Source: Maryknoll News Notes
by David Kane
July 15, 2005
The Brazilian government has been racked by a series of corruption scandals that many social movements--church groups; NGOs; unions; farmers, Afro-Brazilians, womens' and students' organizations--worry may result in conservative parties increasing their power within the coalition that supports the president’s Workers’ Party (PT). President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), a founding member of the PT, was elected in 2002 after losing three previous elections for the same position. In order to gain political support necessary for the election, the PT formed alliances with conservative parties, which has made it difficult to maintain coalition of forces within the government.
In its first two and a half years in power, the Lula government has implemented a mixture of progressive and conservative policies. On the international front, it has maintained a more independent posture in relation to free trade accords like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), while working to increase South-South relationships through stronger ties with African, Asian and other Latin American countries. Internally, however, it has passed a series of structural (neoliberal) reforms that the PT historically had fought against, such as the partial privatization of social security and bankruptcy reform, and is working for other unpopular reforms of education, workers’ rights and unions. This dichotomy of actions represents the internal struggles taking place within the government between the coalition forces. Social movements are concerned that, as a result of these recent scandals, the conservative forces will increase their force within the government.
The first scandal, which came to light in 2003, involved a trusted assistant to Jose Dirceu, the president’s chief of staff, who extorted money from a clandestine lottery director for political campaigns for members of the PT and allied parties. The government was able to avoid a Congressional investigation of the case, but the PT’s image as an ethical and honest party was tarnished, and Dirceu’s reputation was damaged.
A second scandal began earlier this year when a video on national television showed an executive of the postal system, Mauricio Marinho, receiving money from a private company in exchange for contracts with the postal service. During the video, Marinho detailed a bribery scheme, supposedly orchestrated by Roberto Jefferson, president of the PTB, an allied party of the Lula government, which involved other state-run companies. In a television interview about the accusations, Jefferson, in an attempt to deflect attention from his involvement, introduced a new scandal saying that the PT, since the beginning of its time in office, has been paying close to $12,500 per month to as many as 101 representatives and senators from two allied parties, the Progressive Party (PP) and Liberal Party (PL), for them to vote in favor of PT initiatives.
The resulting scandal has dominated the political agenda. No one has strongly denied the accusations and many politicians and aides have commented that they had heard about the illegal payments, but have no proof. Congress already has begun an investigation of the postal scandal and will start an investigative panel of the paying off of legislators.
The first victim of the crisis was Jose Dirceu, Lula’s chief of staff and longtime personal friend, who left his position to return to his position as representative of the state of Sao Paulo to which he was elected in 2002. Dirceu was a strong center-left voice within the schizophrenic Cabinet. Some, like Minister of the Environment Marina Silva, represent the PT’s historical progressive past, while others such as Roberto Rodrigues (Agriculture), Luiz Furlan (Development, Industry and External Commerce) and Antonio Palocci (Economic Policy) favor strong neoliberal policies. The president of the Central Bank is Henrique Meirelles, a former president of the Bank of Boston, Brazil’s largest private creditor. With conservatives in such key positions, the loss of Dirceu was especially worrisome to social movements.
While the scandals have lowered Brazilians’ confidence in the Lula government in opinion polls, the percentage of people rating the government as good or great has fallen from 41 percent to 35 percent since the beginning of the year--many believe that Lula himself may have been unaware of the payments being made to the legislators. When he learned about the latest scandal, aides report that he cried and ordered that the payments to legislators be stopped. Lula continues to be seen positively by the majority of the Brazilian people and as a hope for fundamental change by the social movements. In response to the scandal, over 50 movements released a “Letter to the Brazilian People? in which they defend Lula, demand a full investigation of the corruption scandals and punishment of the guilty parties, and call for a series economic policy changes such as lowering interest rates (currently 19.75 percent, the highest in the world), redirecting part of Brazil’s debt payment to social spending; and political reforms such as public financing of elections, increased public overview of state agencies and the use of direct voting through referendums and plebiscites. The letter calls on all Brazilian citizens to go to the streets in favor of these demands. As Joao Pedro Stedile, spokesperson for the movements, said, “The only certainty of the possibility for changes … is if workers organize independently, mobilize and struggle for changes. Never has any government given anything for free.?
*The author is Abdurazack Karriem of the Department of City and Regional Plannin at Cornell University.
"A reforma agraria se faz no campo, mas se ganha na cidade" – MST slogan
(You make agrarian reform in the countryside, but you win it in the cities)
"Marches always represent the disposition to struggle, of moving forward. They demonstrate
the extreme degree of sacrifice by men, women and children, who challenge themselves to
walk hundreds of kilometers for an ideal: to see land shared." - MST
On 2 May 2005, over 12,000 members and supporters of the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) left the city of Goiania and embarked upon a two week, 230 km, ‘National March for Agrarian Reform’ to the federal capital, Brasilia. The sea of marchers waving their red MST flags and banners did not only call for agrarian reform, they demanded radical changes in the Lula government’s neoliberal economic policies.
In its 21 year history, marches have been an important ingredient in the MST’s growth from a small regional movement in southern Brazil into the largest, most organized and dynamic social movement in Brazilian history. The objective of most of these marches was to take the demands of the landless to and win the support of the population in local towns, provincial capitals and the national capital. The building of links with urban sectors of society has allowed the MST to overcome the ‘isolation’ of rural struggles and win popular support for agrarian reform. This strategy is crucial in a country that is 80% urbanized.
The MST draws inspiration from many historic marches ranging from Gandhi’s salt march, Martin Luther King’s civil rights march on Washington DC, and the Prestes Column’s 25,000 km march across Brazil against elite domination of the rural and urban poor. Of the many marches that the MST has undertaken, three stand out. Most of these marches were shaped by the particular conjunctures of their time. In October 1985, the newly born MST carried out its largest land occupation as 2,500 families took over the 9,500 hectare Fazenda Anoni estate. However, two years later the tent camp of 7,000 people had still not been settled on land. The MST was at a crossroads: patiently wait for the government to fulfill its promises or march on the provincial capital, Porto Alegre and pressure the government to settle the families? The MST decided on the latter. After marching 450 km over 27 days, the marchers were welcomed by 10,000 Porto Alegrenses and given the keys to the city by the mayor. The march was instrumental in placing land reform on the national agenda, in the settlement of the Fazenda Anonni families, and served as the launching pad for the growth of the MST into a national movement.
The second major march took place in another difficult conjuncture. During the mid-1990s, the neoliberal Cardoso administration --after failing in its efforts to co-opt the MST-- utilized the full arsenal of the state machinery (the judiciary, intelligence agency, the police and the media) to vilify, criminalize and repress the MST and its strategy of occupying unproductive farms. Scores of MST members were arrested on trumped up charges of murder. In 1996, 19 MST members were killed and a further 69 wounded (many shot in the back) by the military police while on a peaceful march on the highway at Eldorado dos Carajas protesting unfulfilled government promises. The MST went on the offensive and in February 1997 organized a two month national march for ‘Land Reform, Employment and Justice,’ to the center of political power in Brasília. One thousand three hundred MST members left from three corners of Brazil and covered 1500 km to arrive in the nation’s capital on 17 April 1997, the first anniversary of the Eldorado dos Carajas massacre.
The March highlighted that a year later none of the military police officers implicated in the massacre had been arrested. The reference to unemployment was a clear allusion to President Cardoso’s trade liberalization policies that forced thousands of family farmers off the land, to the job losses associated with privatization of state enterprises, and to the high interest rate policy which was bankrupting factories and leading to rising unemployment. The MST thus demonstrated how local struggles for agrarian reform are connected to the broader struggle against neoliberal policies.
Enroute to Brasília, the marchers were warmly received by residents of small towns who wanted to know more about the lives of the Sem Terra (the landless) as MST members are popularly referred to. The Sem Terra were invited to address schools and churches to explain the purpose of the march, to talk about life in their plastic tent camps, and of their struggle for a better life. As the marchers converged onto Brasília they were welcomed by over 100,000 people. The march, which was widely covered by the print and electronic media, sparked the popular imagination and generated admiration and pride at the determination of a group of people who were willing to fight for their ideals. A poll taken during the march showed that over 80% of Brazilians supported agrarian reform and that the Cardoso government had not done enough to promote agrarian reform and combat rural violence. Popular support for land reform and the Sem Terra forced President Cardoso to back down from his efforts to criminalize and repress the MST.
The MST national march to Brasília during May 2005, unlike the 1997 march, did not take place in a context of repression but one of cooptation and unfulfilled promises from a government that declared land reform a priority. The 2005 march was offensive rather than defensive and had as its objective changes in the Lula government’s neoliberal macro-economic policy, which undermined the land reform program. To understand the significance of the 2005 March, it is necessary to briefly situate it in its political context.
The Context to the 2005 March: The Workers Party (PT) and Lula in Power
In October 2002, over 52 million Brazilians voted Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, a former metal worker, as their president. Lula came into office on a strong platform of change to undo a decade of neoliberal rule. He had broad popular support from the working class, the middle class and sections of the national bourgeoisie, all of whom had to a lesser or greater extent been squeezed by neoliberal policies. Despite his left rhetoric, Lula not only gave continuity to but actually deepened the neoliberal agenda of the previous administration. The Lula government voluntarily increased the primary budget surplus target of 3.75% of GDP (initially agreed to with the IMF) to 4.25% to gain the confidence of the markets. The IMF imposed primary budget surpluses are generated to service interest payments on Brazil’s debt. To meet the self-imposed target of 4.25%, the Finance Ministry drastically curbed public spending. In 2003, rigid monetary and fiscal measures resulted in the economy contracting by 0.2%, resulting in rising unemployment, declines in worker income, and reductions in family consumption. During 2003-2004 the Lula government spent R$273 billion (roughly $110 billion) just servicing interest payments on debt. Instead of tackling Brazil’s social debt, Lula religiously prioritized debt payments.
Lula and many of the NGO and social movement activists who entered government called on popular movements to be patient, arguing that the Brazilian state could not be transformed overnight and that the conservative turn in economic policy was transitional. Instead of promoting and reinforcing popular mobilizations in support of a progressive agenda, the moderate tendency in the PT and the Lula government through a discourse of patience demobilized popular forces while at the same time reinforcing the “liberal ideology of private property and the business class as the principal protagonists of society.?
While most movements were caught in a state of paralysis and confusion, the MST -- despite its close ties to the PT-- was among the first popular movements to assert its autonomy and challenge the Lula administration’s conservative turn. In late 2003, the MST and other rural movements marched on Brasília to demand the launch of the government’s National Plan for Agrarian Reform (PNRA). The drafters of the PNRA stated that there was sufficient unproductive land (liable for expropriation under the Brazilian constitution) to settle one million families over four years. In addition, the drafters proposed a set of agricultural credit and infrastructural policies to ensure the success and sustainability of the PNRA. The government, however, scaled back the original PNRA by only agreeing to settle 430, 000 families by the end of 2006.
In 2003, the government declared that it had settled 36,000 families of the PNRA target of 60,000 and in 2004 settled 81,000 families of the planned 115,000. All rural movements contested these figures, arguing that many of the families included in these statistics were already on the land and merely had their tenure status legalized and thus should not be included as being settled. The MST asserts that less than 60,000 families were settled during 2003-2004.
The May 2005 ‘National March for Land Reform’ thus took place in another challenging conjuncture for the MST. The Lula government’s embrace of fiscal discipline undermined PNRA targets. To ensure that the primary surplus target of 4.25% to service debt was achieved, the Finance Ministry announced R$15 billion (approximately $6 billion) worth of spending cuts in the 2005 budget. The agrarian reform budget allocation of R$3.7 billion was cut by R$2 billion ($800 million). In 2004, when the agrarian reform budget had suffered a similar fate, the MST embarked upon a massive month-long national campaign of popular actions (land occupations, marches, occupation of government buildings and road blocks), which the corporate media dubbed “Red April? in a naked attempt to conjure images of disorder and transgressions of the rule of law that needed to severely repressed. The MST appropriated and incorporated “Red April? into its own struggle lexicon and went on to occupy 127 unproductive farms throughout Brazil, the highest number ever for a single month. As it became apparent that the moderate tendency in the PT and Lula had fully converted to a neoliberal agenda that prioritized debt payments over meeting PNRA targets, the MST prepared for its biggest march onto Brasília.
The 2005 ‘National March for Agrarian Reform’ and a Popular Project for Brazil
Like the 1997 march, the 2005 ‘National March for Agrarian Reform’ goes beyond narrow corporatist demands for land reform to posit national popular demands. It called for an economic policy that addressed the problems of the Brazilian people. To this end, the MST mobilized a broad rural-urban coalition that included affiliates of the Via Campesina-Brasil (e.g. the Small Farmers Movement, the Movement of People Affected by Dams and the Movement of Peasant Women), indigenous movements, the church (Pastoral Land Commission and Rural Pastoral Youth), and urban movements (e.g. the National Union of Students, Movement of Occupied Factories, the Homeless Workers Movement, the Unemployed Workers Movement, Grito dos Excluidos, the Coordination of Social Movements, the Marcha Mundial dos Mulheres, and cultural organizations), and quilombola communities. Quilombolas are descendants of runaway slave communities who are fighting for legal recognition to land they are living on or claiming lands from which they were dispossessed.
The extensive list of demands contained in the national march document --“Proposals of the MST, the Via Campesina, and the Social Movements to the Lula Government? --ranged from meeting the PNRA target of settling 430,000 families by the end of 2006, the installation of agro-industries on land reform settlements and the provision of a special new credit for agrarian reform. For the MST, the transfer of land needs to be backed up by inputs, credit, infrastructure, technical assistance and access to markets to ensure the feasibility of the agrarian reform program. The proposals also strongly critiqued the government’s economic policy and demanded that the primary surpluses be invested in public education, healthcare, housing and sanitation needs of the country rather than paying bankers. One of the objectives of the march according to Fatima Ribeiro, a MST leader, is to make clear to the Lula government that “We will not accept that the R$2 billion [$800 million] for land reform be destined to pay interest on debt.?
With the almost religious preoccupation of repaying debt, Lula’s administration encouraged the expansion of agro-exports to generate foreign exchange. Lula took to heart former president Cardoso’s advice that Brazil had to “export or die? and, in so doing, gave continuity to an exclusionary agro-export model: the colonial sugar and coffee plantations with their oppressive social relations gave way to vast ‘modern’ soy farms. The states of Mato Grosso and Pará experienced the most rapid growth of soy production. However, instead of ‘modernizing’ social relations in the countryside, agribusiness simply reproduced the oppressive and exploitative practices of the past: these states have among the highest indices of land grabbing, land conflicts, slave labor and assassinations of rural workers. During the week in which Brazil celebrated 117 years of the abolition of slavery, a representative of the ‘modern’ agribusiness in Pará, Lima Araújo Agropecuária Ltda, was fined R$3 million ($1.2 million) for maintaining 180 workers under slave conditions. According to the ILO and the Pastoral Land Commission, Brazil has about 25,000 people working under conditions of slavery.
