At the Santa Clara estate, near Sao Domingos, a land invasion has just begun. There are several hundred people in makeshift shacks roofed with black plastic sheeting. Red flags flutter. The camp is well organised. Trucks arrive bringing wood. Children wearing the red caps of the rural workers' movement are taken to school by bus. The movement organises daily prayers. There is also instruction in the way neo-liberalism "produces riches but ensures misery," said Celso Nespoli, a local doctor. "We tell them about Asia, we tell them how governments are stripped of power if international capital controls everything.''

Powerful landowners, with estates the size of Belgium, are adamant that the future belongs to globalised industrial strength agriculture. Land-less peasants say this won't take care of them and their families. The stakes are high, the battle-lines have been drawn and all over the country blood is being spilled and tensions are rising by the day. In the southern state of Parana two rural activists were killed last week. Thirty six families were also violently evicted from land they had occupied. In the northern state of Para violence is a daily occurrence. Right wing hit men set up encampments opposite occupations and as darkness falls, the gunfire begins.

The shift to an open economy in Brazil has come against a backdrop of extreme poverty that has left armies of destitute migrants drifting across the country in search of a means to survive. During the 80's, millions of Brazilians moved to the cities, many to the slums on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, where they often found work in factories. Now, with industries laying off workers to compete with new imports, and fulfil the strictures of the IMF, unemployment in the cities is worsening and people are returning to the already impoverished countryside. The rural workers movement (MST) has become the main conduit for resentment. It has organised 279 occupations over the last three years and now has illegal camps on over a million acres of land. More than 51,000 families live in these camps.

"Many say we are radical, but I say that we are pathetically moderate," said Gilmar Mauro, a leader of the movement. Mr. Mauro, 30, sees the world as dominated by the "neo-liberal" policies of the United States-the religion of the free market. Brazil has chosen to join this global market but will remain "marginal and subjugated" he said. Roosevelt Roque dos Santos, who heads a group that represents landowners, thinks differently. He described the workers movement as "aimed more at establishing a socialism in Brazil than land reform." Asked about violence against protesters, he says, "You think we are going to wait for these people with bouquets of flowers?"

This ideological confrontation is being transformed into violent conflict in the Northern State of Para. The MST operates by organising the peasants to occupy tracts of unused land. The law states that if they can use the land productively four between 2-4 years then they can acquire the title to the land.

The landowners have formed their own union (UDR) and in Para they are particularly ruthless as they have the backing of regional and federal authorities. Over 700 rural activists have been killed in the last 10 years including brutal massacres. At the moment a high profile retrial of policemen accused of massacring peasants is taking Place.

"For the big landowners the goal is bigger profits through larger scale agricultural production. For us the goal is more basic. It is about survival - feeding ourselves and our families." Jorge Neri, MST activist, speaking to us in London last week. But according to Milton Seligman, president of the National Institute for Land Reform in Brasilia. ''Whatever the M.S.T. think, socialism is dead. We're in the international dance hall now, and we have no choice but to dance."

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