did, and even hypothesized that the MST invaded Argentina from the north in order to blackmail the Brazilian government into action. In July 1997, Cardoso' Chief of Military Household (Chefe da Casa Militar, among other things a general comptroller over all issues regarding the military and police forces as armed civil servants) expressed concern about participation of MST activists in the then-ongoing police officers' strikes, as a plot to "destabilize" the military. In terms of concrete measures, Cardoso's government's approach to land reform was divided: at the same time it acquired land for settlement and increased taxes on unused land, it also forbade public inspection of invaded land - thereby precluding future expropriation - and the disbursement of public funds to people involved in such invasions. Cardoso's main land reform project, supported by a World Bank US$90 million loan, was addressed to individuals who had experience in farming and a yearly income of up to US$15,000; they were granted a loan of up to US$40,000 if they could associate with other rural producers in order to buy land from a willing landholder. Thus, this programme catered primarily to substantial small farmers, not to the MST's traditional constituency, the rural poor. Cardoso's project, Cédula da Terra ("landcard") did offer previously landless people the opportunity to buy land from landowners but in a negotiated process. In the words of an American scholar, despite its efforts in resettlement, the Cardoso government did not confront the prevailing mode of agricultural production: concentrated, mechanized, latifundia-friendly commodity production - and the resulting injustices. In his own words, what Cardoso could not accept about the MST was what he saw not as a struggle for land reform, but a wider struggle against the capitalist system. Therefore, Cardoso's administration tried to initiate tamer social movements for land reform on purely negotiated terms, such as the Movement of Landless Producers (Movimento dos Agricultores Sem Terra, or MAST), organized on a local basis in the São Paulo State, around the trade union central Syndical Social Democracy, or SDS. By contrast, MST leaders emphasized that their practical activity was a response to the poverty of so many people who had little prospects of productive, continuous work in conventional labor markets. This reality was admitted by President Cardoso in a 1996 interview: "I'm not going to say that my government will be of the excluded, for that it cannot be ... I