Civil-military Dictatorship and Its Impacts on the Countryside: The Association between the State, Entrepreneurs, and Land Grabbers in the Process of Rural Expropriation in Maranhão

Abstract

Beginning with the Land Law (1964), public policies aimed at modernizing the countryside and using land for business purposes were adopted by the civil-military dictatorship, deepening land concentration in a country marked by latifundia and agrarian conflicts. This article aims to analyze the dossier from the National Information Service “Administrative irregularity”, in which the governor of Goiás, politicians, businessmen, and lawyers from the state are accused of land grabbing in Maranhão and of being the masterminds of a massacre responsible for the murder of six peasants. Based on this process, we will discuss the network structured between public and private agents to facilitate the agrarian concentration of a group of businessmen and politicians from Goiás, to the detriment of the peasants and squatters cultivating those lands for decades. We will also discuss the consequences of this expropriation for the population living in and around the land grab.