Folha de Sao Paulo
9/16/02
Folha

The fact is that there is very little difference between them. The similarities are because the climate of the campaign does not raise the debate of the actual causes of Brazil's problems. As such, with agrarian reform, all of them prefer to appoint for poverty managers, without confronting with clarity that what Brazilian society needs to be democratic is to eliminate latifudios and the concentration of land: like all modern and developed nations have done. Brazilian society needs to openly debate that we cannot survive with the latifundio. Yet any multinational has a right to possess 20 or 30 million hectares of our land. This is the national forum of agrarian reform that has to be debated in society, the right to limit the maximum size of land. Any productive rancher can continue to be rich with a farm of 1500 hectares.

2) How do you evaluate the discourse of the candidates up to now about agrarian reform? Is the inclusion of the theme in the agenda a victory of social movements or do you attribute the approach to an action exclusively of marketing.

There exists a consciousness among the people that the latifundio is anti-social. For this reason, everyone supports agrarian reform. Thus the candidates are obligated to speak about agrarian reform. It is in the permanent debate, because it is a social problem, and not because of the marketing of any force. While there exists latifundio, there will exist landless and poverty in rural Brazil. And this is a social problem that can't be swept under the rug.

But our preoccupation is not with the discourse of the candidates. Our concern is with the social forces each represents. Thus, it is evident that Serra represents the continuation of the perverse model that is already here. Ciro, forces that want small changes and essentially to maintain things the same. Garotinho is unable to articulate the social forces around him. And the only candidate that represents the social forces that want real change in this country is Lula.

3) In June, the PT approved a document that establishes a commitment to settle 500,000 families in four years. To avoi controversery they changed this number. In 1994, Lula's promise was to settle 800,000 families. In 1998, 1 million. How should this retreat be viewed?

This is not retreat. This is different forms of quantifying or not the size of the program. Again, for us, it is of little importance what is written in programs. In Brazil, electoral programs are the greatest exercise of political rhetoric. Compare what is written in the Cardoso plan and what he has done in eight years. The elite have to win over the people during the campaigns with programs and talk. We never present even one candidate and much less the PT promise of number of settlements. We do not want to talk about numbers. We want to discuss that it is necessary to democratize the ownership of land in Brazil and it is necessary to change the actual agricultural model that only benefits the latifundiario sector, and the export sector. In the last ten years, the fruit of the Cardoso model, the concentration of land has increased. Latifundiarios with more than 2000 hectares have grown from an area 121 to 178 million hectares. Almost 900,000 small landowners with less that 100 hectares went bankrupt, 2 million rural workers lost their jobs. And the poverty and misery rose in the countryside. We need to change the agricultural model, and reorganize agriculture to the internal market, for the distribution of earnings and land. Only in this way will we eliminate poverty and inequality.

And therefore, it is necessary bring together fundamental factors: a popular government that unites social forces with this political desire and peasant movements organized and strong that have a capacity to create social pressure. The social changes in the rural areas of the entire world will only occur when you join these two factors.

4)You site studies of Jose Gomes da Silva, that show that it is possible to settle, in two years, 2 million families. Do you still defend this number of settlements, or 4 million families in four years?

I site our Jose Gomes da Silva, that while being a fazendeiro, is the greatest specialist in agrarian reform, to say that if we join a popular government with an organized peasant movement it is possible in a short amount of time to realize great changes. In the example of Japanese agrarian reform, forced by the intervention of the North American government, land was distributed to 6 million families, over 20 years. But this does not depend on promises of a program. This depends on the correlation of forces that create the society, in a determined moment.

5) What is your evaluation of the actual political discourse of Lula? Is it disappointing you?

Lula is creating a discourse within the parameters of an electoral campaign. Obviously it is not a discourse of defending a program of the left or of the necessary radical changes that our society needs. It is a discourse in the center of the ideological spectrum. But as I already stated, the most important thing is not the discourse. The most important thing is that the social forces that come around this or that candidate. The candidacy of Lula has the symbol of change. The people understand that if Lula wins, they will have change. And that, between the four, he is the only one that will really be able to bring together the force to make changes.

6) What do you think of the alliance between the PT and the PL and with politicians like Sarney, Quercia and Luiz Antônio de Medeiros? What do you think of his praises of the economic growth during the military regime?

This is an electoral issue of the PT. The MST already has sufficient problems, and doesn't need to get involved in the problems of others.

However, as militant people we understand this type of alliance injures the tradition of the left and the coherency of the party. And it certainly has positive and negative consequences. But only history can say which of the two will be victorious.

