It fears that creating a free market in rural land would prompt peasants to sell their holdings to pay their debts, sending an avalanche of landless farmers to cities that have no social-security infrastructure to deal with them.

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The trial began of 150 policemen accused of killing 19 protesters during a 1996 demonstration by Brazil's landless - farmers movement in the northern state of Para.

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The large-scale appropriation of farmland in recent years for housing and factory construction has rendered millions of farmers landless.

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The actual process of transferring ownership of land from farmers to landless people is a lengthy, complex one and is unlikely to proceed quickly.

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The rest are either subsistence farmers on plots of land that get tinier with each generation, or landless labourers.

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The farmers, who were interested in developing community seed banks and strengthening family farming, met with the Brazilian Landless Peasant Movement (known by its Portuguese acronym MST).

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