Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) has announced, “We are beginning the year 2013 with several struggles, which represent MST’s response to the irresponsibility of governments. If we do not fight for agrarian reform, which is currently at a standstill, and for the punishment of murderer Adriano Chafik, who killed five landless workers and remains at large eight years later, it would be as if we ourselves were all dead.”
The MST also reports that landless workers from the municipality of Tumiritinga blocked a train owned by the mining company Vale in the middle of an idle large landholding known as Rancho Miura. This property is currently under the control of pulp and paper giant Fibria, which is reserving it for the future establishment of a monoculture eucalyptus plantation.
“The workers who are occupying the Fibria estate and 20 other idle landholdings are protesting against the decision of the repressive state apparatus to evict them from these lands, and against the complicity between the Brazilian government on one hand, and transnational corporations and large landholders on the other, as revealed by the fact that the government is using public funds to finance the appropriation of land by companies like Fibria.” The roughly 1,000 landless workers involved in this action added that they will continue to occupy the area where Vale is operating.