7) Do you intend to vote for Lula? Why? Why isn't the MST openly campaigning for Lula? Have their been negotiations of a pact to suspend invasions in order to keep from prejudicing the PT candidacy?

First, in all election periods, there is created a climate in society so that the elections are the center of the debates and concerns. Thus, every two years, in the election period, all social struggles cool off, not only in the countryside, but in the city as well. The fact that occupations have diminished in this time is not typical of 2002, or of any accord. Occupations do not occur at the will of the leaders, but occur by the planning and working together of forces in each location.

I am going to vote for Lula, and although there were no deliberations of congresses, all of the social militants, the MST, like other movements of Via Campesina, are involved and committed to the campaign and to a Lula victory. For the motives that I already explained. Lula is the only candidate that brings together social forces that can make changes in this country. Changes in the economic model, that is principal, and in particular the agriculture model and agrarian reform. And a victory for Lula will bring a great excitement for all Brazilians, and will generate a process of activity in the mass movements. A Lula government will create a need for the organized mass movements to give strength for the necessary changes.

8) Lula made the following declaration: "If companheiro Joao Pedro Stedile repeats in the 2002 campaign what he said in 1998, he is not helping me. He said: "If companheiro Lula wins the election, it is not in his possession, because we will be occupying all the land of Brazil? He didn't help. " Where will you be on 1/1/2003, if Lula wins the election?

This expression that I used was not in a fighting sense or defiant of the future Lula government. It was in the pedogical sense of defending and clarifying for our militancy and all suffering people, that it isn't enough to elect a new government. It is necessary for the people to organize and struggle for social change. No government is going to make the social changes by their own will. All the social changes in the history of humanity have come through social mobilization. From organized people, that where conscientious mobilization and struggle to alter the causes of problems. And the landless know that we continue having to organize better and better, gathering more people, to make great social mobilizations, so that the latifunudio will be rooted out of this country.

9) You made the following statement: "To be just, the studies of Delfim has helped us more that the PT itself has helped." Can you explain this.

What I said was that ultimately, the economist Delfim Neto is being more critical of the current agricultural model and its perverse effects on Brazilian society, than the economist of the PT. And I maintain that opinion. The last study that Delfim Neto did in the magazine Capital Letter analyzing Cardoso's economic model is a thorough analysis with an impressive clarity. We are using this test as a study with our militants, to understand why the economic model implanted by the Cardoso government is bankrupt. There, he proves with numbers and analysis, how Cardosos subservient government, located the Brazilian economy in an alley without exit. The external vulnerability that obligates us now to export one billion dollars per week. There, he proves how in eight years Brazil became an exporter of capital, and the balance of external transactions show that in eight years we exported more than we received, nothing less that 200 billion dollars . . . And shows also dependence on financial capital, and on interests payments.

See the point we've arrived at, the left has to use the conservative economists, to make a complete critic of the model. I say this, now, how does an economist learn . . .

10) In the New Left Review, a liberal English magazine, you said that the left in Brazil does not have a clear project for Brazil, falling on a simplification of socialism v. capitalism, without formulating the stages that must be pursued. Can you explain what path the left in Brazil defends?

We have debated these aspects in greater spheres than just the MST, with other movements of Via Campesina, in popular counsels, in churches, in popular movements. What is a popular project? It is to reorganize the economy, the use of available economic, natural and technical resources, so that our society, EACH and EVERY Brazilian will be able to have job security, land to work, dignified daily living, quality food, education and culture.

But this is not a declaration of rights, but necessary concrete measures, that will only arise to guarantee these rights, if a popular government uses the state and the organized forces of society to attack the causes of the problems that transformed our society to be so unjust and unequal. And what are the causes? It is necessary to eliminate the latifundio. It is necessary to democratize the accumulated wealth, with heavy penalty on fortunes and inheritances. Make salaries more just. Break the external dependence that makes it so that we export one billion dollars per week. Confront financial capital that today is the great center of accumulation and of exploitation. Confront the monopoly in the communication channels, so that they are used to educate the people and not manipulate, as they are now. And finally, Brazil needs to recover its national sovereignty. Over its economy, over it's natural resources and its culture. This is creating a neocolonial North America.

11) In the same interview, you said that the left has preferred negotiation to accommodate the pressure of the classes. If not by negotiation, what is the answer?

In that interview, I criticized the institutionalization of parties on the left that only think about elections. The role of leftist parties is to raise the level of the social consciousness of workers. It is to help organize social movements. It is to help organize social struggle. It is to help mobilize the people to defend their interest and to conquer their rights. The elections are only one aspect of the democratic game of society. The bourgeios and its channels of communication live making propaganda reducing democracy to the act of voting. Because this is their means of controlling people, disillusioning them with false promises in the election. True democracy is when the people are conscious of their social condition and struggle, and organize to better the functioning of society in all its aspects.

