The 1150 activists from peasant settlements and camps from the area are denouncing the social and environmental impacts of the companies’ tree monoculture plantations, including unemployment, poverty, social inequality and displacement of peasants from the rural area.

The occupation of the “Esperanza” field takes place in the month of the International Women’s Day (March 8th). La Via Campesina Brazil, and precisely the MST, have an important tradition of carrying out direct actions involving women that day or near that date. The occupation of lands of forestry and cellulose companies and the felling of eucalyptus and pine trees have taken place several times in different parts of the country.

In the Southern region of Bahia, the occupation of “Esperanza” is not the first that is carried out by landless rural workers in a land with eucalyptus plantations. On March 28th, last year, the women entered “Nova America” field, in Eunapolis municipality. The field was from Veracel company, owned by the Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso
In 2011, several other fields of the same company were occupied and some of them are still controlled by landless rural workers, who are demanding the lands to settle and focus on family production.

Suzano, a Brazilian company, is the second largest producer of eucalyptus cellulose in the world and is among the 12 largest cellulose producers of the market, according to its website. In 2010, the company commercialized over 1.5 million tons of cellulose for the European, Asian, North American and Brazilian markets.

In Brazil, the company owns factories and plantations in several states. It covers an area of 771,000 hectares in the states of São Paulo, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Tocantins, Piauí y Maranhão. According to official numbers included in their website, 326,000 hectares are planted with eucalyptus and 284,000 are left for “environmental preservation”.

According to information published on Thursday by the MST, the goal of occupying “Esperanza” was to draw attention to the negative environmental and social impacts of the forestry and cellulose companies of the area. The establishment of the tree monoculture plantations model has brought unemployment, poverty, social inequality and displacement of peasants to the cities, with the subsequent overpopulation of urban centers, adds the MST. This has caused an increase of violence in the cities: “for this reason is that the cities in the southern region of Bahia are considered some of the most violent of the country”, adds the peasant movement.

The landless rural workers are demanding speed in the process of expropriation of lands, of the large areas “usurped” for eucalyptus monoculture plantations in the Atlantic Forest, and the settlement of 23,000 families of the MST of Bahia. They also demand that the national government invests in the peasant settlements of the region that are “abandoned” by President Dilma Rousseff’s administration and the state government.

Photo: MST