trade unionism and striving to wrestle concessions from bosses for rural workers. But the more aggressive tactics of the MST in striving for access to land gave a political legitimacy that soon outshone CONTAG, which limited itself to tradeunionism in the strictest sense, acting until today as a rural branch of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT). MST eventually all but monopolized political attention as a spokesman for rural workers. From the 1980s on, the MST hasn't had a monopoly of land occupations, many of which are carried out by a host of grassroots organizations (dissidents from the MST, trade unions, informal coalitions of land workers). However, the MST is by far the most organized group dealing in occupations, and has political leverage enough to turn occupation into formal expropriation for public purposes. In 1995, only 89 of 198 occupations (45%) were organized by the MST, but these included 20,500 (65%) out of the grand total of 31,400 families involved. 1995 - 2005 Cardoso government Brazil has long history of violent land conflict. During the 1990s, the MST emerged as the most prominent land reform movement in Brazil, and in 1995-1999 led a first wave of occupations which resulted in violence. The MST, landowners and the government accused each other of the killings, maimings and property damage. In the notorious Eldorado de Carajás massacre in 1996, 19 MST members were gunned down and another 69 wounded by police as they blocked a state road in Pará. In 1997 alone, similar confrontations with police and landowners' security details accounted for two dozen internationally acknowledged deaths. In 2002, the MST occupied the family farm of then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Minas Gerais, a move publicly condemned by Lula, then leader of the leftist opposition. and other prominent members of the PT. The farm was damaged and looted in the occupation, and a combine harvester, a tractor and several pieces of furniture were destroyed. MST members also drank all the alcohol at the farm. Later, 16 MST leaders were charged with theft, vandalism, trespassing, kidnapping and resisting arrest. In 2005, two undercover police officers investigating cargo truck robberies near an MST homestead in Pernambuco were attacked. One was shot dead and the other tortured; MST was suspected to be involved. Throughout the early 2000s, the MST occupied functioning facilities owned by large corporations whose activities it considered at odds with the social function