True democracy is when the people are able to walk with there own legs and have actual equal opportunities. It is not enough to have rights written in the constitution. It is not the paper that guarantees social conquest. It is an organized people, in the most varied forms, that develops in each country, in each cultural traditional.

12) In the 2000 plebiscite, you defended non-payment of external debt and you already said you're in favor of the limitation of interest payments on internal debt-which could be understood as a species of cheating. As an economist, can you explain your position about these themes, with a view of the political impact for the country?

The external debt is not a moral question: To whom you have debts, pay. The external debt is a mechanism that internal capital created to exploit countries of the third world. In the colonial period, they exploited us robbing our natural resources. In the 20th century they exploited us coming here with their factories, exploiting our labor. And now, they exploit us with loans and interest payments. The test is here. When Cardoso became president, our external debt was $128 billion. According to Delfin Neto, we exported in eight years, $200 billion dollars more than we received, and our debt jumped to $258 billion!!!

So our country will not develop, will not end poverty, will not create a more just and democratic society without limiting this unjust transfer of wealth of the people to the exterior. We can discuss the way this will happen. First, it is necessary to suspend all debt payments, and do a public audit, with view of the constitution, to see what we owe, and what we already paid. It is necessary to locate limits in the amassing of earnings of the multinationals. It is necessary to put an end to CC5. See the crises in which we are living. Yet in the first semester of 2002, 4 or 5 billion dollars of internal savings of the middle class was exported, to private foreign accounts . . . this is savings that could finance our own homes, industries, production, and it goes to Miami, Paris, and New York.

I do not know why the media is so terrified with the suspension of the payments of external debt. This is defended by church documents, the Pope, conservative economists, even Tancredo Neves has announced that we should not pay debt with the hunger of the people.

The issue of internal debt is almost the same. The budget of the union is held hostage by the banks. And it is producing a greater concentration of wealth than is imaginable. So today, the government uses $140 billion Reals a year to pay interests. Or rather, pays the peoples money, through taxes and pays it to the banks. It is necessary to end this. How? There exists many forms. But it is necessary to discuss this. Why, for example, are the interest rates in Brazil 19.75% not the same for the international financial markets that vary from .2% in Japan to 2.5% in New York?

What all serious economist are saying, including, I read the interview of the international banker, is that if we do not resolve these two structural bottlenecks, Brazil will be the new Argentina, soon, in the first semester of 2003. Watch.

13) The MST is helping to organize a plebiscite on the FTAA. How will this change the negotiation of the accord? Is it a marketing event alone? What is the impact of the PT's absence?

The FTAA is unlike any other commercial agreement. It is not a bilateral agreement that benefits both sides. The FTAA is a strategic plan of the 200 largest North-American corporations and the government of the United States, to take account of our wealth, our investment, our industries, our markets, our communication channels, our money, and our culture. And with this, they increase their earnings and gain an edge on their European and Asian competitors.

There exists nine groups of negotiation in the FTAA, and only one is commercial. Thus, the social movements, unions, and churches in all of Latin America, constructed a continental campaign to struggle against the FTAA. And the Brazilian campaign is only one part of this greater campaign. The plebiscite was a pedagogical tool, not only to count the votes, but to educate our people. It was this that we accomplished, millions of Brazilians becoming conscious, involved and participating. And we will secure other pedagogical forms to explain to the people, until we win the battle of blocking the FTAA.

Those of us in the Brazilian campaign have defended and hope that the new Brazilian government backs out of the negotiations immediately. It is necessary to say to the North-American government, "we do not want the FTAA and that is it." And this is not radicalism. It is even being defended by the ambassador Samuel Pinheiro Guimares. The house of deputies itself approved a unanimous motion asking the Cardoso government to back out of the negotiations immediately.

Brazil has other forms of international integration.Integration and not submission. First, we can create a plan of economic and cultural integration with countries in South America. Second, with the strongest economies in the Southern Hemisphere, like South Africa, India, Iran, and China and form a great block, that defends against the imperial offensive of the americans and at the same time creates conditions of mutual help.

The campaign to organize the plebiscite against debt and now the campaign against the FTAA is an immense constellation of more than 100 Brazilian social civil entities. The parties never participate as institutions. Only militant persons. For this, the PT did not assist. But militants in the PT and other parties, even some of the governing party, participated actively in the entire campaign.

14) If the election was today, Lula would win. Do you reaffirm the message that you sent in an international seminar to foreign investors? "Don't come to Brazil, because you are going to lose your money. Sooner or later, we will regain our national sovereignty?