The sheer scale of land grabbing and soy expansion has also had devastating environmental consequences. A recent study by the National Institute of Spatial Research (INPE), released in mid-May 2005, reported that 26.130 square km (almost the size of Haiti) of the Amazon was deforested during 2003-2004. INPE satellite images showed that deforestation was highest where agribusiness, especially soy plantations, was expanding most rapidly. Mato Grosso, governed by the world’s largest individual soy producer, Blairo Maggi, was responsible for more than 50% of deforestation. In its drive for profit, agribusiness expansion onto indigenous reserves led to violent conflicts over land which undermines indigenous ways of life. For example, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul indigenous reserves constitute little islands in a sea of soy plantations. The Guarani Cauiá people had always lived in a dispersed manner on vast tracts of land, but with the advance of agribusiness they were forced onto smaller areas. The concentration of large numbers of Guaraní Cauiá on small plots led to extreme levels of destitution and was the principal reason for increased levels of chronic malnutrition and infant mortalities. During the first three months of 2005 --and in the midst of the extreme wealth of the agro-export elite— thirty indigenous children died of malnutrition related illnesses.
Thus, there is little that is ‘progressive’ or modern about agribusiness in Brazil. Many of the tools employed in the expansion of agribusiness are reminiscent of the tactics utilized during earlier periods of unbridled capitalist accumulation: domination of indigenous peoples and cultures, the use of slave labor and land grabbing, expulsions and violence. Moreover, the ‘success’ of the modern agro-export sector is predicated on massive subsidies, export incentives and infrastructure support provided by successive government’s. In 2003, the agribusiness elite received R$39 billion ($15.6 billion) in subsidies, while the family agriculture sector which comprises millions of families and produces over 60% of Brazil’s food crops only received R$7 billion ($2.8 billion) in support. In addition, while agribusiness was the recipient of state largesse under Lula, state institutions working with indigenous communities had their budgets cut.
The MST march proposals calls for the protection of indigenous peoples and cultures and the demarcation of their lands; the protection of the Amazon and its biodiversity; and, the passage of a law allowing for the expropriation and redistribution of all farms that utilize slave labor. For the MST, the struggle is against an agribusiness dominated agricultural model that is bent on restructuring and transforming family agriculture into an appendage of the agro-export sector. The march thus forms part of the MST’s strategy of accumulating forces in society to challenge an agribusiness model which prioritizes exports over meeting domestic food needs. While Brazil has ‘grown’ into one of the world’s largest exporters of soy, sugar, coffee and oranges, it is importing staple foods (e.g. beans and rice) in which it was self sufficient.
The MST through the global peasant movement, Via Campesina, opposes WTO attempts to liberalize agriculture in the interests of agribusiness, arguing that food is a basic human right that can only be attained in a system where food sovereignty is guaranteed. Food sovereignty according to the Via Campesina is “the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its own basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity. We have the right to produce our own food in our own territory. Food sovereignty is a precondition to genuine food security.? The MST not only marched against the monoculture of agribusiness which undermines the food sovereignty of the Brazilian people, but also against the Lula government’s neoliberal policies which promotes and ‘cultivates’ the agribusiness model of agriculture.
The march proposal also called for an audit of the external debt --as determined by the Brazilian Constitution-- so that the people know how much they have paid thus far, renegotiate its value since the debt has been paid many times over and direct these resources to education and others areas. The document called for a doubling of the minimum wage to redistribute income and stimulate the domestic economy; reduce Brazil’s exorbitant interest rates (among the highest in the world) which favors the speculative financial sector over the productive sectors of the economy; and demanded that the government not sign the Free Trade Area of the America’s (FTAA). The fight against the FTAA is crucial since it is “through the FTAA [that] we will arrive at the complete denationalization of agriculture, and the impracticality of a national development project, a necessary condition for the viability of land reform.?
The popular movements involved in the march decided to take their demands to the people and to dispute the rightward shift of the Lula government. Or as Joao Pedro Stedile, a MST leader, put it a year earlier:
The most important issue is to alter the correlation of forces in the government and in society so that the government is convinced to change its economic policy and utilize agrarian reform and changes in the agricultural model as an instrument for the implementation of a new economic policy that has as its core solutions to the social problems of our people.
The initial 10,000 members of the MST swelled to 12,000 with the entry of sympathizers and members of other movements when the march left Goiania. Simone Domingo, who left her three children at home to participate in the march, said ?I think the [march] is good to improve things, so that we can have land to work and live with our children.? Felipe da Silva, a student who is camped with his family in Goias says “I am going to ask Lula to fix the roads and schools.? As is the characteristic practice of the MST, the march also had the pedagogic role of raising and deepening political consciousness through study, debate and reflection.
Marching, Studying, and Debating the future of Brazil
Over the two week period, the march started at 6 am to avoid the blazing afternoon sun of the planalto region, stopped to have lunch, rest and recharge the batteries for the afternoon study and debate sessions. Each participant received a set of booklets that covered a diverse set of topics related to the national and international political economy: e.g. the capitalist project for the restructuring of agriculture via agribusiness, TNC control over seeds via GMOs and its implications for family agriculture, the FTAA, the environment, the privatization of water, the national political conjuncture under the Lula government, and the MST’s vision of a popular project for Brazil.
A number of public intellectuals and left politicians were invited to address the 12,000 marchers via the 10,000 radios that were loaned to the MST by the World Social Forum organizing committee. An itinerant radio station, Brasil em Movimento FM 88.5, was especially created for the march by the Brazilian Association of Community Radios. The 20 km radius of the frequency allowed for broadcasts to be transmitted to local communities along the path of the march.
Adelar Pizetta, the MST’s national coordinator for political education, speaking on the importance of radios in facilitating political education during the march, noted that: “If it was not for the radio, we would not have been able to realize political activities for such a large contingent of people. It was a learning process for all of us to perceive that the radio could play such an important role in political education.? One of the MST marchers from the northeastern state of Paraíba, Maria de Nazaré Nascimento, who has been camped for two years waiting to be settled states that “I am very happy to have participated in this work of the March. I am learning a lot during the periods of political education.? To ensure that those MST members who can’t read are not left out of the study and debate sessions, the 600 group leaders facilitated the reading and explanation of the key points of the booklets. The MST’s popular method of learning and solidarity gives practical content to a powerful phrase by one of Africa’s forgotten revolutionaries, Amilcar Cabral: “Let those who know a little more teach those who know a little less. We must learn from life, learn among our own people, learn from books and the experiences of others, but always learn.?
The stress that the MST places on political education and on developing its own ‘organic intellectuals’ has been fundamental to the growth and consistent capacity for mobilization of the MST over its 21 year history. Many of the local, regional and national leadership have planned and led land occupations and have emerged from within the ranks of the MST’s acampamentos (camps) and assentamentos (land reform settlements).
Besides political education, Radio Brasil em Movimento, was also fundamental in facilitating the logistics of the march, allowing for communication and organization in real time. The march simply reaffirmed the role and potential of free community radio stations as a fundamental tool in the democratization of corporate controlled media. After giving a presentation via radio, a left PT senator, Eduardo Suplicy, said: “It is as if agrarian reform on land was being realized in air.?
Democratizing Cinema and Theatre
The MST also inaugurated a pilot project for bringing cinema and theatre to the countryside, ‘Cinema on the Land,’ during the march. During the evenings documentaries on MST history and the struggle for land were projected onto massive screens. One of the documentaries, Raiz Forte (Strong Root), describes how MST militants recruited landless and agricultural workers to go on land occupations in the states of Pernambuco, Bahia, Pará and Paraná. The Motorcycle Diaries and two documentaries on Lula, Entreatos and Peoes, among others were also shown.
Entreatos covers Lula on the campaign trail during the 2002 presidential elections making a series of promises to the Brazilian people. In the discussions after the screening many of the Sem Terra were scathing in their comments. Deivid Moura, who hails from Mato Grosso and had never seen a movie or documentary before criticized Lula’s campaign promises: “Lula from the movie is one, while Lula as president is another.? Joanilson Santos, a member of a MST land reform settlement in the northeastern province of Sergipe was even more critical, saying “Lula told all those lies to deceive the Brazilian people.? Joao dos Santos Souza, also from Mato Grosso, describes the practical effects of Lula’s unfulfilled promises: “For the last 6 _ years I am living in a plastic shack and have still not been considered for the land reform program. I passed a big part of my life listening to Lula say that land reform was the salvation for all of Brazil’s problems. From what I’m seeing, the president changed his opinion.? This level of critical consciousness is not very common in rural Brazil where clientelist and patronage politics are still the order of the day. The MST’s political education programs on Brazilian social reality in the acampamentos and assentamentos and the personal experiences and insights of MST members have led to the emergence of a critical political consciousness that challenges the notion that ‘there is no alternative’ to market rule. The land occupations that knock down the fences of large unproductive farms (and hence of capital) is testament to the alternatives that the Sem Terra are creating.
Throughout the two week march, the MST’s national theatre brigade, Patativa do Assaré, held a series of plays that spoke to the nation’s social problems. After the marchers converged onto the Finance Ministry buildings in Brasilia there was a mistica performance showing the Ministry as the representative of bankers and agribusiness. Later, Patativa do Assaré enacted the objectives of the march: one actor portrayed the Minister of Finance, Antonio Palocci. The other artists represented popular movements who demanded an economic policy that would meet the needs of the Brazilian people.
The corporate media was scornful of the march. Rubens Ricupero, former secretary-general of Unctad, writing about Gandhi’s salt march in India commented that “The [MST’s] national march takes place under the most implacable malice of almost the entire media.? This was not surprising since the media, as the representative of capital, bristles at the MST’s slightest challenge to the sacrosanct institution of private property. For the MST land is a common good which should be at the service of society. The political education sessions were reported as indoctrination while the MST’s defense of family agriculture was described as archaic. What the media found most surprising was that the march had theatre presentations, music, poetry, and cinema as if this was abnormal. Gilmar Mauro, a MST national coordinator, describes this deep seated elitist prejudice:
It seems that in Brazil the poor cannot like cinema, like theatre, discuss the economy. It is as if these subjects and fields are the ‘exclusive property’ of those who have money, those who study. For us, however, communication and culture are extremely important tools of education for the people, of opening up a dialogue with society, and it is for that reason that we invest in these areas. On the other hand, we have huge concerns over the future of our country, and it is this that the march tries to bring to the public.
The other favorite question of the media was: how did the MST fund the march? Again, the media found it incredulous that most of the food to feed the 12,000 marchers came from MST land reform settlements; that MST members, despite having little, donated cows, goats, sacks of maize or rice which were sold to support the march and pay for the hiring of buses that took many of the Sem Terra on the two to three day journey to Goiania. The march was also made possible through the solidarity of the church, national and international movements. According to the MST, it would not exist without solidarity and that it depends on the “Solidarity of the Brazilian people to sustain its struggles, its dreams.? There was also the internal organizational structure that made the March work: a food team of 450 volunteers that cooked the meals, a health team, the accommodation team that set up and dismantled the tents every day, and the education team that taught at the iterant school.
“Nothing begins, nor ends: it continues?
The two week march was a massive school of learning, of sharing experiences, of debate and study, of building and deepening national and international solidarity, and a valorization of Brazils’ rich and diverse cultures. The march was a demonstration of the organizational capacity of the MST. And, in taking their demands and proposals for change into the citadels of power, the 12 thousand women and men from all corners of rural Brazil demonstrated that they are not passive victims, but active shapers of their own history. They are making history in a world where some had already declared the end of history.
One of the great qualities of the MST lies in its sharp understanding of counter-hegemonic politics. The MST embarked upon the march by giving practical content to one of its slogans -- “You make agrarian reform in the countryside, but you win it in the cities?-- through building a strong rural-urban coalition. Moreover, in calling for the doubling of the minimum wage to redistribute income and the reduction of interest rates to stimulate job creation, the March proposals took up national popular demands of the working class and the national bourgeoisie. The MST’s consistent emphasis on “accumulating forces? and on taking its demands to the masses is part of its vision of a popular project for Brazil. The national march was thus a key moment in demystifying the glorified agro-export agricultural model. The Sem Terra march posed key questions to the Brazilian people: Why should government support an agricultural model that uses slave labor and violence and expels tens of thousands of families who will end up swelling already overcrowded urban slums? Why despite the massive increase in agro-exports are children still dying of malnutrition? Should Brazilians follow a neoliberal economic model that generates surpluses of billions of dollars just to service debt while there is a shortage of housing and underinvestment in public education and healthcare? These are some of the burning questions that MST militants will raise when they engage in the consulta popular (popular consultations) with the Brazilian people.
As an author writing on the MST once remarked, “Nothing begins nor ends: it continues.? The National March for Agrarian Reform was not the beginning of the struggle for agrarian reform and against neoliberalism, nor will it be the end; rather, the 2005 March constitutes the continuation of the struggle for agrarian reform and a popular project for Brazil.
The gunmen hired to murder the leader of the MST have been imprisoned in
Pernambuco.
On Wednesday the 14th of February, the Municipal Police of Aliança of
Pernambuco's Northern Zona da Mata arrested the gunmen José Edson
Leonardo (38 years old), otherwise known as Lóia, and Francisco Assis
Silva (44 years old).
The suspicion is that the gunmen were contracted in the city of Goiania,
by a farmer known as Branco, to murder the Landless rural worker João
Izídio da Silva (40 years old), coordinator of the Guararapes encampment.
The encampment is situated in the Guararapes estate, part of the failed
Aliança Mill, an area that has staged many land conflicts.
On the night of Tuesday the 13th the gunmen went to the encampment to
threaten João Izídio. The following day the Landless People presented a
complaint of the threats to the Aliança police station. When the police
got there the gunmen had just finished invading the encampment. They were
caught red handed with a 12 gauge caliber rifle and a 40 point pistol.
The violence in the area had already been denounced many times to the
relevant State organs, but unfortunately, the recent assassination attempts
that occurred last Wednesday demonstrates that the problem will only be
resolved once all the land has been expropriated.
A History of Violence:
The Aliança Mill is an historic battle ground for the MST. The mill
went bankrupt in 1996 after running into a debt of more than 250 million
reais (statistics from the State and Federal Governments in 1998) including
debits with the employees. The residents of the former mill, robbed of
their worker’s rights, from 1998 onwards, proceeded to claim the
expropriation of the 22 estates that add up to 7.300 hectares. Only five of
the 22 estates were expropriated, among them the Natal estate.
Industrialists responded to the demands of the Landless People with
violence. Leaders of workers movements were killed and families of the
residents are terrorized by gunmen in an effort to shift them from the land.
In December of the previous year the Landless rural worker José Gomes,
linked to the Pastoral Commission of the Land (CPT), was murdered on the
Natal Estate. In October 2003 another rural worker, Ivanildo Ferreira de
Lima, 25 years old, was killed by three men on motor bikes and in November
of the same year Severino José da Silva, 64 years old, was murdered in his
own home.
