Three days later, on April 2nd, the MST website published a very similar story: landless worker Pedro Bruno had been found dead close to Pereira Grande sugar refinery, in Gameleira municipality, also in Pernambuco state.

For the MST the motives for the crime are clear: the land activist had participated in the occupation of unproductive land hours before his death, together with tens of MST families.

The report of the Brazilian organization says that Pereira Grande sugar refinery belongs to Usina Estreliana and it is located in one of the most emblematic areas in terms of land conflicts in Pernambuco.

The cases of Antonio and Pedro have other things in common: on both cases there has been State and police negligence, the purported complicity of the hired assassins with large estate owners and the inaction of the judiciary, which usually dismisses these cases without filing accusations.

In the most recent case, the landless families of Gameleira municipality have been waiting for land since 2005, when the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) declared the lands were of social interest. The litigation continued in court until they made the decision to occupy the sugar refinery in April.

The MST claims that the precedents of the owners of Usina Estreliana are not very encouraging. One of the owners, Gustavo Costa, was convicted in 2010 for not paying the social security of his employees after an accusation was filed by the Federal Prosecutor.

The MST reported that on March 8 nearly 200 peasant women carried out a protest outside the sugar refinery to expose the economic and social impacts of sugar cane monoculture in the region.

“At the time they were surrounded by gunmen of the refinery, who shot several times at the peasant women”, claims the MST.

Photo:www.mst.org.br