The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) carried out, this Saturday morning (18), an act of solidarity in response to the attack on the Olga Benário Settlementin Tremembé, in the interior of São Paulo, on the 10th, which left two landless workers dead and six injured. At least 20 men in five cars and motorcycles invaded the settlement and shot families that were gathered together.
The mobilization also aimed to defend popular agrarian reform, the protection of life in rural areas and justice for affected families. “This is an act for life and justice, but also an act for agrarian reform, because it is the core and the main issue that needs to be resolved in our country so that peace in the countryside is a reality, so that the struggle of workers are not criminalized and their lives are not taken,” said Renata Menezes, from the movement’s national directorate.
The president of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), Cesar Aldrighi, participated in the event. the superintendent of Incra/SP, Sabrina Diniz, and the minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture, Paulo Teixeira.
The Olga Benário Settlement was created in 2006 and around 50 families work with diversified family farming, producing cassava, fruit, coffee, sugar cane, vegetables, livestock and food for the local market and for subsistence. Agroecological production is highlighted, with Agroforestry Systems (SAFs) that integrate vegetables, fruit trees and practices such as collection of forest seeds and green manure.
“This was the first attack recorded in the Olga Benário settlement, but there are other cases with police reports for threats and episodes of violence, such as shooting at a settler who was on a motorcycle at another time and house fires in the Luís Carlos Prestes Settlement , in Taubaté”, denounces the movement.