Lula Government Inflates Agrarian Reform Numbers
Rubens Valente, for the Folha de São Paulo
At the end of January, the federal government announced that it had achieved a “record for agrarian reform: 381,000 rural workers without land have been settled during Lula’s first presidential term (2003-2006).
However, an analysis of the documents from the MDA (Ministry of Agrarian Development) shows that the federal government inflated its numbers by using families that were already living on settlements that were created and have been maintained by state governments, or living on managed forest reserves, or on national forests, or even on settlements that have been established for years, some dating back to the military dictatorship.
At the request of the Folha de São Paulo, the government sent in 2006 a CD with 7,800 pages that lists 243,000 settlers in the period from 2003-2005, classified by the year they were settled, the states in which they may be found, and the model of the project. It was the first time in the last few years that the government released these data.
Of the 243,000 people that the government said to have settled between 2003 2005 (the data does not include 2006), more than half--127,000 (or 52%)--were created during Lula’s presidency. Of this parcel, 56,300 come from state [as opposed to federal] settlements or managed forest reserves.
The remaining 48%--nearly 115,000were created by past governments.
At least 2,121 people “settled�? by the Lula government were actually from projects created during the military dictatorship; 10,425 are from projects created during the during the eras of presidents João Figueiredo (1979-1985), and José Sarney (1985-1990); another 73,093 were from the 90’s; and 29,156 were from last years of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso presidency (1995-2002).
Barra do Corda
The Barra do Corda settlement (Maranhão), for example, was created during the New State of Getúlia Vargas (1937-1945). According to the 1959 edition of the Encyclopedia of Brazilian Municipalities, this colony was founded in 1942.
In this settlement, more than half a century later, the Lula government was said to have settled 942 people in 2005 and 44 in 2004. However, according to the regional offices, not one family has been settled there by Incra (the federal agency in charge of agrarian reform) in the last ten years.
“I have been working here for 32 years. When I arrived, the settlement was already here,�? explained João Marvão Mendes, a agricultural technician for Incra. And these 986 people “settled�? by the Lula government? “The people living here now have been here for years. We began having title to this property beginning in 1975,�? said Mendes.
There are other examples like Barra do Corda in all the other states. One can find the most examples in the state of Mato Grosso. Of the 23,945 people that the government said it settled between 2003 and 2004, 71% are from projects beginning from the 70’s up until 2002.
Lago Grande
The documents reveal that the biggest rural settlement of the Lula government is the Lago Grande project, with 4,362 people. But, in all actuality, it is simply a reorganizing of a large land-holding situation. The families themselves have been there for a century, according to the president of the rural workers union of Monte Alegre (Pará), José da Costa Alves.
“This region has been inhabited for more than 100 years. These are occupied areas that the folks from Incra are just now beginning to regularize,�? said Alves.
Up until last week, the families have received nothing from Incra. They have only given their names to be registered. But even so, they have became “settlers�? of the government in 2005. Shortly, each should receive US$1,250 in credit for general support, and another US$2,500 for housing and land title.
João Pedro Stedile, of the national coordination for the MST, critiques government policies in this area.
“Performance during these four years is pathetic. It seems that 50% of all families that have been settled are in the Amazon area. But these in truth are colonization projects, the majority on public lands. These projects do not affect fundamentally large land-holdings, they do not contribute to de-concentrating the land. These projects are not agrarian reform.�?
The release of mixed data in a single package of “settlers�? also happened during the FHC government. Then the government included in the count of “settlers�? those who will receive or have received government credit for construction and remodeling of homes, or those who will be able to access lines of credit.
In 2002, the FHC government released archives with agrarian reform data for seven years of the presidential term. However, these documents did not mention what years the various settlements were formed.
Upon being questioned about the numbers as analyzed by the Folha, the MDA and Incra both said the numbers meet the requirements of the Second National Plan of Agrarian Reform.
Translated by Friends of the MST volunteer Chad Ribordy
Between March 13 and 31, La Via Campesina International will organize a camp called “Land Free of Transgenics‿ to accompany the negotiations of two conferences being held in Curitiba (PR). The camp will be in place in Newton Freire Maia Park, (formerly called Castelo Branco Park), in Quatro Barras (20 km from Curitiba) and around 6,000 small farmers (men and women), mainly from the South and Southeast regions of the country, are expected to gather there.
The official work is divided into two blocks: from March 13 to 17 – the Third Meeting of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosecurity (called “MOP 3‿) and from March 20 to 31, the Conference on Parties to the Convention (called “COP 8‿).
The parallel event will be held because the discussion in the two conferences is directly related to the agricultural project of La Via Campesina. “Depending on what is approved in the conferences, it can go against our agricultural project and can affect the food sovereignty of the world’s farmers. For this reason, these conferences are of great importance for farmers, especially in Brazil‿, states Diorlei dos Santos, a member of Via Campesina Brazil. Besides following what is happening in the conferences, the members of the camp will hold discussions, conferences, and public events. The question of biodiversity will be discussed, as well as the state of agriculture in the world. The farmers will also discuss the La Via Campesina’s proposal for agriculture and the people’s project for agriculture worldwide.
Official Conferences
In the MOP 3, the central topic will be the question of transgenics--specifically about the Cartagena Protocol, which should establish minimal models of security to ensure the identification, packaging, handling, and use of modified live organisms.
The protocol is mainly for the prevention of transgenic contamination and for the risks that it can cause to biodiversity and to humans when consumed. In the Letter, approved in 2000 and which should have been effective beginning in 2003, it was decided that the exporting countries should register whether seeds contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a mandate which is not being observed in practice.
The COP 8 has a more extensive agenda, since it discusses everything from agricultural diversity to biodiversity of practically all the world’s ecosystems. The COP meetings are held every two years and is a meeting of great importance that is attended by 187 countries.
One of the main topics is the question of restrictions on the use of “Terminator Technology‿, genetically-modified plants that produce sterile seeds, which prevents their reproduction by farmers. Another topic on the agenda is the question of the international rule on access to and sharing of benefits. The Convention on Biological Diversity proposed regulating access to national knowledge and to the genetic resources belonging to countries, as well as regulating the distribution of the benefits of that knowledge among corporations and the communities .
The social movements, non-governmental organizations, and civil society will not have the right to intervene during the conferences because they do not have voting power. The main action of civil society is outside, in the mobilizations. “We are going to watch the stand of the Brazilian government, which is of total importance for the other countries since positions are made by consensus‿, states Maria Rita Reis.
“We want to make it clear to the world and to the people of Latin America that the topics under discussion are not the thinking of the people, but of the multinationals and of the big corporations that are influencing this agenda. There is a very great deal of discontent about the question of the treatment of the environment and of biodiversity in the world‿, Diorlei stated.
Since the end of last year, the men and women rural workers from the Pátria Livre encampment in the municipality of Correia Pinto (SC), have been denouncing the human rights violations committed by the owners of the São Roque Farm. The decree of expropriation of the area is being processed in the Supreme Court and the landless workers are waiting for the settlement along the BR-116 highway.
In the past week, there was an attempt on the life of Paulo César da Costa, teacher of the encampment school. The worker was collecting firewood together with Francisco José Siqueira Neto, another member of the MST, when they were accosted by two men on horseback, one of them the owner of the farm.
According to Costa, the farmer pointed a gun at him and demanded that they lay down on the ground. After a few minutes, two other gunmen arrived, one of them the son of the farmer. “He asked who we were. And after we replied that we were landless workers, he attacked me with a knife saying ‘then we’ll kill you right here?. Still with his gun pointed at me, he held me down and cut my left ear. After that, he tried to cut my neck?, the rural worker recalls.
The two landless workers ran away as shots were being fired and succeeded in escaping. “In the encampment, I told the comrades what had happened. We called the police, who didn’t come. We arrived at the hospital and were surprised by the officials who were waiting for us because the farmer had accused us of robbing his wood. Even after suffering the assaults, they were taken prisoner. Finally, after the lawyers and deputies who support the struggle for Land Reform intervened, the landless workers were freed.
The case angered the members of human rights organizations. “We repudiate the acts against the MST activists. We urgently ask for the establishment of a police commission as well as the resolution of the expropriation of the lands in the Federal Supreme Court?, they stated in a letter from the Pastoral Commission on Land, the Movement of the Settlers of Amapá, the Pastoral for Prisoners, and the Commission on Justice and Peace.
Brazil is Going Through an Identity Crisis
An interview with João Pedro Stédile published in the August issue of the Newspaper of the Federal Justice Employees Union - RS SINTRAJUFE
How do you see the current political situation in Brazil?
Stédile: It’s very complicated. Brazil is going through a serious crisis. It’s not only because of the accusations of corruption. It’s basically a crisis of destiny. A crisis of the economic model. Our society does not have a development project. We had an agro-export model imposed by colonizing capital, in the first four centuries of our existence. Beginning with the revolution of the 1930s up to 1980, we had a model of dependent industrialization that industrialized and urbanized the country. Then came the crisis. The elites tried to get out of the crisis by imposing the neo-liberal model which in truth is not a project of the country, it’s only the subordination of the country to the interests of international capital.
So neo-liberalism neither took the country out of the economic crisis nor represents a national project. Lula, motivated by aspirations of getting into office, accepted making an alliance with this neo-liberal elite, without discussing a project with the people. And the result is obvious: we remain in crisis.
Do you believe that the Lula government can retake the programmatic line that was promised in the electoral campaign of 2002?
Stédile: Of course. But everything depends on the correlation of forces. It does not depend any more on declarations of good will, either by the president or by sectors of the government or by the Workers Party. It depends on the possibility of carrying out mass mobilizations demanding changes in the economic policy and a broad political reform that rescues the Lula government from being held hostage to its conservative alliances and its commitments to the neo-liberals.
Is Lula being destabilized by the right?
Stédile: The government is in crisis but it has not yet been destabilized. The right plays with various alternatives, the first being to keep the government hostage to neo-liberal agreements. And in the worst case, overthrow it, or defeat it politically so that with political demoralization the right can return to win the 2006 elections.
And 2006, the presidential succession?
Stédile: If it is true that our crisis is about the lack of a project, of a model, of a destiny, presidential elections will not resolve it. We can reelect Lula, Cardoso can return, we can elect Heloísa Helena , whoever we want depending on our party allegiances. We will only get out of the crisis if we have a national development project that places a high priority on finding a solution for the main problems of the people. The problems of the people include the right to work, income, land, housing, schooling, and culture. For this reason, we need to confront the foreign debt, the bankers, the huge multinationals, and the latifúndio. To make this project viable, we need to bring together the social forces that can discuss it with the people and defend it..
We in the MST are worried about the future of Brazil, not about who is going to be the next president of the Republic..
Do you believe that the country really can do it? (has the “jeito‿, or skill, to do it?)
Stédile: Of course the country has the “jeito‿. The ones without any “jeito‿ in this country are the elites, the ruling class, the owners of capital, the owners of the latifundios, those who are sending our wealth overseas. Just look, there are 10 thousand Brazilians who declare on their income tax that they have money deposited abroad, a total $82 billion. They really don’t have “jeito‿. Those jet setters who keep alive the luxury stores in our business centers, they don’t have “jeito‿. But the Brazilian people are hard workers, generous, wise and know how to struggle. Everything is in place to work out okay, if only we can free ourselves from the influence of those above us.
João Pedro Stédile is an economist and a national leader of the Landless Workers Movement and is known for his acid criticism of the national elite. Together with other leaders of the social movement, he wrote the Letter to the Brazilian People, in which they demand changes in the economic policy and priorities of the Lula Government.
Translated by Friends of the MST volunteer Charlotte Casey
Published on Friday, May 20, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Landless Peasants March in Brazil, Build a new Road by Walking
by Deborah James*
On May 17th, Brazilian news media reported that 50 people were injured as landless peasants clashed with police. Like our corporate media in the U.S., this focus overshadowed the real story; that 12,000 poor landless peasants had recently completed a Herculean 150 mile, 17 day-long march across the country to raise awareness about the crucial need for land reform in Brazil.
What motivated thousands of Brazilians to leave their homes to march across hot, dusty terrain, sleep on the ground, and eat camping food for over two weeks? What did they want to accomplish? And most importantly, what can we learn from it here in the U.S.?
Brazil is a land of contrasts. According to the UN, it is the 4th most economically unequal country in the world. In the face of enormous productive capacity, a dazzling geographical landscape, awe-inspiring natural resources, and amazing cultural diversity, millions of Brazilians suffer from hunger, malnutrition, and lack of access to basic social services. Unequal distribution of land - harking back to the Portuguese colonization of Brazil hundreds of years ago - is a signature cause of the human inequalities. It has created enormous divisions in society between giant landowners - who grow crops like sugar, soy, and citrus for export - and the 4.6 million families with no access to land to grow food for their children. The Brazilian film Eu, Tu, Eles dramatized the depth of poverty and instability of rural landless life in the Northeast, much as Central Station did for urban homeless children in Rio de Janeiro. Land reform in Brazil is absolutely essential for ending hunger, the #1 stated goal of President Lula's administration.
For over 21 years, the landless peasants movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST, has fought hard, life and death battles to change that inequality. The MST, one of the largest social movements in the hemisphere, has organized over 1.5 million members in 23 states across Brazil. They have successfully settled tens of thousands of families by taking over unproductive land and founding communities that work together to meet their own needs - not only cultivating food, but building water treatment systems, creating housing, and developing schools. After two decades of building a movement to change power at the roots, the MST has learned to combine savvy political advocacy with taking care of each other's human needs, building political consciousness through popular education, and envisioning the alternative world that we collectively want to live in.
A poster of President Lula here at Global Exchange reads, "You can be sure of one thing, that if I am ever elected President, I will redistribute so much land, that you won't know even what to do with it all." The MST played a huge role in Lula's election to the presidency, because he had promised to give access to land for 430,000 families by the end of his term in 2006. The results of Lula's government for landless peasants has not just been disappointing, it has been crushing. Under the current administration, only 60 thousand families have been settled - that's less families than were settled under the previous neoliberal government. At that rate, it would take about 150 years to ensure land for all in Brazil. Lula's government has frozen the land reform budget in order to save money that will be used to pay the foreign debt.
Coming out of a more than 20-year dictatorship in 1985, Brazilian hopes for economic growth under democratic governments have been disappointed. The largest country in South America suffers from a gigantic debt that has made policymakers subject to economic guidelines set by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, including privatization of essential services, deregulation of private industry, an emphasis on production for export rather than domestic consumption. Finally, with the 2002 election of Lula, a metalworker from a working-class background and strong ties to social movements, the vast majority of Brazilians believed that democracy would finally be combined with sensible national economic policies, and the poor could hope for a better future.
But Lula has pinned his hopes on agribusiness to export Brazil's way out of debt. According to the Ministry of Agricultural Development in Brazil, the government-run Bank of Brazil destined over $6 billion in supports for agribusiness in 2003. The same year, 73 landless peasants were killed in incidents linked to land struggles with agribusiness. According to the Pastoral Land Commission's Antonio Canuto, "[i]t's important to demystify the agribusiness industry, because its growth is not linked to the national development, as many say; it's linked to the exploitation of workers."
