• Grassroots organizations are settling new areas in the Brazilian Amazon amid disappointment that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been slow to jump-start the stalled land reform agenda.
• According to the federal land agency, Incra, about 145,000 people are inhabiting camps all over Brazil, waiting for a plot of land.
• In one of the Amazon’s deadliest regions, a group fighting for land was besieged by a dozen armed men hired by ranchers; even in established settlements, harassment by land grabbers and lack of government support drive settlers out of their plots.
• The stalling of the land reform agenda pushes Amazonian people further into the forest, driving the cycle of deforestation, or else to the outskirts of cities, where many struggle to make a living.

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