Occupation of the Giacometti plantation, which at 205,900 contiguous acres is the largest in the state of Paraná. It belongs to an economic group in the state of Rio Grande do Sul which specializes in the extraction of lumber. At the start of the 1980s the government had decreed expropriation of the area as a latifundio, based on size. However, as the Giacometi group had close ties with the political establishment then dominant in the state of Paraná, the expropriation process was shelved.

Finally, the occupation of the latifundio by over 3,000 families, thus creating an unavoidable fact, will oblige INCRA, the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, to initiate the process of examining the area, with the objective of identifying it as a latifundio. The next phase will be expropriation and payment to the owners with National Treasury bonds. If the project achieves its goal, the area will be big enough to install more than 4,000 families, directly generating through its productive activites over 8,000 jobs. Paraná, 1996.

Salgado, Sebastião. Terra: Struggle of the Landless. Preface by José Saramago. Verses by Chico Buarque. Translated by Clifford Landers. London: Phaidon Press, 1998: 124 (photo), 142 (caption). Thanks to Sebastião Salgado for providing free use of his photographs and captions on this web site. For further information about the photographs and captions contact neil@nbpictures.com