What has been remarkable about the MST's political position with respect to Lula is that they have engaged critically with the government, stating loudly and in factual terms their profound disappointment, but without rescinding their support - yet. During this march, it was made public that the MST was reconsidering their potential support of Lula during the elections next year. This is a key factor in holding a rhetorically but not politically progressive government accountable to its stated position, and one that we in the U.S. could learn from.
An important goal of the march was to engage the Lula government on key issues of the domestic and international political agenda. Through a mass consultative process, they created a list of 16 demands that ranged from settling the promised 430 thousand families, releasing the frozen funds so that real land reform could be accomplished, doubling the minimum wage, and defending Amazonian biodiversity, to renegotiating the debt, opposing the FTAA, and refusing to expand the WTO. The linking of their domestic political agenda for justice with the global trade agenda is another hint of the incisive political analysis of the MST. In fact, the overwhelming importance of Brazilian agribusiness in the national political arena has been the determining factor in the derailment of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas and the stalemate in the WTO. The MST has recently honed in on the importance of transforming their mass mobilization against the FTAA into a strategic campaign to pressure their government to represent not agribusiness, but small farmer interests, in the WTO, as the global umbrella federation of small farmers, Via Campesina, calls for "Agriculture Out of the WTO!" U.S. activists, who have long struggled to link global and local issues, could take this lesson from the playbook of the MST.
But Brazilian social movements are too strategic to pin all their hopes on government. While they sharpen their analysis, engage in critical debate with the government, and mobilize thousands through farmers groups and trade unions to pressure their elected officials to represent them in international fora, Brazilians have also been exceptionally successful in deploying a lesser-utilized strategy our movement for global justice; the visioning of alternatives. And for them, this means creating the world we want to live in by building it.
The self-sufficiency and organizing capacity of the movement was clearly demonstrated during the march. Providing food, shelter, and sanitation for 12,000 marching people for 17 days is no minor accomplishment. Each day, a team of 415 activists awoke before dawn to prepare three meals - using 4,610 pounds of rice, 3,130 pounds of beans, 761 pounds of cornmeal, and 215 pounds of meat a day. According to reports, a major source of the provisions is the MST's own productive settlements. Each day, approximately 66 thousand gallons of water were used for drinking and bathing. Each day, hundreds of volunteers participated in the setting up and striking of mobile tents. Each day, mobile units handled the waste of 12,000 marchers so as not to leave a trace. As Leonardo Boff commented, "the ecological concern was almost obsessive. If, on the following day, someone would like to know where these thousands of people had been camping, they wouldn't be able to, because the cleanup was so detailed that not even a scrap of paper was left behind."
But the MST has also long realized that in order to grow, you have to organize. So their goals have always included not only bringing more and more landless peasants into the movement, but growing the quality of their participation in the movement through democratic popular education. This is, after all, the country that produced the great Paulo Freire, world visionary of popular education, as well as Augusto Boal, inventor of Theater of the Oppressed, both ardent supporters of the MST. During the daily walk, marchers tuned their headphones in to a mobile radio station that beamed political education on various topics - the economy, sustainable farming, movement building, land reform. Then, each afternoon, discussion groups were formed to debate and reflect on various topics, knowing that space must be created for each participant to share their views, reflect, grow, and learn.
Perhaps one of the most profound lessons we can draw from this movement is their vision for shifting our understanding of the human relationship to food. Though landless themselves, these farmers have a deep sense of the sacredness of land as the sustainer of life. To those that fight their whole lives for access to land, the earth is not just a clump of dirt waiting to be turned into money. It is a public good, and we humans are its stewards; we have a right to share in its bounty, but also a responsibility to conserve it for our grandchildren. And that includes a very strong opposition to the genetic modification of seeds and plants, and a complete rejection of the patenting of life. The earth sustains life, and life is to be spent in struggle, in creation, in learning, and in celebration.
Marchers were inspired and sustained by the immense support they received from the local communities along the route. Luiz Basseigo commented with amazement, "early in the morning, before the sunrise, hundreds of people - all the inhabitants of the city - went out to the road; women, children, the elderly, basically all the population of the city expressing their unconditional support for the marchers."
Living in the U.S., pondering the achievements of Latin American social movements, I dream of a day when we create the road by walking it, and everyone comes out to cheer.
For more information: www.mstbrazil.org
*Deborah James is the Global Economy Director of Global Exchange.
by Dom Tomas Balduino*
Source: Adital – May 3, 2005
"Why have thousands of people, men and women, babies and children, adults and seniors, joined together in a large march? To say to the government and to society that Agrarian Reform is necessary and that it must take place and can no longer be delayed. The march will show everyone that the concentration of land on the large estates has to come to an end. It will show that agribusinesses are predators of natural resources, polluters of the environment, the cause of the exodus from rural areas and a subsequent increase in unemployment. Wherever agribusiness goes, it leaves a deeper and deeper mark of violence against workers and of human rights violations. After the daily march, tired from a long day full of obstacles, the mind and the heart of the people are empty and begin to open and to understand the causes that provoke so much suffering for the poor. In the horizon, the eyes of those who march begin to detect a new land in which there is abundance and there is a place for everyone, where everyone can attain with joy the daily bread, and where weariness is transformed into happiness.
This march is also going to leave a lasting and deep mark in the history of the Brazilian people. It is the mark of dignity of those that have been excluded from the feast that has been prepared for everyone. Yet, they do not allow themselves to fall and they fight to gain the space that is theirs, the space from which they have been excluded. It is the mark of faith of those who know that this fight is going to construct a new land.
This march reminds me of the other great march that is written about in the sacred book, the Bible. God’s people gained their freedom from slavery from Pharaoh in Egypt, and after crossing the Red Sea they began the march to conquer the Promised Land. It took 40 long years of walking through the desert, and suffering from thirst, hunger, and internal troubles. They were tempted to seek out and worship other gods who promised them easy answers and offered them solutions without having to confront difficulties. Despite adverse situations, the people continued walking. During this long walk, the identity and the unity of this people began to form and they were able to join together with their energy and with the hope of attaining land, the land that God promised them, a land that runs with milk and honey.
The march of this multitude today, from Goiânia to Brasília, also hopes to conquer land. It is going to take charge of the central power that keeps intact the archaic and unjust structures on which Brazilian society has its foundations; a structure that supports the privileges that benefit a few and are to the detriment of the great majority of the people. It is a system that prefers to use the resources of the people to pay interest on a debt, which no one knows with certainty where it came from, instead of directing these resources to the basic needs of the citizens.
The people who are marching will take Brasília to remind President Lula that even though he guaranteed that Agrarian Reform would be one of the priorities of his term, he has not yet made concrete and significant steps toward this goal. The people who march want to shake the Congress, not the defenders of the people, but instead the negotiators of the powerful groups of the elite that only maintain and amplify the privileges on which they sit. The marchers want to open the eyes of the Judiciary whose blindness is emblematic, a blindness that does not see the just and legitimate demands of the poor for land, food, work, a place to live, health, and an education. The marchers want Congress to redefine the “rights? of the powerful, especially the right of the powerful to property without reservations or limits. This human mass is going to occupy the Central Plain to show to everyone that exists that they are standing and that they will not be intimidated by the profits and the difficulties that the rich prepare for them.
As the people of God conquered the Promised Land, these people are walking to conquer land so that they can work and produce food on land that is part of the consciousness of the men and women of Brazil. They will add to the fight for the right of everyone to a life of dignity.
* Bishop emeritus of Goiás. President of the Pastoral Commission on Land
**Translated by FMST volunteer Jamie Wick.
SOURCE: Polaris Institute--Brazil
Media Release
29th June, 2005
Drought in Brazil has caused a severe 72% drop in soybean yields in the
heaviest Round-Up Ready soy using state. The Polaris Institute calls on the
company to review its FY06 earnings estimates that include new Brazilian
sales that will begin this fall. In particular, what pricing changes should
investors expect to address this crisis and how will those changes affect
next year's EPS estimates?
Rio Grande do Sul-- the biggest adopter of Monsanto technology ˆ has been
the hardest hit by the drought. The state is also home to Monsanto‚s
fledgling royalty collection system. Brazil‚s agricultural department
estimates that yields are down 72% in Rio Grande do Sul. Monsanto
representative Ricardo Miranda concedes that yield losses are 80% in some
areas. Soy exports from Rio Grande do Sul are expected to drop 95%.
The effects of such a severe drought are predictable. In some cases, soy
crushers are halving their staff. Cargill is even closing a processing
plant for a month for lack of inputs. Farmers have defaulted on one-third
of the government loans so far this year.
Farmers are taking notice. The president of the Rio Grande do Sul seed
association sites 25% higher crop losses in GE soy crops as compared with
conventional ones. Governor of Mato Grosso (25% of national soy production)
has publicly stated that he will not plant genetically modified soy next
year.
"Farmers and farm groups are only now realizing the full financial impact of
this drought," said Etienne Vernet, South American Research Director of the
Polaris Institute. "Many Brazilian farmers who use Round-Up Ready soy will
be thinking twice about it next year."
"Despite the distressing facts of a severe drought, which some farmers are
blaming on Round-Up Ready soy, Monsanto has been consistently optimistic
about its prospects for Brazil in FY06," said David Macdonald, Analyst with
the Polaris Institute.
The Polaris Institute calls on the Monsanto to review what pricing changes
investors should expect in the Brazilian market and how those changes will
affect next year‚s EPS estimates.
For more info, contact:
David Macdonald, Tel: 613-237-1717 Cell: 613-725-7606
Etienne Vernet, Tel: +011 55 21 22 25 67 39
From Issueonline.org, Issue 9 magazine, June 2005
The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement) is a mass movement of landless workers. Generally speaking, the MST undertakes land occupations to create settlements of landless and poor people. The MST feels that idle land holdings should be used to produce food and provide housing to the displaced and marginalized of Brazil’s poor. This is a transcript of a recording of an encounter with a member of the MST, Judite Stronzake, during the Taco Bell Truth Tour of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers - a farmworker organization based in Immokalee, Florida. We met in a church. The talk was translated from Portuguese to English, so keep in mind some things may have been lost in translation. The questions were asked by multiple attendees. The first section is a general description of the MST, their goals, strategy, and organizational pattern.
Judite Stronzake has been in the MST for 20 years, since its founding, and is part of the national leadership team. Stephen Bartlett, who interpreted for Judite, works for Agricultural Missions, Inc (AMI) whose organization helped bring Judite for the mobilization of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Louisville, Kentucky. Stephen proof-edited the transcript as it came to him from Austin Indy Media, adjusting slightly according to his memory of the content of the talk. The talk took place on March 12, 2005.
Judite: The thing that [the MST] came to decide was that the movement had to maintain its autonomy...Also that the primary action that this movement wanted to take was land occupations.
...Three main goals were set for the movement. One was to acquire land, but having land was not enough. We have to seek agrarian reforms. Agrarian reforms are all those elements of life: education, health care, sanitation and basic services in the countryside...
But, even then those two [goals] were not enough to make this a successful movement. We realized we couldn’t achieve those two things, if it were just the countryside people struggling.
We needed to transform the society to make those first two things possible. We needed to bring in people from the city: the unemployed, the homeless, etc...
Our social base of our movement is about 350,000 families who have settled on land and are farming and living in rural communities. And 250,000 families who are camped out are in the process of organizing themselves in order to get access to land. If you take about eight persons per family you can figure out how big the movement is.
Occupation of land was the way we forced the issue of agrarian reform. We forced the idea that private property is not the only value that should be looked at...
...Our movement is a mass movement and it’s the quantity of people we organize that gets the attention of society and makes them think, ‘Oh, these people really have something to say...’
We have a constitutional clause that says that land must serve its social function or be turned over for agrarian reform. For that reason, we occupy land and consider it to be a legal action.
QUESTION: What is the MST relationship with Lula? [Note: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the president of Brazil. The MST was born at the same time as the Workers’ Party.]
We came out of the same conditions; we are like brother or sister organizations...There is a historical commitment between the two movements.
However, we have also maintained our autonomy as a social movement from the Workers’ Party. More and more, the Worker’s Party followed the institutional path...
What has happened is the leader of the Workers’ Party has taken the administrative power. But, the government in Brazil doesn’t really have power. The real power resides here in the United States and with the international institutions.
So, it’s a centrist government taken as a whole, which tries to resolve social problems through negotiation. But, their hands are very tied by the agreements Brazil has come into with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, etc...
We have maintained the strategy and tactics we always have, which is to pressure with social mobilization and negotiate. We occupy and then we negotiate.
Q: Could you talk about the political and violent repression of the MST?
There is an organization called the UDR (Uniao Democrático Rural, Rural Democratic Union), which is an association of the principal landholders in Brazil. These people are senators, large businessmen, people who own large newspapers. They are the richest people of the country. They hold all the power, the land, the reigns of political power, they are lawyers and judges. They contract paramilitaries. For example, the recent killing of the American Nun, Sister Dorothy Stang, cost about $50,000 reales (about $15,000 US)...
It depends on which state if the police will get involved or not. So, in Paraná, it’s a center-left government and they don’t use the police to repress the camps. Up the state where Dorothy was killed it’s a right wing government and they send in the police...
In the case of the 1996 massacre of 19 MST members in El Dorado Carajás there have been no convictions. But, in [the state of] Minas Gerais five of our members were killed and the intellectual author of the crimes is in jail. In Mina Gerais, there was a lot of social pressure to bring justice to the killers and they were bought to trail.
The only justice we ever get and the only way we stop impunity is massive social pressure. We could say as a generality about 92% of all cases are never convicted.
Q: What’s the relationship with the environmental organizations and what can people in the states do to support this?
First of all, as the MST our principles are to look upon land as sacred and belonging to all people. Based on that principle, we have relationships and alliances with environmental groups...
Even if we have settled on land that has been completely deforested we set aside 20% for forestation. We also protect the waterways and recover local seed varieties in agriculture. Together with Via Campesina we have waged a very strong campaign against genetically modified organisms.
It is something we’ve learned especially from the indigenous people who have taught us how to respect nature.
Q: Can you describe the motivations and goals for the big march coming up?
...We are in the middle of a big fight between two visions of what the countryside should look like: the agro-business model, which is displacing people on the one hand, and our social movement’s vision of the countryside...We want to involve the whole Brazilian society in the debate about what the future of the countryside should be...
The main demand is for the government to fulfill the promises that it has made about the speed that agrarian reform will be untaken. The government agreed to settle 450,000 families in the first 4 years of the term. That should have been a 150,000 families settled each year. Last year they had only settled 27,000. This year the IMF forced the government to cut its agrarian reform budget by 50%.
About five years ago some right-wing groups decided to do a survey to see whether the MST was really supported by the society. They wanted to prove that the MST was not supported. The result, however, was that 87% of the population supported the MST.
Q: Can you describe the process of a land occupation?
(Laughter.) Imagine that we all here are landless people. The only difference would be that there would be a lot of children and older people here. Our style of work is that the whole family participates...
