Land reform cannot be delayed any more. But agrarian reform is not a new issue nor is it exclusive to Brazil. Wherever you go in Latin America, most farms are huge and most peasants are landless. In the 1970s and 1980s the half-continent's big farms grew bigger, its small farms shrunk and its landless laborers multiplied. There has been talk of land reform throughout Latin America but with few positive results.
Brazil is no different.
Since colonial days, Brazil's countryside has been a parquetry of privilege, where a handful of barons rule over rambling estates the size of counties, even countries, while millions of peasants scratch a living from meager patches. In the mid 1980s, nearly half the farmland in Brazil was owned by one percent of farmers. In the late 1980s, Brazilian landowners delayed expropriation by filing interminable law suits and lobbying friendly politicians. When frustrated peasants invaded estates earmarked for expropriation, the landlords hired armed gangs to defend them. In 1986 they killed at least 260 people.