Barreto: Agrarian reform "was an old myth in political life"

Agrarian reform was an “old myth of Portuguese political life,” which took shape in 1975, when tensions were rising in the Alentejo region, which was short of labor, said former politician António Barreto in an interview with Lusa.

“Agrarian reform was an old myth in Portuguese political life and among the opposition and the Portuguese democratic left,” António Barreto, Minister of Agriculture in the first constitutional government led by Mário Soares, told Lusa on the 50th anniversary of agrarian reform.

From April 25, 1974, until the end of the same year, a situation of “some social pressure” was created in the Alentejo for the implementation of agrarian reform, driven by political parties, from the PCP to the PS, but also by unions and the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), which acted more actively until the promulgation of the Constitution in 1976.

In Alentejo, employment and production were declining. Portugal's agricultural sector was struggling. The pressure resulted in the occupation of Herdade do Monte do Outeiro, in the parish of Santa Vitória, in Beja, in December 1974. "Half a dozen occupations" followed at the beginning of the following year, before the agrarian reform law came into effect.

This law defined "a threshold above which lands could be expropriated, defined compensation, and the reservation [expropriated owners had the right to reserve a certain area of ​​the property]. None of these clauses were respected [...]. Everything was expropriated: the livestock, the machinery, the grain, the cork, the warehouses, and even the home," explained the sociologist.

António Barreto recalled that, at the time, the message was being conveyed that the occupied land was abandoned and that, true to the slogan of the time, it would be handed over "to those who work it." However, agricultural workers, mobilized by the unions and the PCP, occupied, above all, "the good lands, with modern farming and all the improvements—irrigated lands, vineyards, olive groves, and cork oak groves."

The occupation operation “was very well prepared”, with the Government creating Agrarian Reform Centers, responsible for carrying out this process.

The GNR (National Republican Guard) was unarmed and did not intervene, unlike what often happened with the military. There was "moderate resistance" from the landowners, and many withdrew to the cities with their families, fearing the ongoing process.

However, some estates, particularly those that had invested a year earlier in improving their conditions and those they offered their workers, managed to resist the occupation attempts, as was the case with the Alorna and Lagoalva estates in Ribatejo.

Most of the agricultural workers who took up occupations were driven by the desire to keep their jobs, although some had the aspiration of becoming property owners.

"That was a minority. The Alentejo had been proletarianized for many years. The majority [of workers] were rural wage earners, who lacked the taste or technical and economic skills to become property owners overnight [...]. They wanted a guaranteed salary and employment year-round, which was a novelty in the Alentejo," he said. And even these workers, at the first opportunity, moved to industry, to factories, considering that agricultural work is "extremely arduous and poorly paid."

The expropriated lands, located within the so-called Agrarian Reform Intervention Zones (ZIRA), formed Collective Production Units (UCP), which combined several estates. The property was owned by the state. These production units relied on emergency agricultural credit to guarantee the weekly wages of their workers.

"Whether it was 10 or 200 workers, it didn't matter. The bank branch had instructions from the Central Bank to make the payment upon presentation of just one document attesting to the workers' identities," said António Barreto, recalling that the banking sector had just been nationalized.

The ZIRA encompassed the districts of Setúbal, Beja, Évora, and Portalegre, as well as parts of the districts of Faro, Lisbon, Santarém, and Castelo Branco. By January 1976, nearly 1,183,000 hectares of land had been occupied.

According to António Barreto's book "Anatomy of a Revolution," between August and December 1975, 865 estates and 311 landowners were legally expropriated. From January to July 1976, 1,261 estates and 398 landowners were expropriated.

It wasn't until 1977 that a law drafted by then-Minister of Agriculture António Barreto regulated the agrarian reform process, structuring the conditions for the restitution of properties to former owners or heirs and paving the way for compensation. Many landowners recovered their land 20 or 30 years after the agrarian reform. The European Court ruled in favor of most of the landowners who requested compensation, leading the State to assume the responsibility for the amounts in question.

The September 1977 law, designed to regulate agrarian reform and create conditions for the return of occupied properties, resulted in then-minister António Barreto facing 200 court cases, all of which were deemed unfounded, and attempts at intimidation.

"I had over 200 court cases. Almost every UCP [Collective Production Unit] filed a lawsuit because of what I was doing. The law, credit, income, and taxes—everything was grounds for lawsuits," recalled former Agriculture Minister António Barreto in an interview with Lusa, marking the 50th anniversary of agrarian reform. However, these cases were "copied from one another," meaning the unions "were copying" the texts.

António Barreto, through his lawyer, Ângelo Almeida Ribeiro, asked the court to combine these cases into one, given that they all had the same objective.

He only appeared in court once in this case, followed by two or three sessions, attended only by his lawyer. The court ruled that the case should be dismissed entirely. "It made no sense. It was a political case, pure and simple," he stated.

The so-called “Barreto Law” also led to attempts at intimidation against its promoter, which extended to his family, leading the then Minister of Agriculture to ask the Ministry of the Interior to pay more attention to this case.

For the sociologist, phrases like "Death to the Barreto Law" or "Death to Barreto," which were written on walls across the country, similar to the cartoons, confirmed that he was "touching a nerve" and didn't bother him, unlike the threats that reached his family, who live in the Porto district. He therefore asked the police, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Armed Forces to be vigilant and provide some protection for him and his family.

As a minister, he missed having a private life, and the cinema ended up being his refuge, he admitted. "I had a bodyguard who was always with me. I would go to the hotel, and the bodyguard would drop me off and go to sleep. As soon as I could, I would dress in jeans and a t-shirt and go to the cinema. There was a cinema in Lisbon, in Avenidas, called Quarteto […], and sometimes I would go to a showing at ten and another at midnight," he said.

After leaving his post as minister, he couldn't resist taking to the streets a few times to photograph the phrases and cartoons that have stood the test of time. António Barreto was part of Pinheiro de Azevedo's last provisional government and was later invited to join the first constitutional government, led by Mário Soares.

He took over the Commerce and Tourism portfolio after working at the United Nations, and later received the Agriculture portfolio, but placed some conditions on it. He told Prime Minister Mário Soares that he wanted to create a new agrarian reform law because the current one "was neither useful nor useful."

On the other hand, he chose Carlos Portas (independent) and António Campos (PS) to take over, respectively, as Secretaries of State for Agrarian Reform and Agricultural Development. "Days after taking office, I announced on television that we were going to enact a new agrarian reform law. This shook the political landscape a bit at the time, but it was the right thing to do. I had no doubt that the law needed to be thoroughly revised," he argued.

For Barreto, it was necessary to reward those who worked well and who made investments and to define the reserve that remained in the hands of the owners.

The September 1977 law aimed to regulate the agrarian reform process, structuring the conditions for the restitution of properties to former owners or heirs and paving the way for compensation. However, António Barreto acknowledged that the new law was limited by the Constitution, which did not allow for the determination, for example, that "estate A was expropriated because it was poorly cultivated, and estate B was not expropriated because it was well cultivated."

The constitutionality of the so-called "Barreto Law" was assessed by the Constitutional Commission (at the time, there was no Constitutional Court), led by Colonel Melo Antunes, who spent "long days" discussing it and subsequently approving it. Many UCP members, who combined several expropriated estates, reacted negatively to the law and organized demonstrations.

As with the occupations, the land return process was generally peaceful. The military, and especially the Republican Republican Guard (GNR), had only rubber or wooden bullets as deterrents. Some landowners recovered their land 20 or 30 years after the agrarian reform.