Suppose you had about 200 families like that all together. After some education about how the MST works and what it is. People from that group would go visit settlements that have been establish...In coordination with the other groups in the region they decide which land idle land holding to occupy. It is not a hard thing to find these idle land holdings because 1% of the population controls 47% of the land...
On the day that been decided, we’ll have trucks go to door to door and load up the families and meet in one central place...You are talking about groups of 500, 1000, 2000 families all together.
When they arrive at the large landholding, they will get out of the vehicles and break the gate or whatever they have to do to get into the ranch. With their hats, and flags, and farming tools they will march into the land.
People feel very emotional at this time. Some will kneel and kiss the ground and say this is saving our lives. They start to sing and have a party. Then they start to build little shelters...Once it is light, they’ll have a big meeting including allies. We are talking about 10,000 or 15,000 people. Every 50 families is considered a base unit. They are organized into 50 families. In each base group, everyone in the group will be given an assignment of health, security, finances, etc. Then they will begin to discuss how we are going to govern this base unit and the settlement; how are we going to function, etc? For us, these are small meetings. In each of these sectors or workgroups, each person will belong and have a role to play. We start to turn the ground and prepare the ground for planting immediately. That gives you a picture of the initial phase.
The people become more and more empowered as they learn to work in the workgroups, carry out their functions and gradually you will progress in the way you organize and how well things are functioning.
Q: You spoke a lot about self-organization, but also demanding the government fulfill certain needs. I wonder if this a practical appropriation of state resources or a contradiction within the movement?
We want to hold the government responsible for undertaking agrarian reform because it is part of the constitution. We feel it is the government’s responsibility to provide those basic things...
We rely on organizing ourselves to apply that pressure so the government will fulfill its basic responsibilities to the people in general and in this case the people of the countryside.
And in that case is not a very extreme thing, it is within the framework of reform. We are not yet up to the stage of agrarian revolution...
For article complete with photos and map of march go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4550773.stm
Brazil's landless squeeze government
By Sue Branford
BBC News, Brasilia
Brazil's landless movement, known in Brazil as the MST (Movimento dos Sem Terra), is on the march.
Waving red flags and walking in an orderly line along the federal highway, some 12,000 "sem-terra" (as they are known) have spent two weeks walking to the federal capital, Brasilia, from Goiania, capital of the neighbouring state.
As they marched, the sem-terra chatted, sang or listened to one of the thousands of small portable radios donated to the movement by the World Social Forum.
Most wore straw hats to protect them from the hot sun and carried their belongings in small backpacks.
The sem-terra converged on Goiania for the march from different corners of Brazil. Some travelled for three days by coach from the hot and impoverished northeast.
Others came up from the much more temperate state of Rio Grande do Sul in the very south of Brazil, where the movement was founded 25 years ago.
Circus tents
The march was organised with meticulous care. Fireworks went off at 0400 to wake the marchers, who slept in 23 circus tents. After a quick breakfast they set off into the darkness.
At midday they "invaded" one of the large private farms along the road and erected the 23 giant circus tents where they spend the night.
Although the landowners were not consulted about the use of their land, there was no violence. A small contingent of federal policemen, accompanying the march, looked on rather anxiously each day as the MST set up camp.
The sem-terra spent the afternoons talking, playing music, sipping mate tea from a chimarrao (gourd), or going to one of the political education seminars organised by the movement. No alcohol was allowed in the camps.
There were about 100 children on the march. In the afternoons those of school age attended classes in the MST's well-known "itinerant school". Education is always a priority for the movement.
The MST held the march to put pressure on the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, from the left-leaning Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT).
"We want the government to carry out its agrarian reform programme," said Luisana Bomfim, a 26-year-old woman who lives in a landless camp in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
"President Lula said he would give land to 430,000 families during the four years of his government, but so far only 73,000 families have been given plots. At this rate, he's not going to honour his promise."
Miguel Rossetto, the minister for agrarian development, contests the MST's figures.
"We gave land to 118,000 families during the first two years of the government," he told the BBC News website.
"And, just as important, we're providing the families with good technical and financial support, once they're on the land. That's something they didn't get in the past."
Prudent economics
President Lula came to office in January 2003 amid great expectations that he would end poverty.
He knows what it is like to be very poor. As a seven-year-old boy, he sold peanuts on the street to supplement the family income.
Income is highly concentrated in Brazil. A small elite is extremely rich, but some 44 million Brazilians still struggle by on less than $1 a day.
President Lula has pleased the financial and business class, because he has adopted prudent economic policies. The economy is growing steadily and exports, especially from the farm sector, have been booming.
New areas of land are being incorporated into the agricultural frontier. Brazil is already the world's leading exporter of orange juice, chicken, tobacco, coffee and other commodities. Beef may be added to the list this year.
The country has the world's largest iron ore company, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, and mineral exports are soaring, particularly to China.
Slow change
But the pace of social reform has been slow.
Bernardo Kucinski, who works as a presidential adviser in Brasilia, says advances have been made.
"We have launched a system of micro-credit, that is, we are providing individuals and small companies with cheap credit. This is changing the panorama of the whole financial system.
'We have introduced Bolsa Familia, a programme to help the very poorest families, which is already reaching about half of them. We are funding students from poor families to go to university.
"These programmes are important but the problem is that they are not connected to one another. They do not convey a general feeling of change."
So, if President Lula is elected to a second term of office in 2006, will he manage to really change Brazil, as many poor Brazilians hope?
"It will depend, not so much on Lula, but on the people. If people demand more, more will be done," said Mr Kucinski.
If this is really the case, then the MST will certainly play its part.
Articled written by Hannah Wittman, Friends of the MST-North America, Cornell University
hkw2@cornell.edu
Feb 26, 2005
When Brazil’s long time grassroots leader Luis Inacio “Lula? da Silva ran for president in 1994, he promised that if elected, he would settle 800,000 families in 4 years. By the time he ran for the fourth time in 2002, agrarian reform was still a major campaign rallying point. But then, the number of landless families had reached five million and over 150,000 families were camped on roadsides, abandoned estates, and on the patios of beleaguered Federal Land Reform Agencies (INCRA) in almost every state. Fast forward to March 2005. At the halfway point in Lula’s current mandate, programs for agrarian reform are paralyzed and rural social movements in Brazil, especially the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), are questioning the gap between policy and practice. Escalating violence around land issues during the first two years of Lula’s mandate and highly visible assassination of Sr. Dorothy Stang and other rural leaders in a land reform conflict areas in February of 2005 have brought increasing public focus to the pace and direction of agrarian reform in Brazil.
When Lula was elected with more than 60% of the popular vote in October of 2002, there was a collective sense of relief and victory on the part of many rural and worker’s rights movements, who felt that their grassroots call for social justice through agrarian reform would finally be realized. Lula immediately appointed a top-notch team to develop the II National Plan for Agrarian Reform (PNRA). Comprised of public intellectuals and rural development experts, the team viewed democratizing access to land as a vehicle for social inclusion and economic development. They showed that in 2003, 85% of farms occupied just 20% of arable land, while large landowners with more than 1000 ha (1.7 percent of farms) occupied almost 44% of land. Analyzing the historical results of such land concentration for ongoing social exclusion and poverty, the commission produced data endorsing a program that would settle 1,000,000 families over a period of eight years, in addition to re-structuring Brazil’s agricultural policy to provide more support to family farmers.
The first National Plan for Land Reform was developed in 1985 as a project of the new democratic movement. It aimed to use land reform as a rural modernization strategy to break the economic stranglehold on the countryside resulting from concentrated land tenure. However, emaciated by the resistance of the rural elite to land expropriation, frontier colonization emerged as the major component of state-led land reform during that period. By the end of Sarney’s mandate in 1990, only 6% of the PNRA had been carried out and fewer than 120,000 families settled.
The 2003 March to Brasilia – Enact the II PNRA!
In 2003, rural social movements, including the MST, the Small Farmer’s Movement (MPA), Movement of those Displaced by Dams (MAB) and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) set out to ensure that the II PNRA would not suffer the same fate of the first one. A 2003 Land Charter defending land reform and family agriculture was signed by more than 45 social movement organizations, rural unions, pastoral commissions and research agencies. This charter demanded policies that would radically alter the current predatory model of agricultural development which “concentrated land, income, and power?. In particular, the movements demanded the expropriation of the largest estates, regardless of productivity, a constitutional amendment limiting landholdings, and initiatives promoting a regionally diverse, self-sufficient family-based agricultural model that would ensure food security for the Brazilian nation while protecting the environment. The alternative agro-ecological model proposed by the MST, CPT and other rural social movements is modeled on small-farmer production, supplying local and national markets with a sufficient supply of healthy food in order to ensure a system of food sovereignty.
By the end of 2003, the II PNRA had not yet entered into law and rural movements were getting restless. Occupations and rural conflicts increased sharply; according to the CPT Brazil experienced the greatest number of rural conflicts in 2003 since the mid 1980s, with 73 rural leaders assassinated (a 70 percent increase over 2002). The landed classes and agribusiness increased pressure on the Judicial sector, which increasingly sided with large landholders in land disputes and ordered more evictions than ever since CPT began documenting land conflicts in the late 1970s. A total of 175,485 people were evicted in 2003, an increase of 263% since 2002.
In November 2003, more than 1000 members of the MST and other movements marched more than 350 kilometers over 10 days between Goiânia and Brasilia in support of the National Plan for Agrarian Reform. Once in Brasilia, they joined with thousands of other rural workers for an audience with Lula, who declared that he would “die defending agrarian reform? and launched the legal implementation of the II PNRA.
Although less than half of the recommended proposal was included in the actual II PNRA legislation, Lula promised to re-settle 400,000 families during his first term and regularize the land tenure situation of another 130,000. The numbers of families actually settled so far are much less than expected. In 2003, not even 30,000 were settled of the proposed 115,000 families, and between January and December 2004 the government expropriated only enough land to settle 25,000 families, although they insist that they settled more than 68,000 out of the 115,000 planned for 2004.
The agribusiness threat
With Lula’s 2002 election as part of a center-left coalition government, rural social movements found renewed opposition from their historical adversaries. The landholding elite felt threatened by the institutionalization of what they called “populist rhetoric? which advocated social justice through land redistribution. They began to form rural militias and increase lobbying efforts to show that smallholder agriculture was “bad for Brazil?, and their growing alliance with transnational capital, especially agribusiness corporations like Cargill, Bunge, and ADM, along with record-breaking soybean harvests, have helped cement their influence with the neo-liberal sector of the Lula administration, especially the Minister of Agriculture, Roberto Rodrigues, the Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, and Luiz Furlan, the Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade. With their support, the media has declared agribusiness as Brazil’s saviour, responsible for resolving balance of payments issues and literally paving a pathway through the Amazon region towards a developed future. The growth of agribusiness has been subsidized by successive governments; despite Lula’s personal support for the demands of rural social movements, the centrist administration granted R$39 billion (US 12 billion) to agribusiness interests in 2003 while only R$7 (US$2.3 billion) for agrarian reform programs.
In the Center-West region of Brazil, where agribusiness interests have advanced most rapidly in the last decade, social conflict and the gap between rich and poor is also increasing. This conflict is fundamentally about the exclusionary agricultural model in which soybean cultivation has been a modern addition to the historically oppressive the sugar and coffee dominated plantation complex. The highest yields in the world for soybean have been reported in the region, while favorable climatic conditions allow several crops per year. These figures hide, however, the true cost of agribusiness for the rural poor.
Today’s agribusiness seems bent on reproducing the same exploitative and oppressive set of social relations that have marked the Brazilian countryside since the colonial period. Brazil has an estimated 25,000 people working under conditions of rural slavery, with the highest numbers found in Mato Grosso and Para, states where agribusiness is advancing most rapidly. The state of Mato Grosso, the global leader in soybean productivity and responsible for almost 40% of Brazil’s grain production, was also home to 27% of all land conflicts and 36% of evictions in Brazil during 2003, especially grave given the region’s fairly sparse population. Also in Mato Grosso, 41% of the rural population was involved in some sort of documented rural conflict in 2003 according to the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), and has the highest per-capita ratio of rural assassinations. Currently, over 20,000 families there are camped along roadsides, watching soybeans getting trucked out of the state and poverty getting trucked back in. At the same time, highly publicized recent deaths of indigenous children from malnutrition in Mato Grosso do Sul, another important soybean production area, provides a sharp contrast to the claims of agribusiness to foster Brazilian social and economic development.
The Road Ahead
Despite current setbacks and numbers, some progress is being made. The 2004 agrarian reform budget (although much went unspent) was relatively large, and shows precedent for including substantial resources for land reform in the budget for 2005. Some last-ditch spending in December of 2004 brought numbers up slightly for agrarian reform programs, and a Provisional Measure was passed in December of 2004 requiring all landowners with over 400 hectares to submit to a governmental geo-referencing of their land areas and validation of land titles. This is expected to liberate significant acreage of “grabbed? land for expropriation and redistribution. At the same time, new studies are being released quantifying the important role that family agriculture plays in Brazil’s economy, information necessary to counter the media stereotypes that portray land reform as out of date and harmful to Brazil’s economy. A FIPE study (Economic Research Foundation) for the Ministry of Agrarian Development showed that family agriculture was responsible for 10.1% of the GNP in 2003, valued at R$ 156.6 billion (about 55 billion dollars).
The 2005 March
The struggle for land reform appears to be at a crossroads in Brazil. During the 1990s, the MST and other rural social movements enjoyed widespread social solidarity, especially after a series of highly publicized massacres and repression of peaceful mobilizations. The elite-controlled media has now collaborated with agribusiness and the neoliberal wing of the Lula administration to counter-act that solidarity, arguing that an agricultural model built on genetically modified crops and increased exports will bring social and economic development to Brazil. And they are trying to win over society with glitzy advertisements and publications showcasing the modernized and wealthy agri-business dominated corners of Brazil. Tellingly, reports on soybean boom towns and high-profile export expeditions to China now dominate the rural social scene in the evening news.
The confusion wrought by the multiple messages and directions emanating from the Lula government has served to fragment and dilute the solidarity of progressive social movements in Brazil. As Plinio de Arruda Sampaio (a founder of the PT and long time public intellectual around agrarian development issues) points out, the Lula government does not repress the popular movements, but neither has it supported them with concrete action. Thus the movements find themselves at a strategic crossroads – become opposition to the only government in recent decades that has had any favorable tendencies towards meeting the demands of rural social movements, retreat in order not to criticize, or re-organize, (re)mobilize and bring more people out onto the streets to pressure the Lula government to meet the popular demands.
The MST has chosen the latter. In response to this historic conjuncture, the MST and allied rural social movements are planning a April-May 2005 march and social mobilization to measure and gain societal support for land reform and alternative economic and agricultural development in Brazil. Members of the MST from 23 states along with representatives from supportive movements and civil society will march for two weeks from Goiania to Brasilia, following the path leading up to the passage of the II PNRA in 2003. Along the way, an expected 10,000 marchers will conduct social education and media campaigns, dialogue about Brazilian reality, and discussion alternatives for change. The mass mobilization will depart on April 17, the International Day of Peasant Rights, and arrive to Brasilia during the first days of May, in conjunction with the labor day celebration organized by Brazil’s major labor organizations. More than 100,000 MST members, supporters and other popular movements will be waiting to receive the march.
