Lula expropriates land and settles 400 families from Brazil’s MST

By Brasil de Fato

A ceremony on Thursday, May 29, marked the creation of the Maila Sabrina Settlement on land that was once the “Fazenda Brasileira”, a large plantation owned by a rich landowner. It is located in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended the ceremony and officially expropriated the plantation, settling 450 families from the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) who have occupied the site since 2003.

The settlement covers 10,600 hectares. Before being occupied by the MST, it was used for raising buffalo and was in a state of severe environmental degradation. Today, it is inhabited by around 1,600 people, who live off the production of 167 types of food, including grains, vegetables, greens and fruits.

At the ceremony, President Lula watched a performance by the Orquestra Popular Camponesa and was moved by the farmers who had been present throughout the 581 days of the Lula Livre Vigil. He emphasized that Brazil experienced paralysis under former President Jair Bolsonaro. “Fixing this takes time.”

“When I took office, I said that to avoid conflicts and deaths in the countryside, we had to map the country’s lands and create settlements. It took a long time because INCRA was dismantling it. I had to recover all of this because they were not governing,” said Lula.

Some of the settlers arrived in the region days after Lula took office for his first presidential term, when a small portion of the Fazenda Brasileira was occupied to create the Che Guevara Camp. In 2005, after more landless people ed the camp, the occupation expanded to the central headquarters of the area. In 2006, the community was renamed Maila Sabrina, in honor of a child who died in the camp due to a chronic illness.

Today, there is a community center, an outdoor gym, a basic health unit, a soccer field, a cafeteria, a market, churches, and the Caminhos do Saber Itinerant School, which serves 200 students and employs 20 staff. Almost everything was built through collective efforts.

The president reinforced the role of the MST, the Agrarian Reform, and the Maila Sabrina Community in the victory and in interventions nationally. “You do not invade, you seek dignity. And the more people are producing, the cheaper food becomes and the more people eat,” said the president.

“We lived here during Lula’s first term and we are being settled during his third term,” recalled Jocelda Oliveira, from the community’s leadership, at the settlement’s creation ceremony. “We learned to fight, persist and not give up.”

The Minister of the Secretariat for Institutional Relations (SRI), Gleisi Hoffmann, reinforced that the consolidation of Maila Sabrina was a commitment of the president. “I was here in 2022. There was an eviction order, tension. The election of the president represented the formalization of this settlement. Lula expropriated 54 million hectares in the first governments and now we are recovering Incra and strengthening the MDA,” said the minister.

The event also saw the g of an agreement with Itaipu Binacional and the Ministry of Agrarian Development for the purchase of food with the intention of assisting people in situations of social vulnerability and strengthening family farming. The agreement was signed by Minister Paulo Teixeira and President Ênio Verri. Other agreements were signed, totaling over R 50 million.

Paraná has 329 settlements and 80 camps, which represent 28,000 settled families and 7,000 camped.

Land of the people

The creation of the Maila Sabrina settlement is part of the federal Terra da Gente program, which aims to accelerate agrarian reform by establishing settlements throughout the country. The federal government invested R 340 million to compensate the owners of the former farm.

Since 2023, the government has already allocated more than 15,000 new lots in conventional settlements. By the end of 2025, 30,000 families will have settled in new lots and another 30,000 by the end of 2026. President Lula’s government promises to benefit 326,000 families in traditional, environmentally differentiated settlements, regularization, and recognition in four years.

According to the Minister of Agrarian Development, Paulo Teixeira, this is the floor and not the ceiling of what the government intends to do. He recalled that agrarian reform needs resources. “We won the election, but we have a minority in Congress. Congress is the one that controls the Budget,” he stated.

According to the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), in February, Brazil had 145,000 families camped awaiting settlement.

Lula said that this number is related to the abandonment of agrarian reform policies by the previous government. During the istration of former President Jair Bolsonaro, there was no expropriation of land for settlements. The Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) was even dissolved.

*This article was first published by Brasil de Fato in Portuguese.