of property. On March 8, 2005, the MST invaded a nursery and a research center in Barra do Ribeiro, 56 km from Porto Alegre, both owned by Aracruz Celulose. The MST members held local guards captive while they ripped plants from the ground. MST president João Pedro Stédile commented that MST should oppose not only landowners but also agrobusiness, "the project of organization of agriculture by transnational capital allied to capitalist farming"—a model he deems socially backwards and environmentally harmful. In the words of an anonymous activist: "our struggle is not only to win the land ... we are building a new way of life". The shift had been developing since the movement's 2000 national congress, which focused mainly on the perceived threat of transnational corporations, whether Brazilian or foreign to both small property in general and to Brazilian national food sovereignty, especially in the area of intellectual property. This principle led to the July 2000 attack on a ship in Recife loaded with GM maize from Argentina. Since 2000, much of the movement's activism consisted in symbolic acts against multinational corporations as "a symbol of the intervention politics of the big monopolies operating in Brazil". A possible reason contributing to the change in strategy might have been the perceived shift in government stance in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Cardoso government declared that Brazil "had no need" for land reform, that small farms were not competitive, and were unlikely to increase personal incomes in rural areas. It would better to create of skilled jobs, which would cause the land reform issue to recede into the background. Cardoso denounced the MST's actions as aiming for a return to an archaic agrarian past, and therefore in conflict with "modernity": "one of the enabling myths of the neoliberal discourse". Cardoso offered lip service to agrarian reform in general, but also described the movement as "a threat to democracy". He compared the MST's demands for subsidized credit, which led to the 1998 occupation of various banks in Paraná, to bank robbery. In a memoir written after he left office, Cardoso expressed sympathy for land reform, stating, "were I not President, I would probably be out marching with them", but also saying "the image of mobs taking over privately-owned farms would chase away investment, both local and foreign". Although Cardoso himself never branded the MST as terrorist, his Minister of Agricultural Development