Brazil: Pará campesinos demand land, end to violence http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/06/wnu-1084-brazilian-campesinos-demand.html

More than 5,000 agricultural workers blocked the Trans-Amazonian highway in the northern Brazilian state of Pará on June 15 and 16 to push demands for land, government aid and an end to violence against activists. They continued the action after one protester was run over and killed on June 15, but they agreed to open up the highway on June 16 as the result of an agreement for Presidency Minister Gilberto Carvalho and representatives of the Mining and Energy Ministry and the Agrarian Development Ministry to meet with them on June 20.

The campesinos said that until the meeting had taken place they would continue the encampment they have maintained for the past month in front of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) office in the Pará city of Marabá.According to a June 17 statement from the Landless Workers Movement (MST), the Agriculture Workers Federation (Fetagri) and the Federation of Family Agriculture Workers of Brazil (Fetraf),

the protesters are demanding land for the 8,000 families that are still living in encampments in the state; conditions that will make it possible for the families that have land to grow crops; roads to take the produce to market; credits for agricultural projects; technical advice; and electricity. "There's money to build hydroelectric facilities, railroads, waterways, steel plants, etc., but they say there aren't resources for agrarian reform and family agriculture," the groups wrote, claiming that investment in small-scale agriculture is more beneficial to the economy than many large-scale projects.