Qualla: 1989 Santa Elmira Massacre

1989 Santa Elmira Massacre: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chicagogeek, CC BY-SA 2.0. They had come for land that no one was using. In early 1989, families belonging to Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement, the MST, settled onto the Santa Elmira ranch near Salto do Jacuí, in Rio Grande do Sul, an estate they regarded as idle while they had nothing. They were farmers without farms, waiting on the promises of an agrarian reform that kept not arriving. When Governor Pedro Simon ordered their removal, they refused to go. What followed, on the 11th of March, was not an eviction so much as an assault, and the people who endured it were not statistics or agitators but parents, neighbors, and laborers who had asked for little more than ground to plant.

Image: chicagogeek | CC BY-SA 2.0

1989 Santa Elmira Massacre: The People on the Land

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chicagogeek, CC BY-SA 2.0. It helps to remember who they were. The men and women of the MST who occupied Santa Elmira were among Brazil's poorest, families that had already been resettled once, at Salto do Jacuí, and who were pressing for the redistribution of unproductive estates that the country's own la...

Image: chicagogeek | CC BY-SA 2.0

1989 Santa Elmira Massacre: The Day the Planes Came

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chicagogeek, CC BY-SA 2.0. The force sent against them was overwhelming. Governor Pedro Simon of Rio Grande do Sul ordered the eviction, and approximately 1,200 officers of the state Brigada Militar carried it out, backed by an instrument almost surreal in its cruelty. Small agricultural aircraft, crop-dus...

Image: chicagogeek | CC BY-SA 2.0

1989 Santa Elmira Massacre: A Wound That Did Not Close

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chicagogeek, CC BY-SA 2.0. Santa Elmira did not fade into silence. It became a marker in the memory of the MST, a date returned to each year, a name spoken so that what happened would not be forgotten or repeated. The struggle it represented was old and would continue: the violence at Santa Elmira sits on ...

Image: chicagogeek | CC BY-SA 2.0

1989 Santa Elmira Massacre: Remembering With Honesty

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chicagogeek, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a temptation, with events like this, to reduce them to a number and move on. The people of Santa Elmira deserve better than that. A priest and writer, Frei Sérgio Antônio Görgen, set down their story in a book published in Porto Alegre in 2002, refusing to let the massac...

Image: chicagogeek | CC BY-SA 2.0