Far beyond the ground: the history of the MST's struggle for land and social rights in southwestern Goiás

Abstract

Known from the documentary “Chão” (Camila Freitas, 2019), the Leonir Orback camp (Santa Helena de Goiás), in southwestern Goiás, is fighting for the right to land and many other social rights, such as work, education, health, culture, etc. This article presents the history of these families' struggle against the Naoum Group and Usina Santa Helena Açúcar e Álcool, which was established with the support of the business-military dictatorship but went into crisis in 2008, when the MST organized itself in the region, working to transform the monoculture estates into territories for agrarian reform and agro-ecological food production. We point to the history of the occupation of the Várzea da Ema farm, the site of the Padre Josimo Camp, which had more than 1,000 families, and we analyse the instruments used by the latifundia and the judiciary to dismantle that struggle and evict the families, including the criminalization of militants based on the pioneering law on criminal organizations. After an intense period of repression and criminalization, the families reorganized and created the Leonir Orback camp, which has been occupying the Ouro Branco farm since 2016, fighting for the federal government to award the plant's land as payment for tax debts. As the peasant families fight for the land, the organization of the community and the support of popular advocacy and popular legal advice guarantee a set of social rights that have historically been denied to these families.