On February 12, 1979, the Maranhense Society for the Defense of Human Rights (SMDDH) was created, a civil society entity of a public nature and a political space for denunciation against arbitrariness and violence, common events during the dictatorship regime. For this, it adopted as action strategies the popular mobilization, basic education and presentation of denunciations of rights violations. The performance in this or that moment was centralized in the great São Luís. 

In the 1980s and since the 1990s, the main demand placed on the entity was basically intervention with the land conflicts, marked by violent clashes with grileiros and landowners. 

 
In 1985, the Alternative Technologies Project (PTA) was created, in partnership with FASE, aiming at raising experiences in alternative agricultural technology and encouraging the networking of technicians, workers, unions and rural communities. Starting in 1986, the SMDDH created the Legal Assistance to Rural Communities Project (PAJ), with the objective of guaranteeing the rights of squatters and the exercise of citizenship in the struggle for land, through legal assistance, strengthening of workers' organizations and opinion-forming. At the same time, the entity intervened with the population of the neighborhood of the Guardian Angel, victim of the expropriations for the implantation of the Great Project Carajás. 

Mission