Weekly Report - 23 December 2003

President Lula da Silva wore a hat with the logo of the MST, the movement of the landless, when, last week, he handed out title deeds to about 1,000 families settled on what used to be a 19,700-hectare melon farm before it collapsed. In the midst of an uneasy truce with the MST, the old Maí­sa farm, in the impoverished northern state of Rio Grande do Norte, is meant to be a showcase of agrarian reform, Lula-style.