The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese) is demanding a more efficient investigation by the Civil Police into the attack on Friday (10) that killed two and injured six in the Olga Benário Settlement, in the town of Tremembé, in the state of São Paulo. The movement estimates that around 25 armed men carried out the attack. They arrived in five cars and motorcycles.
“It’s the police who really have to find [the criminals]. They can identify them because there are cameras on both sides of the highway: you can’t cross it without being identified,” says Altamir Pontes, from the MST leadership in São Paulo.
So far, the Civil Police have arrested “Nero do Piseiro”, as Antônio Martins dos Santos Filho is known, who confessed to taking part in the attack. Another suspect, Ítalo Rodrigues da Silva, had his arrest warrant issued by the courts and has been on the run since Sunday (12). According to settlers, Ítalo is Nero’s son. Survivors recognized both men as attackers.
“We still see the Civil Police unwillingly looking at this process given its distortion of the facts, as if it were an internal problem of the settlement – which it’s not,” criticizes Pontes.
At a press conference the day after the massacre, police chief Marcos Ricardo Parra, from the Taubaté Police Station, claimed that the case was “a local issue”, a disagreement due to “internal reasons within the settlement’s organization,” and “nothing to do with the movement or with invading or defending the land.”
Contrary to what police chief Parra said, the MST and the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA, in Portuguese) explain that the episode started because of an attempt by a group unrelated to the settlement to illegally invade an empty plot and add that it is the tip of the iceberg of a larger, recurring problem in the state of São Paulo.
“It’s not an isolated episode. It wasn’t simply a dispute over a vacant plot of land,” says Sabrina Diniz, Incra’s superintendent in São Paulo. “It’s part of a process of invasions that has been happening since the federal government’s omission during the Temer and Bolsonaro presidential terms,” she says.
According to Gilmar Mauro, from the MST’s national leadership, the problem is caused by “real estate pressure,” especially in areas close to urban centers.
“When we established the first occupation in the Paraíba Valley in 1994, where the Conquista settlement is located today, this stretch of land was all pasture,” recalls Reginaldo*, a member of the MST, gesturing with his hand. “Today it’s all condos. And there’s nowhere for the city to grow. So, the price is over BRL 100 (around US$ 16,5) a square meter. A plot that doesn’t have a high price tag for settlers, ends up costing about BRL 5 million (US$ 824,960.00) to BRL 7 million (BRL 1,154,944) to the real estate market,” he explains.
The attack in Tremembé
In the case of the Olga Benário Settlement, located next to the urban area of Tremembé, INCRA formally vacated the 5,000-square-meter plot in December 2023.
“In these cases, the next step is to open a public notice to select interested families, prioritizing encampers and their children,” explains the INCRA superintendent. “The settlement’s coordinators decided to occupy the area to prevent an invasion by people who have nothing to do with agrarian reform, and this disgrace ended up happening,” laments Diniz.
The plot defended by the landless in the Olga Benário settlement / Gabriela Moncau
The area, one of the 45 plots of land that make up the settlement, was sold irregularly by a settler to a man named Alex, according to settlers heard by Brasil de Fato. In turn, he illegally transferred the area in November 2024 for BRL 80,000 (US$ 13,199) to Ítalo Rodrigues da Silva.
That same month saw the first meeting between Valdir do Nascimento de Jesus, dubbed “Valdirzão”, a 52-year-old MST leader, and the man who had been identified as his murderer. In addition to the Olga Benário coordinator, the attack would fatally injure 28-year-old Gleison Barbosa de Carvalho. Two of Carvalho’s brothers were also shot – one of them, Denis, remains in serious condition in the Intensive Care Unit of the Paraíba Valley Regional Hospital, after being shot twice in the head.
The conversation at the end of last year in which Valdirzão told Ítalo that the area could not be sold or occupied by third parties was ignored. On January 7, settlers noticed the presence of strangers in the house and the theft of pipes and pumps from the water tank located on the plot, which irrigates the surrounding crops. On Friday (10), a group of 15 landless rural workers set up a vigil on the land to wait for the invaders to show up.
It was 4 pm when Ítalo arrived in a Volkswagen Amarok pickup truck followed by men on motorcycles. According to the MST, the invader allegedly said he was authorized by a Tremembé city councilor to settle on the land. Then, he left the place, but promised he would come back.
