Correio newspaper | Bahia leads the index of rural conflicts across the country, says report

Numbers are on the rise in Lula’s government

Published on April 23, 2024 at 6:04 pm

During the first year of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (PT) third term, the country recorded 2,203 incidents related to conflicts in the countryside. This is the highest annual index recorded by the report Conflicts in the Countryside, organized by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) since 1985. The 2023 edition was released by the entity this Monday, 22.

The incidents include conflicts related to land ownership, labor issues and access to water resources. According to the CPT, in 2023, 950,847 people were directly affected by clashes in the countryside. The area involved in the conflicts exceeds 59 million hectares, according to the report.

The states in the North region concentrate most of the conflicts, totaling 810 incidents. The federation units with the highest records are Bahia, with 249 cases, Pará, with 227, and Maranhão, with 206.

The report also presents a mapping of the agents and victims of violence in the countryside. According to the commission, the most frequent targets in 2023 were traditional peoples and communities, with 1,394 victims, landless people, with 388 cases, and rural workers, targets of violence in 254 episodes.

The agents causing the most frequent violent actions were farmers, with 557 incidents, military or government forces, with 440, and businesspeople, in 361 cases.

Work similar to slavery breaks record

The number of people rescued from working conditions similar to slavery was the highest in the last ten years, according to the CPT. The report compiled that, in 2023, 2,663 people were rescued in this circumstance. The State with the highest number of incidents of this kind was Goiás, with 699 people rescued, followed by Minas Gerais, with 472, and Rio Grande do Sul, with 323.

In total, there were rescues of workers in conditions similar to slavery in 207 municipalities in 23 states in the country. Sugarcane production was the activity with the highest incidence of rescues, with 618 occurrences, followed by permanent crops, with 598 , and temporary crops, with 477.

Conflict intensifies under progressive government, authors say

The authors of the report emphasize that the conflict in the countryside intensifies even under a government that maintains channels of dialogue with social movements linked to the agrarian issue, such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST).

“There is no confrontation of the Brazilian agrarian issue by progressive governments”, say the organizers. “The numbers of violence against people in progressive governments were very close to the average variation over the last 10 years”, says the report.

The agrarian issue was on Congress’s agenda in 2023. In addition to the MST’s Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI), which intended to investigate the movement’s invasions, but ended without a final report, the Temporal Framework Law was approved.

The time frame is an interpretation of an article of the Federal Constitution. This understanding provides that an indigenous land can only be demarcated with proof that the original peoples were in the required location on the date of promulgation of the Constitution, that is, on October 5, 1988.

The Chamber approved the time frame in May 2023. In September, the STF overturned the thesis and invalidated the time frame argument. Even so, six days after the Supreme Court’s decision, the text was approved in the Senate. When sanctioning the law in October, Lula vetoed the section that would cause the legal impasse, but Congress overturned the veto in December.

This Monday, the 22nd, Minister Gilmar Mendes, from the STF, suspended all legal proceedings – ongoing in any instance of the Judiciary – that deal with the Temporal Framework Law.