North American based activists with the Friends of the MST will gather at consulates and embassies in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C. on April 22 to join in solidarity with the MST in its mass march to remind Lula and the Workers Party of its constitutional responsibility and historic opportunity to secure agrarian reform and development in Brazil. For more information or to support the march financially, contact the Friends of the MST at www.mstbrazil.org.
Land & Impunity: The Trial of the Massacre
In the past 33 years, 772 rural workers have been murdered in the state of Pará. Only 27% of these cases ever went to trial and only 11% were judged. Not one culprit has been punished.
On April 17th, 1996, 19 members of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) were shot and killed by the state military police of Pará. Another 3 workers died years later from their wounds. In total, 22 workers lost their lives and many others were seriously wounded.
April of 2006, ten years after the massacre, only two people have been held partly responsible for the attack at Carajás: Major Oliveira and Colonel Pantoja. As such, the MST identifies the State as the principal party responsible for the massacre, having utilized the judiciary and the police to impose the hegemony of the rural oligarchy.
The State is not only responsible for the massacre, but for its incompetence when addressing the implementation of agrarian reform. To make matters worse, social movements like the MST, struggling for the emancipation of the working class, are declared enemies of the State. According to Charles Trocate, of the MST’s National Coordinating Body, the State has at its core a problem that is three-fold: forged land titles, slave labor and the erosion of biodiversity.
In accordance with a judicial decision made in 1999, the widows and wounded peasants from the massacre should have been receiving medical and psychological treatment to handle the aftereffects of the incident. Walmir Beraz, the lawyer for the surviving victims, has denounced the omission on the part of the State with respect to both the judiciary and health system and their failure to serve the needs of the victims.
Nilo Batista, who defended the MST during the trial of the two responsible, insists on the need to continue in struggle. For Batista, the judiciary is another battleground of struggle in the same way the rural area is for the fight for agrarian reform. In both sectors, there is much to be done.
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/vozes/vozesinicial.htm
The World Bank’s contemporary agrarian policy:
aims, logics and lines of action
João Márcio Mendes Pereira
Historian, History doctorate student at Universidade Federal Fluminense/Brazil
E-mail: joaomarcio1917@yahoo.com.br
[1 This is a condensed version of an article presented at the workshop “Rural development, globalization and
crisis?, during the XXV Congress of the Latin-American Sociology Association (ALAS), carried from august
22-26, 2005, in Porto Alegre / Brazil. Text available at www.landaction.org and other webpages. Translated
from Portuguese by Clayton Mendonça Cunha Filho.]
There’s a World Bank (WB) offensive going on over the formulation of the agrarian policy
of the national States with a double objective: on one hand, to market land access through the
neoliberal change of the state apparatus, in order to favor the free flow of workforce in the
countryside, stimulate private investment on rural economy and potentialize the subordinate
integration of punctual parcels of the peasantry to the agro-industrial circuit, ruled by big
corporations; on the other hand, to alleviate rural poverty in a focused manner, specially on
situations where social tensions on the countryside may reach “dangerous? levels for the safety of
private capital and/or the stability of the present political order (see World Bank, 2002, 2003 and
2004).
The data testify this movement. Between 1990 and 2004 the WB agreed on 45 loan
operations with 32 countries for projects related to its agrarian policy. Counting finished and
ongoing projects, we observe that the Latin America and Caribbean region corresponds to 33,3%
of the total, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 26,6%, East Asia and Pacific region, 24,4%, Africa
and Middle East, 13,4% and South Asia, 2,2%. We also note that the WB has been significantly
increasing the approval of such projects: between 1990 and 1994, 3; from 1995 to 1999, 19,
totalizing US$ 700 millions; from 2000 to 2004, 25, totalizing US$ 1 billion in loans (Suárez, 2005).
At the same time, the WB has been articulating courses and workshops in several
countries, both for the state bureaucracy directly responsible for the implementation of policies on
rural world and for the select group of WB’s partner associations and organizations from civil
society, with the aim of exerting ? on the words of Antonio Gramsci ? an effective moral and
intellectual direction over the definition and execution of the agrarian policy of the national States.
An example of this is that the same categories of thought now present (and already predominant?)
on the sphere of research and formulation of policies for the rural world (like “social capital?,
“empowerment?, “participation?, “decentralization? etc.) are dictated or resignified by the WB. It’s
valid to say, under the inspiration of Pierre Bourdieu, that this intellectual production has been
establishing itself as a new vocabulary of the thinkable in terms of public policies, whose logic
points to: a) the stimulus to the (self-)organization of social groups according to merely
corporative and local interests; b) the praise of partnership between historically and structurally
unequal social agents; c) the veto to any consideration over the construction or dispute of more
universalistic political projects (class-based, national and/or international).
The WB practically abandoned the agrarian theme during the 1980s, due to the total
priority given to macro-economical adjustment programs and the renegotiation of external debt of
the Latin-American countries, but came back on getting interested by it over the following decade.
Why? According to the author’s hypothesis (Pereira, 2004), basically for five reasons: a) the
opportunity to depoliticize the treatment of the agrarian problem existent in great part of the
southern countries, once the end of Cold War, on its vision, would have weakened the link
between the struggle for agrarian reform and a broader ideal of social transformation; b) the need
to liberalize the land markets, eliminating the legal barriers to free sale and purchase and the lease
of lands, as part of the structural adjustment programs; c) the need to answer to agrarian conflicts
and, in some cases, to the action of pro-agrarian reform social movements, aiming to guarantee
the safety and political stability of capital; d) the need to create programs and social projects on
the countryside to selectively compensate for the regressive impact of the structural adjustment
policies over parcels of the peasantry; e) the need to guarantee the hegemony over the rural lands
market-turning process on the former soviet block, in order to accelerate and consolidate its
transition to financial capitalism.
According to the exposed information, we may imply that the contemporary agrarian policy
of the WB was designed and has been operating under the marks established by the structural
adjustment pushed by the WB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Therefore, it is
subordinated to two antagonistic processes to the labor world: on one hand, the liberalization of
the national economies, specifically its poorest portion; on the other hand, the State counterreform,
that substitutes its redistributive role for punctual and focused policies to “alleviate?
poverty, which, by their turn, do not alter the bases of inequality reproduction, domination and,
overall, exploitation (SAPRIN, 2002).
How does the WB agrarian policy organize itself? Basically, in eight lines of action:
1) Lands renting. This is the priority topic for the WB, especially after the “market-assisted? land
reform reached crises in several countries where it was experimented. It implies the suspension of
legal barriers, normally created on the bulge of agrarian reforms to protect the small leaseholders.
The fact that this kind of social relationship may be identified for decades as a synonym of
peasantry exploitation and economic retrocession by all Latin-American peasant organizations ?
not being clamed by any of them ? is not taken in consideration by the WB (Baranyi et al., 2004:
50; CGRA, 2004: 7-8). Its main objectives are to increase the productive use of lands and diminish
the production costs of agro-industrial corporations. Several researches show that this kind of
relationship hasn’t been contributing to improve land access by the poor peasantry in Latin
America (Carter, 2003; Carter & Salgado, 2001).
2) Purchase and sale of lands. The objective is also to increase the degree of mercantilization
of land, allowing, via patrimonial transactions, the exit of “inefficient? rural producers and the entry
of “efficient? ones, always through the optics of big agro-industrial capital appreciation.
3) Private titling. It implies the concession of property titles to land workers who occupy and
cultivate non-titled lands, including communal, public and reformed areas (i.e., constituted from
agrarian reforms). Its priority aim is to diminish the informality on land markets, improving the
legal security of transactions. For the WB, it doesn’t matter if a people or social group considers
the land usage value more important than its trade value, because, on its vision, the
universalization of private property to all human societies would be the “apex? of development. In
some situations, the titling stimulated the sale of lands by peasants and its later concentration.
Besides that, contrary to what the WB claims, there are strong signs that the concession of
property titling didn’t increase the poor peasantry access to the formal credits market, at least in
Latin America.
4) Agrarian legislation change and creation of new management apparatus. It is, in
essence, the creation of legal and managerial conditions for the free market transaction of land,
simplifying and making cheaper the bureaucratic procedures and guaranteeing the safety of
private contracts. By this logic, all the process should be managed by municipal governments. As
expected, the WB says nothing about illegal private appropriation of public lands, very common in
southern countries, or about the peasants’ claims over the retaking of illegally appropriated lands
by big farmers.
5) Agrarian conflicts control. It’s the creation of mechanisms of neutralization and quick
solution of social tensions around hold and property of land, preferentially by municipal
governments. The aim is to impede that the accumulation of “low intensity? conflicts come to
jeopardize the safety and foreseeing of market transactions and private investments ? including
foreign ones ? on the countryside. On the WB’s documents there can’t be found a word about the
ever sharper violence against the peasantry and indigenous populations caused by the expansion
of private appropriation of land associated with the production of commodities for export.
6) Rural property taxation. The WB champions the municipalization of rural taxation and
doesn’t prioritize the support to the implementation of a progressive taxation over land property to
restrain land speculation.
7) Land de-collectivization and privatization. It’s the privatization and individualization of
tenure and property rights in collective or state farms, in order to create formal land markets and,
thus, open the property pattern ? especially on the societies of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet
Union ? to the entrance of private national and international capital.
8) “Market-assisted? land reform. This model, created and exported by the WB under
different shapes, began in 1994 in South Africa and Colombia and 1997 in Brazil and Guatemala,
and also inspired or politically reinforced previously-existing programs of purchase and sale of
lands in Honduras, El Salvador, Philippines, Mexico, Malawi and Zimbabwe. It consists of a
voluntary purchase and sale relationship between private agents financed by the State, plus a
variable amount of subsidy destined to complementary socio-productive investments. That is, the
State concedes a long-term credit for the rural worker to, alone or in group, buy land directly from
the owners, at market prices, and then gives a variable grant for the start of agricultural
production. The purchases and sales are completely voluntary. The WB claims that this model
would allow landless workers or near-landless to generate enough income to overcome poverty,
repay the debt with the State and maintain themselves as “efficient producers? on the agricultural
market. If it doesn’t happen, the farmer loses his land. This model integrates the WB agenda of
selective and punctual rural poverty alleviation policies, severely aggravated by the neoliberal
policies supported by the own WB (SAPRIN, 2002). Its presuppositions are the diminution of the
expropriative power of the State and the privatization of the access to essential goods and services
to the socio-economical reproduction of the peasantry.
Through an ingenious operation of “semantic slide?, the WB affirms that this model is a
modality of the redistributive agrarian reform. Is this true? No, for the agrarian reform consists of
an arbitrary action from the State that, in a short period of time, redistributes to the poor
peasantry (i.e., to the landless rural workers and/or near-landless) a meaningful amount of private
lands appropriated by a class of big landowners, that may be, inclusively, agro-industrial groups,
industrials and banks. Its objective is to democratize the agrarian structure of a country, what
presupposes transforming the economic and political power relationships responsible for the
reproduction of the agrarian concentration. As a redistributive policy, it implies, at first, a
“punitive? expropriation (i.e., through indemnification below market prices) of private lands that do
not fulfill their social functions, usually defined by law (El-Ghonemy, 2002 and 2001; Barraclough,
2001). Besides that, as peasant movements from all around the world defend (MST, 1996; Via
Campesina, 2002; CNOC, 2004; FIAN et al., 2001; FMRA, 2004), it needs to be accompanied by a
set of complementary policies in the areas of infra-structure, education, health and transportation,
as well as an agricultural policy that favors the peasantry, based on subsidized credit, public
technical assistance and the guarantee of access to consumer markets. In other words, the
agrarian reform has as its main goal the redistribution of land and the guarantee of conditions for
the economic and social reproduction of the peasantry, attacking the power relationships in society
that privilege the big proprietors. It is only viable if it’s compulsory, what demands the increase of
the redistributive power of the State against the private monopoly of land. Because it is also a
national development policy, the agrarian reform requires the strengthening of the role of the
State on the provision of essential goods and services to the enhancement of the life conditions of
the settled peasants and the good economic performance of the reformed sector.
It’s easy to notice that the presuppositions of the “market-assisted? land reform are
antagonistic to those of the redistributive agrarian reform. On the first case, land is seen as a mere
production factor, a purely economic good, a commodity, negotiable as any other. On the second
case, land is considered to have a multidimensional character (political, economical and cultural),
reason why the control and property rights over it express, above all, power relationships between
groups and social classes (El-Ghonemy, 2002 and 2001; Barraclough, 2001; Borras Jr., 2004).
Therefore, contrary to what the WB says, redistributive agrarian reform doesn’t have
anything to do with “market-assisted? land reform. A national development policy that aims to
transform the agrarian structure, redistribute a substantial part of the wealth stock privately
appropriated and alter the power relationships between groups and social classes doesn’t have any
similarities with punctual rural poverty alleviation policies backed in patrimonial transactions
between private agents financed by the State.
Directed at countries marked by severe agrarian problems and strong social tensions on the
countryside, what have the programs oriented by the “market-assisted? land reform model of the
WB showed to the moment? Looking at the recent experience in South Africa, Colombia,
Guatemala and Brazil, we may notice that they: a) do not contribute to democratize the agrarian
structure, nor is it its objective, for they were created merely to alleviate in a selective way the
negative social effects caused by the neoliberal policies; b) can’t minimally answer the existing
demand for land, because they lack the capacity to gain scale due to the payment in cash at
market prices, and not in public long-term bonds; c) for the same reason, they are very expensive
when seeking for elevated goals; d) generally lead to the indebtedness of poor peasants, who
can’t afford to pay for the land bought at market prices (Pereira, 2004: 230-53).
On the other hand, in political-ideological terms, the implementation of such programs
brought meaningful gains to its support base (Pereira, 2004), because: a) it competed with
existing agrarian reform programs, already precariously executed; b) it helped to reinforce the
dominant ideology that seeks to legitimate the mercantilization of fundamental social rights; c) it
served for the governments to divert in a bigger or lesser degree from the pro-agrarian reform
social pressure; d) it strengthened the critics from the right about the economic inefficiency and
the political unfeasibility of agrarian reform nowadays; e) it reinforced the recipe diffused by the
WB and the IMF about the fiscal unfeasibility of social policies with a universal and redistributive
character.
In Colombia, Guatemala and South Africa, programs of this nature have notoriously entered
crises and will hardly have conditions to be expanded. As for the Philippines and Malawi, these
programs have gained strength. But the big exception on the international level today is really
Brazil, whose experience is being replicated now with a bigger intensity in Mexico. In fact, Brazil is
the main scenario where the WB seeks to legitimate its model. It’s for this reason that, at this
point, the WB has prioritized the liberation of loans and “technical advisory? to Brazil. In essence,
what’s at stake is not the future of one program or another, but the political-ideological struggle
over what should be the role of the State in societies marked by grave agrarian problems on the
neoliberal context.
