. As a result, the MST launched an extensive public awareness campaign about the procedures in the trial, gathering enough support to force a new one.

The result has been an ongoing process that Amnesty International went on record as stating, "the longest trial in the history of Brazil, totaling 120 hours in five separate sections, [only further exposing] the deep faults in the system of justice of the State of Pará."  All state judges assigned to these trials have acted in ways that raise doubts about their impartiality with regard to this case. The first judge absolved the three main defendants accused of orchestrating the massacre:  Colonel Mário Pantoja, Major José Maria Oliveira and Captain Raimundo Lameira. The second and third Judges, Edinéia Oliveira Tavares and Cláudio Montalvão, declined to preside over the cases.  The fourth judge, Eva do Amaral Coelho, whom the press has recorded as friendly with Ivanildo Alves, Captain of the Military Police of the state of Pará, tried to disallow the principal evidence of the prosecution:  a scientific study done by the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) that proved that military officers had shot to kill the peasants.

MST lawyers fought the judge's ruling and, in the end, demonstrated that that the UNICAMP findings were indeed an integral part of the trial.  Judge Coelho was removed from the trial and the State Court of Pará then appointed a new judge, Dr. Roberto Moura, who took over the case on May 10, 2002.

Surprisingly, despite receiving a case whose documents totaled 14 volumes of hundreds of pages each, Moura scheduled the trial to begin three days later on May 13, 2002. MST lawyers, deeming this act as evidence of judicial prejudice, removed themselves from the case and did not follow the trial.

The trial, as expected, ran short:  the cases of all 142 policemen, soldiers and officers involved were judged in only three sessions.  In one session alone, the cases of 127 policemen and their actions were determined at the same time. In Brazil, when the judicial process conducts a legal examination, it is on a case-by-case basis. The prosecution only had three hours to present evidence against each defendant.  Done one at a time, as the law required, the prosecution simply found it impossible to present evidence against all the accused policemen in a single session. Thus, the police were acquitted due to the failure to produce evidence.

In the end, only two commanders were found guilty, Colonel Pantoja and Major Oliveira.  Both, along with Captain Lameira, were formerly absolved but due to the compelling evidence against them were returned to trial.  Colonel Pantoja was found guilty of the murder of the nineteen peasants, and the court sentenced him to 228 years in prison. Major Oliveira was sentenced to 158 years in prison.  But instead of being arrested, these men remain free pending appeal (Captain Lameira, was acquitted).

Defense lawyers of the convicted commanders petitioned to annul sentencing.  They argued that since the police and soldiers, the executioners of 19 workers, were found innocent, their commanders should also be found innocent.  In other words, how could those giving orders have broken the law if those who followed their orders were found not to have broken the law?

The Public Prosecutor also appealed to the Court of Justice to annul the decision of the court, denouncing the ridiculous procedures in the trial, claiming that the judgment contradicted the legal documents of the case.

As it stands, if the Court of Justice of the State of Pará annuls the judgment, it is certain that MST lawyers will return to support a new trial. If the Court of Justice does not annul the judgment that acquitted the police, it risks being discredited before the country. However, another possibility still remains to all parties: to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice.

For the time being, MST continues its efforts to transfer cases involving human rights violations to federal courts in Brasilia so as to escape the excessive influence of local authorities and powerful landowners over trials affecting them.

This transfer depends on speeding up the Brazilian Congress' approval of the bill, which, due to its complexity, has been more than 10 years in the making. The new government, according to its own declarations, has little interest in advancing it in its present form.

Violence against landless workers remains an issue of life and death in Brazil.  During these trials, on January 2002, another crime marked the suffering of the landless people. The incident took place in the wealthy state of São Paulo. Scarcely a day after the occupation of the Santa Rita estate by MST workers, José Rainha Jr. -- one of the pioneers of the MST's program of strategic land occupation -- was caught in an ambush and shot in the back. The farm had already been lawfully seized by the INCRA on behalf of the MST, but the former owners refused to leave the land. Investigations led the police to hit men hired by the estate owner's brother, Roberto Junqueira, to kill Rainha. Contrary to what has happened to the "authors" of the massacre in Eldorado dos Carajás, Junqueira was immediately arrested.

However, so long as some rural elites resort to violence as a means of solving land issues, the landless workers will continue to be at risk. In this sense, the Eldorado dos Carajás trial is one of political importance, given that its fair execution will serve to deter others from engaging in rural violence.