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Three-thousand families affiliated with the Brazil’s Landless Peasants Movement occupied unproductive agricultural land in the state of Goias belonging to a senator on Sunday.
This is the second occupation of the land purportedly belonging to Eunicio Oliveira, a senator for the right-wing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. The movement, known as the MST, opted to reoccupy the land after the federal government failed to follow through with promises made to landless rural workers after they were evicted from this same land.
The protest encampment "affirms its determination to remain in the area until the government allocates the large parcel of land for the purposes of agrarian reform,” reads a statement by the MST.
The land is comprised of 21,000 hectares, which, according to the MST, have been declared unproductive. It was first occupied by landless families in August, 2014, but they were evicted by 2,000 police officers March 4, 2015.
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During the first occupation, the families cultivated 200 hectares of land. Part of the deal permitting the peaceful eviction of the families was the preservation of the goods produced on the land. However a week after the eviction, the cultivated land was destroyed.
The deal also committed the government to resettling 1,100 landless families within 60 days of the eviction, as well as conducting a study of the legality of the ownership of the land. The MST claims neither was done.
The MST accuses Oliveira of engaging in evictions with the intention of conducting land speculation and that he collaborated with judge Levine Artiaga in order to secure the eviction order.
The MST, the largest social movement in the Americas, fights for land reform and organizes landless families in order to recover unproductive land and put it to use.
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RELATED: A look at the MST’s first conquest
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