These are the eight lines of action from the current agrarian policy of the WB. It is, on its
whole, a totally subordinated agenda to the circuit of big agro-industrial capital appreciation. Just
so it is that it requires the traditional technological model ruled and demanded by it
(mechanization, mineral-chemical inputs and biotechnology). This kind of model is ecologically
nefarious and ? contrarily to what the pro-“free market? discourse preaches ? economically
sustained by public subsidies and fiscal exemptions, especially in the central countries. Its
prevalence excludes the great majority of the peasantry, because it doesn’t need workforce, has
highly elevated costs and demands great production volume. Only a small part of the peasantry
can be integrated to this circuit, and even then in a subordinated manner (i.e., dominated and
exploited) (Rubio, 2003; Teubal, 2001). The WB knows it, reason why its main proposition to
“substantially? reduce rural poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean is the pure and simple
“assisted migration? (sic) to the cities (2002: 14). Through this logic, only the “fittest? and more
“efficient? farmers ? according to the WB’s criteria ? should remain on the agricultural activity.
Hence the need to maximize the purchase and sale transactions and the lease of lands, in order to
favor the free flow of investment and workforce.
It is this agrarian policy that the WB has been managing to implement in an accelerated
rhythm, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. When we
deal with this issue from the southern countries and, above all, the poor peasant’s angle, it’s not
difficult to notice what the social, political and economical implications of the contemporary WB’s
agenda to the rural sector are.
References
BARANYI, Stephen e t al. (2004) Tierra y desarrollo en América Latina. Perspectivas sobre la investigación
sobre políticas. Ottawa, The North-South Institute/International Development Research Centre.
BARRACLOUGH, Sólon (2001) “A reforma agrária nos países em desenvolvimento: o papel do Estado e de
outros agentes?, in Edson Teófilo (org.) A economia da reforma agrária: evidências internacionais.
Brasília, MDA/CNDRS/ NEAD, Estudos NEAD, nº 5, pp. 377-439.
BORRAS JR., Saturnino M. (2004) Rethinking redistributive land reform: struggles for land and power in the
Philippines. The Hague, PhD Thesis, Institute of Social Studies.
CARTER, Michael (2003) “Viejos problemas y nuevas realidades: la tierra y la investigación sobre políticas
agrarias en América Latina y el Caribe?, in Pedro Tejo (org.) Mercados de tierras agrícolas en
América Latina y el Caribe: una realidad incompleta. Santiago do Chile, Nações Unidas/CEPAL/GTZ,
vol. 1, pp. 61-82
CARTER, Michael & SALGADO, Ramón (2001) “Land market liberalization and the agrarian question in Latin
America?, in Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Gustavo Gordillo e Jean-Phillippe Plateau (eds.)
Access to land, rural poverty, and public action. London, Oxford University Press, pp. 247-277.
CGRA – Campaña Global por la Reforma Agrária (2004) Comentario sobre las políticas de tierra y desarrollo
rural del Banco Mundial . Available at www.cadtm.org
CNOC – Coordenadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (2004) Propuesta de reforma agraria
integral . Guatemala, mayo, disponible en www.fmra.org
EL-GHONEMY, M. Riad (2002) Agrarian reform between government intervention and market mechanism.
Paper presented at Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, Cairo, Egypt, 4-7
March, available at http://www.aucegypt.edu/src/conf_site/papers.htm
_____ (2001) “The political economy of market-based land reform?, in Krishna B. Guimire (ed.) Land reform
and peasant livelihoods: the social dynamics of rural poverty and agrarian reforms in developing
countries. London, ITDG Publishing, pp. 105-133.
FIAN et al. (2001) Declaración de Bonn sobre accesso a la tierra. Resolución final del seminario Acceso a la
tierra: reformas agrarias inovadoras para la sustentabilidad y la reducción de la pobreza, 23 de
marzo.
FMRA – Foro Mundial sobre la Reforma Agraria (2004) La reforma agraria y los recursos naturales: una
exigencia de los pueblos. Valencia, Declaración Final, 8 de dezembro.
MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (1996) Programa de reforma agrária. São Paulo,
caderno de formação nº 23, 2ª edição.
PEREIRA, João Márcio Mendes (2004) O modelo de reforma agrária de mercado do BM em questão: o
debate internacional e o caso brasileiro. Teoria, luta política e balanço de resultados. Rio de Janeiro,
master thesis presented to the Post-Graduation Course on Society, Agriculture and Development of
the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, August, available at www2.liphis.com and
www.fmra.org
RUBIO, Blanca (2003) Explotados y excluidos: los campesinos latinoamericanos en la fase agroexportadora
neoliberal. México, D.F., Plaza y Valdés Editores, segunda edición.
SAPRIN (2002) Las políticas de ajuste estructural en las raices de la crisis económica y la pobreza: una
evaluación participativa multi-nacional del ajuste estructural . Washington D.C., abril, disponible en
www.saprin.org
SU?REZ, Sofia Monsalve (2005) Política de tierras y desarrollo rural del Banco Mundial . FIAN Internacional,
january (not published).
TEJO, Pedro (2003) “Obstáculos en la activación de los mercados de tierras de la región?, in Pedro Tejo
(org.) Mercados de tierras agrícolas en América Latina y el Caribe: una realidad incompleta. Santiago
do Chile, Nações Unidas/CEPAL/GTZ, volume 3, pp. 433-452.
TEUBAL, Miguel (2001) “Globalización y nueva ruralidad en America Latina?, in Norma Giarraca (org.) Una
nueva ruralidad en America Latina? Buenos Aires, CLACSO, pp. 45-65
VIA CAMPESINA (2002) Histórico, linhas políticas internacionais e projeto popular para a agricultura
brasileira. São Paulo, junho.
6
WORLD BANK (2004) Colombia: land policy in transition. Report nº 27942-CO, Rural Development Unit, Latin
America Region, January.
_____ (2003) Land policies for growth and poverty reduction. Washington D.C.
_____ (2002) Llegando a los pobres de las zonas rurales – Estrategia de desarrollo rural para América Latina
y el Caribe. Región de América Latina y el Caribe, Departamento de Desarrollo Ambiental y
Socialmente Sostenible, Sector Rural, julio.
TERRA DE DEREITOS, a civic human rights organization, declares publicly its rejection of the Report approved by the CPMI on Land Issues on 29 November 2005.
The CPMI on Land Issues was constituted with the aim of carrying out a broad diagnostic evaluation of the Brazilian agrarian structure, of the agrarian and urban reform processes, as well as of the campaigns of both the civic workers’ and landowners’ movements. Its mandate was to determine what was not working, and identify the path(s) to a solution. However, in rejecting the opinion submitted by the legitimate Speaker for the Commission, Representative João Alfredo, and in approving separately the findings of Representative Abelardo Lupion, the majority of the members of the CPMI came down on the side of criminalizing land rights movements, particularly the MST.
It is unacceptable that, after two years of research, fact-finding visits to nine different states, 125 interviews, inspection of 75 thousand pages of documents, the lifting of the veil of secrecy from 21 individual and legal entities, and analysis of dozens of accords entered into by the Federal Government with both worker and landowner bodies, the Report released by the CPMI would conclude that the problem of Brazilian rural areas is related primarily to the distribution of resources to entities connected with land rights workers.
The conclusion of the approved Report is completely silent as far as the violence in rural areas in concerned, and ignores both the murder of rural workers and the illegal expropriation of public lands. It makes no mention of forced labor or the militias formed by plantation owners. The text is so reactionary that it goes so far as to recommend the passage of two pending pieces of legislation that would characterize as heinous crimes and terrorist acts the actions of those who occupy land in order to pressure the government to act on agrarian reform.
The CPMI visited the state of Paraná and held a public hearing in Curitiba, at which the topic of the formation of private militias was widely debated. Representative Lupion’s report, however, does not dedicate even a single line to the matter. It does not mention operation Março Branco, which broke up a gang operating in rural areas and sent Lt. Colonel Copetti Neves to prison after demonstrating his involvement in the professional persecution of land rights movements in Paraná state. Neither does the report describe another operation carried out by Federal Police, called Peace for Rural Areas, during the course of which eight ranchers were captured red-handed and nine investigations were conducted that resulted in the indictment of 17 individuals on charges of illegal arms trafficking and gang activity. Among those charged were Humberto Mano Sá and Cristiano de Jesus Guilarde Claser. It is important to remember that rancher Humberto Mano Sá, known for working to create the First Rural Command, is currently the ‘director of territorial activity’ for the national RDU (Rural Democratic Union, a landowners’ organization), while Cristiano de Jesus Guilarde Claser, for his part, is a member of its governing council.
The Report also does not address police brutality in clearance operations, or the countless deaths that have occurred in rural land conflicts across the state. Betraying its bias, the Report, in the few lines devoted to Paraná state, does nothing more than criticize the settlement that is being established on Araupel Ranch.
In recommending that the public prosecution service go forward with legal proceedings against leaders of the ANCA (Portuguese initials of the National Agricultural Cooperation Association) and ConCRAB (Confederation of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives of Brazil), the document reveals its partiality and inclination toward criminalizing defenders of human rights that are looking to improve living conditions for the men and women living in workers’ camps and settlements.
The authoritarian and prejudiced conviction found in the winning report is a disgrace to the Brazilian National Congress. The document criminalizes victims, hinders agrarian reform, and rewards those who attack the Federal Constitution, particularly those sections that regulate and protect the right to life and the social role of property.
The report that was defeated - that of Representative João Alfredo - presents a realistic analysis of the agrarian structure, notes the causes of the violence in the countryside, and holds up agrarian reform as a solution to the problem. In rejecting it, and in approving a text which is in itself a manifesto of the hate felt by rural landowners for landless workers, the CPMI on Land Issues has ceased to fulfil its constitutional responsibilities, becoming instead yet another impediment in the path to realizing agrarian reform and social justice in the Brazilian countryside.
Contacts:
Terra de Dereitos
www.terradedereitos.org.br
tel.: (41) 3232-4660
Darci Frigo, coordinator, cel.: (41) 9987-4660
---
In Portuguese -
The statement above is available in its original form by visiting:
http://www.terradedireitos.org.br/index.php?pg=conteudo&tema=1&conteudo_id=243&tipo=1
Brazil at the Crossroads: Landless Movement Confronts Crisis of the Left
by Tarso Luís Ramos
August 2005
RIO DE JANEIRO - By all rights, social movements in Brazil should be flourishing. In
2002 Brazilians elected as their president Luíz Inácio “Lula? da Silva of the left-wing
Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers Party). The PT has roots in the militant labor
and popular movements that helped bring a close to Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship
in the mid-’80s. Its presidential victory raised hopes that, some twenty years after the end
of military rule, the promise of popular democracy in Brazil might finally be fulfilled.
However, the current political reality in Brazil is far more complicated – and sobering.
Struggle for Land
The crisis of land reform well illustrates the contradictions of the current political
conjuncture. During his electoral campaign Lula famously declared that if he could
accomplish one thing as president it would be agrarian reform. With good reason:
overconcentration of property ownership – just 1% of the population controls some 45%
of the land – is a leading cause of hunger and poverty here. Popular movements for land
reform have been part of the political landscape for more than a century, but were
crushed by the dictatorship.
Founded just 21 years ago, as the dictatorship loosened its grip on Brazilian society, the
Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem
Terra) took up the struggle for land and has since grown to become the largest social
movement in Latin America. The MST has won land for more than 400,000 families by
forcing the government to implement constitutionally mandated land reform.
The PT and MST are longtime allies and, once inaugurated, Lula asked the prominent
leftist intellectual Plínio de Arruda Sampaio to develop an ambitious land reform
proposal. But Lula balked at the resulting plan, which called for settling one million
landless over four years. Lula’s government ultimately adopted a National Plan for
Agrarian Reform that cut Sampaio’s figure by more than half. Well over two years into
his term, Lula’s government hasn’t come close to meeting even this compromise
commitment. Lula is, in fact, settling landless families at a slower pace than did his
neoliberal predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was openly hostile to the MST
and even created a special police unit to antagonize the movement.
The MST believes Lula is personally committed to agrarian reform but that his economic
policy makes reform impossible. The most glaring example: R $2 billion has been cut
from the agrarian reform budget to service the national debt, leaving neither the funds nor
the personnel to implement the government’s reform plan. Meanwhile, the Agriculture
Ministry continues to invest in large, export-oriented mono-crop cultivation, such as
soybeans, over sustainable agriculture. Export agriculture, a legacy of the colonial-era
plantation economy, is controlled by some of the most reactionary families and
politicians in the country.
On May 1st of this year nearly 13,000 landless workers set off on a 200+ kilometer
march to Brazil’s federal capital, Brasília, to demand – among other things – that Lula
implement his own limited agrarian reform plan rather than spend the project’s budget on
servicing the national debt.
Brasília and Beyond
On arrival in Brasília the MST march targeted the U.S. embassy and Brazilian Finance
Ministry, rather than the President. While thousands of landless carried banners and
scythes through the streets, a delegation of 50 held a warm, three-hour meeting with Lula,
who donned an MST cap for the cameras. During this session Lula recommitted to
settling 430,000 families by the end of 2006 and agreed to allocate the necessary human
and financial resources to accomplish this goal. He also committed to a range of related
reforms, including an increase in the pool of lands available for redistribution.
It’s not everything the MST was after. (Demands that the government change its
economic policy, withdraw troops from Haiti and implement a process for popular
national referenda – among others – were not settled.) But if Lula keeps his word, the
march will have made a big mark on national land policy. And there is little question but
that 13,000 landless workers have returned to their settlements and encampments with a
deepened understanding of and commitment to the movement for agrarian reform and
broad social transformation.
Yet even while Lula met with MST leaders behind closed doors, mounted police charged
– batons swinging – into the crowd of landless workers gathered peacefully on the federal
mall. The assault, reminiscent of Brazil’s dictatorship, resulted in a total of 50 wounded
(landless and police). This bittersweet end to the march is emblematic of the situation in
which the MST – and the Brazilian left more generally – finds itself today. While the left
has won some formal political power, the state remains largely under the control of forces
violently opposed to popular democracy.
Never Demobilize
Some find it puzzling, or discouraging, that the MST felt the need to organize this, the
largest social justice march in Brazil’s history, in order to pressure a labor party
government – directed by a longtime ally and supporter of agrarian reform – to recommit
to its own land redistribution plan. We should also recognize it as a sign of the
movement’s maturity and sophistication.
It would seem that the MST has learned from the experiences of other countries where
social movements found themselves isolated or even betrayed by the center-left
governments they helped to elect. Consider, for comparison, the response of progressives
to Clinton’s election over George H. W. Bush or, better, of South Africa’s popular
movements to the election of Mandela and the African National Congress. In both
instances, many progressives demobilized and pursued an insider political strategy – with
disastrous results.
