Supporting nearly 60 families, Assentamento Zapata is a small, struggling farming community which has become the direct result of social declaration exerted by Landless Movement affiliates. Situated nearly 20 km east of the city of Ponta Grossa, the 620 hectares which encompass the settlement has been occupied for nearly six years without the inhabitants obtaining the legal title of the land. After just recently straightening out legal ties with surrounding large scale farming operations, the government has approved the surveying and mapping of this land in order for it to became an established assentmanto. Because the settlement has not been able to gain title to the land up until this point, the families have not been able to receive any source of governmental funding for agricultural practices, and were left to 
accumulate financial endowments through personal practices. The primary production has been concentrates on corn and soy beans, but with objectives to use newly developed sustainable agriculture 
methods, the members of this community plan to collectively cultivate a variety of organic vegetables as well. Our first task, after discovering an appropriate irrigation system, was to build an organic compost primarily of cow consisting of fresh cow manure and last years corn husks. Nothing welcomes you to a new place better than shoveling a healthy six hours of hearty cow manure with your bare hands. Although this work was hardly appetizing, it was satisfying and filled me up on my fare share of dirty laundry. 
Celio Rodrigues, a leading member of the Landless Movement, sits in his home sipping a cuia as I was able to speak to him about his influence in the largest social movement in Brazil.
