 Casualties amounted to nineteen dead and fifty-one injured, underlining the land problem and accompanying disrespect for human rights.In a 1996 article economist Maria da Conceição Tavares, one of the most prominent critics of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's Government, claimed, "the importance of a rural reform has increased and the dispute for land, if the relations of "dominance" of rural properties are not regulated quickly, will lead to growing confrontations".The land reform movement included about five hundred land occupations of what protesters considered to be unproductive farms.