The massacre took place at the gate of the plot entrance. A survivor fell on the tall grass and stayed there, from where she heard one of the men saying “Kill everything, kill everyone”. In addition to the two men murdered, six settlers were shot in the arm, rib, shoulder, leg, foot and head. Blood marks are still on the ground.
When contacted, the Public Security Secretariat of São Paulo state (SSP-SP, in Portuguese), under the Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans Party) government, said that the case is being “rigorously investigated by the Specialized Criminal Investigations Police Station (Deic, in Portuguese) of Taubaté, with the support of the Tremembé Civil Police”.
“Investigators analyzed security camera footage and identified the vehicles used in the criminal action. One of the cars was located in a vacant lot and [was] seized. The police also seized projectiles and bladed weapons, as well as a motorcycle. The investigation continues with the collection of statements and preparing expert reports,” said SSP-SP.
The Federal Police, which has opened a parallel investigation, limited itself to saying that “investigations are ongoing.”
Tip of the iceberg
According to Altamir Bastos, there is information that a group linked to Ítalo Rodrigues is trying to seize another plot of land in the Manoel Neto settlement in Taubaté, also in the state of São Paulo.
“It’s not something limited to a single area; we have to make that clear. Criminal groups are entering landless workers’ settlement areas. As a regional leader, I circulate in all these areas, and there is a link between these groups. They talk to each other, they know the internal situation of the settlements, they know what’s going on when we hold meetings,” says Altamir Bastos.
“They enter the plots, subdivide them and sell them,” Bastos explains. “Up there, there’s a plot of land that’s been subdivided,” he says, referring to another area inside Olga Benário. “And the smaller areas were sold for around BRL 80,000 [US$ 13,199] each. They announced it on Facebook to publicize it,” he says.
“Usually, the people who do the procedures for entering the plots and the negotiations are stooges. As in the case of agriculture in the Cerrado and the Amazon biomes. There, they are land grabbers who enter the areas and then pass it on to soy monocultures. So, apparently, agribusiness doesn’t commit the crime,” compares Gilmar Mauro.
“In the case of land reform areas, it’s very similar. They’re front men who do the dirty work,” says the MST leader. “It’s an inglorious war because, deep down, it’s fought among poor people in the countryside and urban areas,” he says.
“Here, at first, plots were invaded from forest reserves within the Conquista settlement, sometimes with the consent and ‘blind eye’ of the judiciary branch and the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” he said, referring to another MST community in Tremembé. “But the issue is deeper. It’s been happening in areas already regularized for Quilombola people, for example, and also for the My House, My Life program,” warns Gilmar Mauro.
Bolsonaro’s propaganda for handing out land titles
According to the MST, the scenario was worsened by former president Jair Bolsonaro’s (Liberal Party) propaganda of handing out Land Titles. (TD, in Portuguese).
In Brazil, there are two types of definitive titles for land reform beneficiaries. They are the TD and the Concession of Real Right of Use (CDRU, in Portuguese). The former gives the settler ownership of the land, but he has to pay for it. Once the payment is made and after a period of inalienability, he is allowed to sell the plot. The settlement would become a collection of small properties.
The second is free of charge: the land still belongs to the state, but the title gives that family the definitive right to use it, including subsequent generations. In this modality, the land cannot be sold.
Most of the documents issued by the Bolsonaro government are neither. According to Incra itself under his administration, only 12% of the 370,000 he advertised were definitive titles. None in São Paulo. The rest were provisional registrations, the so-called Use Concession Contracts (CCU), which only state that the peasant family has a link with Incra.
The fact is that the discourse and false propaganda, according to the popular movement, had an impact. “It scared the real estate market,” says Reginaldo.
“With this, the idea of popular agrarian reform that we defend is questioned,” Gilmar Mauro criticizes, saying that the impoverishment and the still-present difficulty in accessing credit and other forms of development give strength to the fake news that titling can bring improvements to the lives of family farmers.
“So it’s a political articulation, an ideological propaganda beyond the tip of the iceberg, which even appears in the delegate’s speech, which tries to conceal these underlying issues because there are economic interests involved,” argues Gilmar Mauro.
*Name changed to preserve the source’s identity.
Edited by: Martina Medina
