Land disputes reach Brazilian Congress

Founded nearly 40 years ago, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) is Brazil’s main land reform group and largest social organization, with tens of thousands of families in its ranks. 

It emerged as a response to the military dictatorship’s policies favoring large rural oligopolies — for example, encouraging large soybean producers to move into the hitherto largely unexplored Amazon in the 1970s and the 1980s — and abandoning small and medium-scale farmers.

Brazil’s social inequality is even greater in the countryside, where just 1 percent of agricultural properties take up almost half of Brazil’s rural expanse.

The Workers’ Party of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was involved in the creation of the MST. While the two organizations have enjoyed considerable closeness over the decades, their relationship has also been punctuated by disagreements.

During his two previous presidential terms (2003-2010), Lula distinguished himself as the president who settled the most families in the countryside and incorporated the most land for agrarian reform.

But Lula did not fulfill his boldest promises to the MST, such as enforcing land reform by decree or updating the productivity criteria that dictate when a rural property can be expropriated. Nevertheless, the movement campaigned on his behalf during his imprisonment and in the lead-up to the 2022 election.

The MST is uncomfortable with what it perceives as government inertia in drawing up a more complex land reform plan to settle around 100,000 families in the coming years. 

João Pedro Stédile, an MST leader, said over the Easter holiday that activists would hold demonstrations nationwide, including new land occupations. “Electing Lula is not enough,” he said. “We also want to help solve problems [such as hunger,...