At the roadblock, Castelo

It's Jeremy here, back in the "Castle of Dreams," some 900 km south of Santarém on the unpaved Br-163. I arrived here on Saturday morning, and was lucky to have been able to get to Douglas and Cris's house (my hosts). Since September 20th, a group of agrarian reform clients (sem terra, or "landless workers") have been operating a roadblock at a crucial wooden bridge located 3 km north of Castelo, on the Br-163. They are protesting a recent federal court decision to suspend the operations of land reform settlements in Western Pará, as it was decided that the settlements are accelerating deforestation and illegal land occupation in the region. The settlers are trying to call attention to their plight: they've waited for four years for their settlement to be legalized; have received many promises of land and techincal support from the government; they've been involved in low-grade warfare with ranchers and lumber companies who run over their land with impunity and are the real accelerators of deforestation in the region. Now, it seems, they might lose all they've worked for and/or been promised.

When my bus arrived at the roadblock at 7 am on Saturday, I got down and began socializing with the protestors, many of whom are my firends. Within 20 minutes, someone had gotten a motorcycle ready to give me a lift into the center of Castelo. My companions on the bus had to wait another 5 hours at the roadblock, as the protesters only open the road for traffic at noon and midnight. If I had a fast enough connection, I'd attach the photo of a sem terra protester, Matheus, lighting a set of tires ablaze at the roadblock. Last week, before I arrived, a group of lumber-folks and ranchers tried to take over the roadblock by force and liberate traffic on the Br-163. Matheus made sure some of them took 2nd-degree burns away with them, and the roadblock continues.