This is not a message, it is a theory. Brazil must have a government that bars the entrance of foreign speculative capital, (and it was this that I said in Vienna) that come here only to buy our businesses (to take the earnings) and hoard them, living on interests . . . We must accept foreign capital, when it comes here to locate a factory, when it comes here to put into place production and commits to reinvest the earnings in Brazil.

That speculative capitalists are going to lose money, it is not a threat on my part. This they understand by the logic of the market itself. Besides, in the Brazilian case, they have already begun to lose their money and leave, and leave us with the brush in our hands. We have seen that the titles to external Brazilian debt are being negotiated in the exterior for 50% of their value.. . because the entire world understands this scheme. It is not Jesus Christ that discarded the Brazilian economy in crises and maintains the levels of sending 1 billion dollars a week to the exterior.

15) You've admitted that there are few blacks in the MST and attribute the fact to Brazilian agrarian formation. Is it not a statement that the movement does not alter this problem, with a view that blacks form the major part of those called excluded? Can this be seen as a reflection or continuation of Brazilian racial segregation?

The MST is proud to be a movement that has contributed to redeem citizenship and opportunities for all the poor, including blacks. But, unfortunately, the Brazilian elite historically condemned the black population to exclusion. First, there was 400 years of slavery, and after, with the Land Law of 1850, the elite prevented the freed slaves from becoming farmers. It is for this reason that the majority had to migrate from the farms to the port cities. Thus we have a small percentage of the black population among landless farmers. The black populations among the landless are mostly in Maranhao and Bahia. And there, they are the majority of the MST. The majority of the landless farmers are located in the south and the northeast, and reflect the ethnic formation of these two regions. In the south, there is more white Europeans and in the northeast, a mixture of mulatores, mamelucos . . . a general mix.

16) You defined the MST invasion of Cardoso's ranch as a defecation. Whose defecation and why?

There were many errors. Errors in the ingenuity of the landless, that had planned to go to the entrance of the farm alone, and ended up entering into the farm and the house, when they saw that it was unprotected. They didn't realize that it was a trap. The intelligence service of the Cardoso regime attended the assembly that decided to act eight hours earlier. They erred by letting strange cinemotragraphers accompany them and induce them to enter the house.

The Cardoso government erred by attempting to create a political fact to demoralize the MST, the landless and agrarian reform that humiliated us in a form of prison. It was an error to disrespect negotiations of Incra (the federal institution responsible for agrarian reform), that had to ask for their dismissal with the lies of the government. It was an error of the government that tried to undermine the PT and the Lula campaign.

It was an error of the menial press, which did not explain what was really happening was a game of the government, especially Globo, which has already caused our people so many problems.

In conclusion, everyone lost with that episode. The MST lost by having its image soiled. The government lost by its lies. The press lost with its shameful subservience. The judicial power of Buritis lost that allowed himself to be manipulated.

But what is most tragic. All the problems that the settled families neighboring the president's farm have continue without change. The government did not resolve any of them ... and their only bad luck or good luck, is that they are poor and neighbors of the president, which can be very dangerous at times. But the public opinion doesn't understand, for example, that this settlement was emptied of the money for its schools by the local authorities. A school that was in an old stable with more that 100 kids, less than 100 kilometers away from the vast farm of the President Sociologist, that was certainly purchased by money acquired by the sweat and hard labor . . . together with Sergio Motta . . .

17) The Folha de Sao Paulo published a series of reports about the irregularities found by the Public Minister in the financing of cooperatives linked to the MST, including the payment of taxes. You said that, if there where irregularities, there would be punishment. Was anyone investigated? Was anyone punished?

The Folha de Sao Paulo borrowed the propaganda of the Cardoso government. The landless did not mobilize for ideology, but rather for social necessity. Each time that we organize national manifestations to pressure the government to resolve the problems, the Cardoso government rather than resolve the problems, adopts mechanisms of propaganda, the use of the channels of communication to attempt to politically destroy the MST. For one of the mobilizations, the government invented this situation, to undermine the cooperatives.

Despite the numerous investigations, there has been no news of anyone being sued, because in fact there have not been improprieties with public money. It is clear that our cooperatives, the majority, like the fazendeiros, have administrative problems. And these they correct, renewing directors, etc.

But what I want to say is that the associations of our cooperatives and the MST itself has mechanisms of control and to avoid corruption, and when there are problems, the associations themselves take measures.

Talk about corruption, Brazilian society is waiting for an answer to many accusations that were made, since the fateful process of purchasing votes of deputies, to guarantee the reelection of Cardoso. And the case of Sivan, that still has no explanation for the people.