Washington Post on Brazilian land occupations

["Marvin Gandall" <marvin.gandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An article in today's Washington Post describes how unemployed urban workers
are joining the rural poor in occupying unused arable land while landowners
are increasingly resorting to violence and land reform stalls.

Brazil’s militant Landless Peasants Movement, which is organizing the
occupations and has spread into the cities, says there are now 166,000
families populating squatter camps across the country, most having flooded
into them in the past year in the wake of the Lula government’s election.

But the government, preoccupied with paying down it’s foreign debt and
wrestling with recession, has only granted title to 6,000 of the 60,000
families it promised to resettle by year’s end.

The Post says at least 31 squatters have been killed so far this year by
angry landowners, who are pressing for an unlikely government crackdown to
end the occupations and threatening vigilante action unless it happens soon
. “This is High Noon in Brazil”, writes Jon Jeter, describing the tense
confrontation.

Full text of article: www.supportingfacts.com



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