At least 15,000 protesters wearing the red shirts, the Brazil's landless movement, have gathered around the Congress in the country's capital Brasilia.
Non-governmental organizations say the number of landless activists killed over the past years has fallen but that the number of death threats issued against them has almost tripled.
Tiberius Gracchus tried to bolster the citizen military by taking ager publicus from the wealthy and giving it to the landless poor. This was of course interpreted as trying to buildup a clientele.