MST sets up camp in front of the farm in Rio Grande do Sul

A group of members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) set up camp in front of a farm in Hulha Negra, in Rio Grande do Sul. The farm has been the target of a legal dispute for around 10 years.

In October 2023, an MST group, made up of around 60 families, had already set up a camp a few kilometers from the farm that is now the target of the new camp. Since then, rural producers have set up a vigil to try to protect neighboring properties from invasions.

The family that lived there, and was fighting over ownership of the land, was ordered, on January 29th, to leave the property within 15 days. By appealing the decision, the family gained another 60 days to remove their goods from the site, but now had to deal with pressure from campers in front of the farm gate. As a result, the group, which until then had been camped in a designated area on the banks of BR-293, moved the camp.

In an interview with the newspaper Minuano, the coordinator of MST camps in the region, Ildo Pereira highlighted that the area already has a destination. “The area already belongs to Incra and will be used as a settlement, it has already been allocated to some families who were camping in the Metropolitan region, who are the first to need it”, he said. Pereira also stated that, in total, the group mobilized in the Hulha Negra region is made up of 850 families.

Understand the case involving the MST camp

The farm where the MST group set up camp in Hulha Negra is part of a larger area, which covers 443 hectares in total. The entire area is under legal dispute, but only an area of ​​150 hectares was used by the family who received the order to vacate the site.

The legal dispute began after Incra received the area as a donation from the Union Heritage Secretariat (SPU), in 2015. In October 2023, a decision by the Federal Court of Bagé recognized the legality of the transfer. Since then, Incra has sought to vacate the area to use the property for agrarian reform.