MST criticizes Lula for not having changed president of Incra

The national coordinator of the Landless Movement (MST), João Paulo Rodrigues, used social networks to criticize, this Wednesday (22), the Lula government, of which he is a supporter. The reason for the criticism is the delay in nominating the new president of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra).

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“Starting to turn on the yellow light. So far @governofederal_ has not named the direction of @Incra_oficial who is responsible for taking care of all areas of implementation of the agrarian reform program. “, wrote Rodrigues on Twitter.

In an interview with blog do noblat, the MST coordinator reinforced the criticism of the PT government and said that the delay in defining the new command of Incra “may have implications for the government”. According to Rodrigues, without the choice of the president, the definitions of the superintendents of the 30 Incra units in the states are compromised.

“The states are not managing to appoint superintendents. And there are Bolsonarists still ahead of Incra in the states. Other than that, we have situations of writs of repossession and evictions that require an active Incra. It’s not just a question of the MST invading land, but of curbing the right’s offensive and not having a schedule to put together a plan for the president,” said the coordinator to Noblat.

In Lula’s government, Incra returned to form part of the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), which was recreated in the current administration. In the Bolsonaro government, agrarian reform was the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture, more specifically the Secretariat for Land Affairs, which was headed by Nabhan Garcia, former president of the Rural Democratic Union (UDR).

The MST was one of several social movements that supported Lula’s candidacy and, after the PT’s victory, began to seek positions in the government for its representatives. To Noblat, Rodrigues mentioned that the movement defends one of these two names for the position: Rose Rodrigues, MST militant and former Secretary of Agriculture of Sergipe, and Carlos Frederico Marés, former president of Funai, also linked to the social movement.

MST lost influence with new Incra rules

Among the MST’s main criticisms of Incra during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro is the Titula Brasil program, which facilitated the delivery of individual property titles to settlers.

In 2021, the MST criticized the new rules on the concession of properties, claiming that they “facilitate land concentration, land grabbing and extinguish the criteria that ensured the social function of land and, therefore, of agrarian reform itself”. According to the movement, the Bolsonaro government was trying to end agrarian reform in Brazil.

However, since 2016, with the departure of the PT from power, Incra has already been significantly increasing the number of land titles granted to rural producers, which in practice means the “completion” of the agrarian reform process for the farmers who are part of it. the settlements, largely controlled by the MST. As a result, the movement began to lose influence in these areas, since the main promise of the leaders to the settlers was precisely to fight for the concession of land.

The social movement, however, is contrary to the model that has been applied in concessions in recent years, and prefers that the lands remain the State’s property rather than being definitively ceded to rural producers, to guarantee the influence of MST leaders. in the settlements. “We are advocates that land titles should be collective and not private,” said Alexandre Conceição, a member of the movement’s national board, to the People’s Gazette in a report published in 2021.

Attempts at “emancipation” by rural producers who no longer wanted to be subject to orders and rules determined by these leaders resulted in a series of violent conflicts in settlements in different parts of the country, especially in the extreme south of Bahia.