Brazilian President Promotes Agrarian Reform in New Territories
Brazilian President Lula da Silva in Quilombo Campo Grande, March 7, 2025. X/ @MST_Oficial
March 7, 2025 Hour: 1:59 pm
The decrees were announced at the Quilombo Campo Grande, an settlement named after a community of runaway slaves.
On Friday, Brazilian President Lula da Silva signed decrees to allow the settlement of 4,883 families from the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) on over 75,000 hectares.
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The Workers’ Party leader also announced new actions under the Terra da Gente program, which will allocate 12,297 lots to families living in 138 informal rural settlements.
Another decree will allow the Agrarian Development Ministry to expropriate 13,000 hectares and distribute them to landless families in the states of Minas Gerais, Para, Goias, Parana, and Rio Grande do Sul. Thanks to these decisions, the Lula administration will have distributed 385,000 hectares across 24 states so far.
These announcements were made at an event in defense of agrarian reform held at Quilombo Campo Grande, an informal settlement named after a 19th-century community of freed slaves, runaway slaves, native Brazilians, and poor whites.
Located in the municipality of Campo do Meio, this quilombo has become a symbol of the struggle for social justice led by hundreds of landless families, who have had to face attacks from far-right governments and rural militias.
“I’ve been crying since yesterday,” said history teacher Lourdes Maria, a resident of the Quilombo, moved by the decisions of the Brazilian leftist president. She and her loved ones have been living since 2015 in an irregular settlement that Lula will expropriate to be handed over to landless families.
“The area belonged to the former Ariadnopolis factory, whose owners declared bankruptcy in 1983. The workers were left abandoned and without labor rights, and they began to suffer attacks from large landowners. In 2023, the courts recognized the land ownership rights of 459 landless families camped in the area,” recalled Brasil de Fato.
“In southern Minas Gerais, 459 families live in 11 camps: Betim, Campos das Flores, Chico Mendes, Fome Zero, Girassol, Irmã Dorothy Resistência, Rosa Luxemburgo, Sidney Dias, Tiradentes, and Vitoria da Conquista. They have been waiting for 27 years for the legalization of their land, a period during which they suffered 11 evictions. The area is one of the most emblematic in the struggle of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement,” it added.
In these territories, painful memories have not faded. During the government of far-right former captain Jair Bolsonaro, the Military Police entered the area and destroyed the school in an attempt to scare poor families into abandoning the land.
“Currently, farmers in Quilombo Campo Grande grow more than 150 products, including coffee, guava, corn, and other organic crops. At the event in defense of agrarian reform, some sold the food they had grown at the fair,” reported Brasil de Fato.
teleSUR/ JF
Sources: MST – Brasil de Fato
