'Region of southwest São Paulo, at the meeting of the Paraná and Paranapanema rivers, which was transformed into one of the main centers of land conflicts in the country, because of more than one million hectares of public lands whose titles were falsified by landowners but that legally belonged to the government of the state of São Paulo. The origin of grilagem (q.v.), falsifying of documents, goes back to the 1950s, but it had its greatest occurrence - and the assurance of impunity - during the military dictatorship. Because of the pressures of the MST, the state of São Paulo began to follow suit for the reintegration of ownership against the landowners’ fraud and settle the Sem Terra on the recovered farms' (Fernandes, Bernardo Mançano e Stedile, João Pedro. Brava gente: a trajetória do MST e a luta pela terra no Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, 1999, p. 25, n. 25). |