Some 1,000 members of Brazil’s MST Landless Movement on Monday occupied the finance ministry to protest the austerity policies of President Dilma Rousseff.
The MST activists arrived during the early morning, occupied the first floor of the building and blocked access to ministry officials, police said.
In a communique, the MST said that the protest was called to protest the combination of spending cuts and tax hikes that the Rousseff government decided to implement to shore up public finances and straighten out the economy, expected to shrink at least 1.5 percent this year.
Alexandre Conceição, a member of the national MST coordinating body, told reporters that the cuts in public spending announced by the government has reduced by almost 50 percent the funds available this year for agrarian reform.
“The austerity threatens to paralyze agrarian reform even more and end the government’s political commitment to settle 120,000 (peasants) who are waiting for land,” he said.
The activists said that they will only end their occupation of the ministry if they are received by senior officials, and they displayed several posters demanding the resignation of Finance Minister Joaquim Levy, a leading advocate of austerity.
Levy, according to his official schedule, on Monday was slated to participate in a government policy coordination meeting called by Rousseff at the presidential palace, and thus he was not at the ministry building when the takeover occurred.