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SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - About 2,000 highly organized farm workers invaded a plantation owned by a big Brazilian paper and pulp company Wednesday, uprooting saplings and destroying a laboratory in an environmental rampage against mass eucalyptus tree cultivation, the company and the protesting group said.
The protesters, mostly women with Brazil's branch of the international Via Campesina farm workers rights group, occupied the plantation about 700 miles south of Sao Paulo before dawn, overpowered security guards and left after causing damage that could cost the company millions of dollars, Aracruz Papel e Celulose SA said in a statement.
Via Campesina said it organized the invasion "to denounce the social and environmental impact of the growing green desert created by eucalyptus monoculture" in Latin America's largest country. The raid was timed to coincide with International Women's Day.
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