MST invades Ceplac public area in southern Bahia

Starting the Red April actions in Bahia, around 400 members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) invaded a public area in the municipality of Itabela, in southern Bahia. The area belongs to the Executive Committee of the Cocoa Farming Plan (Ceplac), linked to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock.

In a statement, the MST claims that the area is “unproductive” and that the invasion is part of the National Day of Struggle in Defense of Agrarian Reform, also known as Red April. “The MST claims the area for the purposes of Agrarian Reform and defends Popular Agrarian Reform as a sustainable agricultural project to produce food for all Brazilian people in the countryside and in the city and thus combat hunger, as opposed to agribusiness, which uses labor slave and concentrates the land, spreading more misery and destruction in the countryside”, says the note published by the movement.

A People’s Gazette He tried to contact the Ministry of Agriculture to seek the department’s position on the invasion, but did not receive a response until the closing of this article.

MST’s Red April actions begin after Lula’s announcements are postponed

With the beginning of Red April, a month that is historically marked by a series of actions by the MST, the government promised that it would launch what President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) called a “land shelf” to try to stop the invasions of lands. The land shelf consists of mapping unproductive or vacant areas in the Union that could be used to meet MST demands.

However, the invasion in Bahia occurred the day after the announcement that the government had postponed the launch. In addition to the invasion, members of the MST from Bahia will also carry out a march that should start from Feira de Santana this Tuesday (9) and will continue to Salvador until April 17. The 110 km walk is made by around 3,000 landless people, according to information published by the MST.

The actions take place in a context in which the movement shows signs of dissatisfaction with the Lula government. Militants have complained about the government’s delay in allocating land for the creation of settlements.