Shortly after Lula’s inauguration in 2003, Willie Madisha, president of South Africa’s
COSATU union federation, told a cautionary tale to PT president José Genoino before
thousands of participants gathered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
South Africa’s popular movements sent their top leadership into government positions
and failed to keep their political party – the ANC – autonomous from the elected
government, Madisha observed. He warned, “The struggle really starts once the new
government takes office... we should not have sacrificed mass organizations and
mobilization of the people.?
As with the ANC, Brazil’s PT has been under strong criticism for becoming a
mouthpiece for the government while losing connection with its grassroots. Unlike the
situation in South Africa, the Workers Party did not win a congressional majority and so
cannot govern without cross-party alliances. The government often relies on the votes of
the congressional rural caucus – controlled by large landowners – to pass its initiatives.
These conditions heighten the need for social movement mobilization if the aspirations of
Brazil’s poor masses are not to be betrayed.
In 1997, an MST protest in Brasília against the policies of President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso drew 100,000 demonstrators – the majority of them allies from the PT and labor
unions. Although the MST’s recent National March for Agrarian Reform drew on
substantial support from unions, churches, nonprofits and elected governments in ways
that are likely to strengthen the movement at the local level, this time the MST’s allies
did not turn out in force. Along with Indigenous groups, the MST stands out among the
social movements as willing to mobilize pressure on Lula’s government to fulfill its
commitments.
Power: Political or Popular?
A labor leader and co-founder of the PT who rose from very humble origins to the
presidency, Lula is something of a folk hero among Brazil’s poor and a beacon of hope
for progressives in the U.S. His popularity abroad is understandable. With the exception
of sending Brazilian troops to Haiti as part of a UN occupation force (Brazil is lobbying
for a permanent seat on a reorganized UN Security Council), Lula’s foreign policy has
been commendable. He is a vocal supporter and trade partner with Venezuela’s Hugo
Chavez (to the dismay of Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice); he has effectively
stalled implementation of the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA); and he is even threatening the local market dominance of Microsoft by
announcing his government’s intention to convert to the open-source Linux operating
system.
Economic and social policy is a different matter. Lula’s much-heralded Zero Hunger
program has been under-funded and poorly administered, and he has been cutting back on
social spending to finance the foreign debt and dazzle investors with large annual budget
surpluses. To please these same investors, his government has raised interest rates to a
staggering 19.50%, with the result that only the well-to-do can afford to borrow while
lenders are getting rich. The government’s economic policy is essentially the same as that
of the previous administration and Lula has even retained his opposition’s economic
team, led by Finance Minister Antonio Palocci.
Lula was elected on his 4th consecutive run at the presidency. The common
understanding abroad is that he was swept into office on a wave of popular support, as
well as by disgust with the corruption and neoliberal policies of his predecessor,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Alongside these factors, the Workers Party also opted to
move to the right in the last campaign: choosing a center-right running mate; assuring
capital that a PT government would not question the foreign debt or otherwise threaten
the interests of foreign investors; and emphasizing Lula’s biography rather than the
political program of the PT in campaign ads.
It was a successful formula for winning the presidency, but Lula’s governing strategy
relies in large part on alliances with political parties that loathe everything the PT has
historically stood for, rather than on the direct support of social movements and the rest
of his popular base. As with the case of land reform, this approach has forced the
government away from its social commitments: education; Indigenous land and political
rights; minimum wage; health care; etc.
Willie Mandisha’s words at the ’03 Social Forum seem especially prophetic today. The
PT has all but abandoned its efforts to build a mass party, instead directing all its
resources into political campaigns. This decision, and the PT’s drift to the political
center, has driven many out of the party. Others, like federal senator Heloisa Helena,
have been expelled for resisting the government’s attack on public sector worker
pensions. During the 2005 World Social Forum over 100 prominent PT members
publicly resigned. Some formed a small opposition party, P-SOL.
Lula’s decision to seek legitimacy for his government in Brazil’s snake pit of formal
politics rather than with his popular base clearly comes at a high price. Defenders of the
government argue there is no other option given the lack of a PT congressional majority.
Critics point out that even under constant attack from reactionaries and international
finance capital, Lula’s approval ratings hover around 60% and question the point of
holding political power if one lacks the courage to lead.
Moment of Decision
With the presidential campaign of 2006 shifting into gear, Lula’s governing coalition is
on the rocks. In the months following the MST’s march, the government and the PT have
been hit by a wave of political attacks on the heart of the PT’s credibility – its intolerance
for corruption. Accused of putting federal deputies of allied parties on a monthly payroll
in exchange for their votes, the PT is now under Congressional investigation and Lula has
been forced to accept the resignation of his closest Minister and longtime comrade, José
Dirceu. The Party’s President, José Genoino, and other key officers have also stepped
down.
The accusations come from the right, which hopes to deprive Lula of a second term.
Nonetheless, the revelations to date can leave little doubt but that the PT has been badly
compromised by the system it sought to reform. [For the response of social movements,
see “Declaration to the Brazilian People? at www.mstbrazil.org/?q=node/174]
Despite the scandals, which have dominated the daily news for weeks, Lula’s approval
ratings have barely been affected and he shows no signs of changing his governing
strategy. To the contrary, in an effort to shore up his congressional coalition, he has
offered additional ministerial posts to the center-right party-for-sale, the PMDB.
There are three hypothetical exits from the present drama: 1) Lula could realize his errors
and align his government with the social movements; 2) Brazil’s social movements could
themselves seize the moment and take leadership to advance the democratic
transformation of Brazil; or 3) Lula’s government could stay its present course, reopening
the door for the return to power of an openly neoliberal government. The first two
scenarios are, to say the least, doubtful. Lula appears to have set his course and the social
movements would already have taken the lead had they the strength to do so. The MST,
for one, is already bracing itself to weather a long, difficult period of defensive battles. A
probable herald of what’s to come, court-ordered evictions of MST encampments are
already on the rise.
Regardless of how Lula’s government acts or fails to act, Brazil’s poor are determined to
make their own destiny. The MST’s march left little room for equivocation; the
government must now decide whether it will be an ally or an obstacle in this process.
Formerly Program Director at Western States Center, Tarso Luís Ramos is a freelance
writer based in Rio de Janeiro. He volunteered as a press assistant to the MST during
the National March for Agrarian Reform.
© 2005, Tarso Luís Ramos
Copy of the Open Letter printed August 24th in Brazil's O Globo Newspaper
(Translated from Portuguese)
The murder of our sister Dorothy Stang – martyr, Pará citizen of the year, and BOA Human Rights Awardee – by ruthless, lawless ranchers and loggers continues to be a horrible shock to all of us eight siblings, and to thousands of Notre Dame Sisters around the world, CPT, MST, CNS, and the millions of law-abiding citizens who love Brazil.
Dorothy Stang was a great gift from God to your country. She believed in you, your government, your laws, your people, and the great Amazon Forest. Dorothy devoted 39 years to Brazil’s poor, landless, and marginalized. At 73, she still fought for the right of the poor to enter into your great Brazilian economy – only to be ridiculed by lawless loggers, pistoleiros, the mayor and radio station in Anapu, local police, your corrupt officials in INCRA and IBAMA, and the consortium of ranchers who many feel paid the pistoleiros to murder our sister. Although she received many death threats the last years of her life, our sister continued courageously along her path of justice and truth, never giving a second thought to the monumental task she had set for herself.
The Senators commissioned to investigate Dorothy's murder recommended that her case be federalized. Joining their call were the Stang family, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, and international community. We were shocked and dismayed on June 9th to hear of the unanimous decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice denying federalization. If this is not the kind of case that merits federalization, it is entirely unclear what case would, given the long history of impunity in Pará. Can there be any doubt that hers is a human rights abuse case? What proof has Pará provided to us that justice will be served? What support is Pará giving to the poor and landless? We challenge you to show us that you put up the best possible arguments to press for federalization of our sister's case.
Immediately after our sister's death, you promised the world to tackle the impunity in Pará. While we were heartened to hear of your commitment to punish our sister's assassins and set aside land for the landless and conservation areas, we have seen few concrete actions. In April, the Anapu radio station reportedly said that Dorothy was evil and that people’s attempts to have their land certified would be stopped. In February at the Anapu city hall in front of your five Senators who were investigating Dorothy's murder, a representative of the loggers and ranchers accused you, Mr. President, of killing our sister. Is this not impunity?
Words are cheap, Mr. President.
Our sister gave her life for an equitable land reform that would provide the poor and landless with a viable way to put food on their tables and empower them as key actors in their own development and full participants in Brazil's democracy. Dorothy sought structural change that would target the roots of poverty, hunger, and social injustice – seeking to dismantle the inequality that robs the landless of dignity and any hope for a better tomorrow. Why should only the lawless feel they have rights?
Dorothy wrote to us of her hopes that you would visit Anapu to learn about her work with Sustainable Development Projects. Her dedication and love for Brazil sustained her; while she never gave up hope that an equitable land reform would come to pass, she died hoping her courageous death would push you and your government to bring freedom to the poor and disenfranchised in Brazil. Will you, Mr. President, who came from the poor, be the one to help them enter into the economy of Brazil as free people and not as slaves of the brutal ranchers and loggers?
Mr. President, you have not used your considerable influence to deal with the corruption in INCRA and IBAMA. Our sister told us that she had great hopes for those organizations. Nor have you sought the vital funding needed from the World Bank and other major donors to make possible the land reform advocated by the CPT, CNS, and MST. Because you have not met these challenges, you will not realize your campaign pledge to settle 430,000 landless families.
In the name of our murdered sister, we challenge you to work with the social movements and take a strong stand before the World Bank and major donors, requesting the needed funding for the land reform supported by the CPT,
MST, and CNS that empowers the poor and landless.
Dorothy Stang gave her life to your people, in order to see systemic changes and new models of growth take hold. She is a martyr, a saint, and a great hope to your people, not someone to be mocked by merciless, corrupt people who lie in wait to destroy the Amazon Forest and enslave the poor and landless. We are counting on you to take a critical stand and do what is right. She loved the Brazilian people and was not afraid to speak up for what is right and just. Can we not expect the same from you?
We have great hope in you, your government, and your people. We look forward to meeting with you when you have met these challenges.
David Stang
Marguerite Stang Hohm
Barbara Stang Richardson
Thomas Stang
John Stang
Mary Stang Heil
Norma Stang
James Stang
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Dorothy’s Relatives Criticize INCRA
O Globo 25 August 2005 (English-language translation)
BRASÿLIA. President of INCRA [National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform] Rolf Hackbart reacted yesterday to the criticisms of the relatives of the nun Dorothy Stang regarding the government’s delay in implementing agrarian reform in Pará. Hackbart says that all of the measures announced by the government immediately after Dorothy’s assassination at the beginning of the year are in progress. He says that the georeferencing of 600,000 hectares of land in the region of Anapu will start on 1 September.
According to Hackbart, 25 teams from INCRA have been selected to do the surveying, with the support of the Army. After that, the government will have the requisite conditions to identify illegally-owned lands in the region and with that, intensify/quicken the land reform. Nevertheless, the president of INCRA says that, since the assassination of the nun, 630 families have been settled and 340 of those are already receiving technical assistance. The government also opened up a line of credit of R340,000 [US$139,768] for the families in the region, but the money was not handed out because two associations of small farmers have not yet formalized their bank accounts.
“We are going to meet this year’s goal and we are looking to meet the general goal next year,‿ says Hackbart.
The government’s goal is to settle 115,000 families throughout the country this year and 430,000 families before 2006. In the open letter to President Lula, Dorothy’s relatives complain that Lula “has not sought funding . . . from the World Bank . . . that would make possible the implementation of land reform.‿ As the President has not responded to those challenges, he “will not be able to realize his campaign pledge to settle 430,000 landless families.‿
In Question: The Agrarian Reform Model
Published in Jornal Brasil de Fato
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Conference organized by FAO, in Porto Alegre, promises to divide governments and social movements beginning March the 6th.
After almost 30 years without debate, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN-FAO) will come together at the international level to discuss agrarian reform. The 2nd International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development will take place in Brazil, city of Porto Alegre, from the 6th to the 10th of March. In the official conference, and in the parallel forum being held on the streets, an appropriate model for agrarian reform will be decided. The event is likely to place two stakeholders on opposing sides: governments and the social movements.
Just the decision to hold the conference in the city of Porto Algere, state of Rio Gande do Sul, has been a polemic decision. The Minister of Agrarian Development (MDA) affirms that the choice was made after recognizing the cities role as host during previous World Social Forums (WSF). But some question this view. “Rio Grande do Sul is home to one of the worst agrarian reform implementations in the last four years. We’ve had less than 200 families settled on lands, and we still have roughly 2,600 families currently living in encampments. What model of agrarian reform will delegates see here?‿ asked Cedenir de Oliveira of the MST’s Rio Grande do Sul state coordinating body.
The divide between the agrarian reform models implemented by the federal government – prioritizing settlement of the legal Amazon and re-settlement in deserted land reform projects – and the model promoted by the social movements – insisting that the families living in encampments be settled immediately, and that expropriations take place in order to meet the goals of the National Plan for Agrarian Reform – is just one of the disputes that will take place during the conference.
Another issue of contention stressed by social movements worldwide, organized by the Via Campesina, is the influence of entities like the World Bank (WB) in agrarian reform policies. The WB imposes its will on developing countries, forcing them to implement public policies such as the ‘Land Bank’. “What the World Bank defends is the removal of the entire social question from agrarian reform, transforming the question into one of the market, transforming land into a commodity, and making access to land only for those who can afford it‿, affirmed the MST’s Oliveira.
In the official conference, only governments will participate. Civil society, including social movements and NGO’s, is organizing a parallel conference at the same place and time. Also, close to 2,000 peasants affiliated with the Via Campesina will set up encampments in Porto Alegre to protest the slow pace of agrarian reform in Brazil, and to defend an agrarian reform model that is socially sustainable and economically viable. The same period will include massive mobilizations, since it corresponds with International Women’s Day on March the 8th.
Note: FAO stands for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The agency was created by the Brazilian geographer, Josué de Castro, who dedicated his life to the fight against hunger and the concentration of land in the hands of a few. Castro was also the first president of the FAO. In recent years, the FAO has taken positions that are harmful to peasants, such as the promotion of transgenic crops and public policies encouraged by the World Bank.
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In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its original form by visiting:
http://www.brasildefato.com.br/v01/agencia/nacional/news_item.2006-02-13.7025130200
Paraná will host Latin American School of Agroecology
Lúcia Nórcio
Reporter - Agência Brasil
Curitiba - Establishing an exchange network among peasant farmers throughout Latin America is one of the goals of the Latin American School of Agroecology, which will be inaugurated tomorrow (27) in the municipality of Lapa, in the state of Paraná. Participating in the ceremony will be the Minister of Agrarian Development, Miguel Rossetto; the governor of Paraná, Roberto Requião; João Pedro Stédile, of the national coordinating body of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST); and Judith Valência, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela who acts in the international negotiations arena of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
The school represents a partnership between the governments of Venezuela and Paraná, the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), the International Via Campesina (an organization that brings together movements involved in the struggle for land from all over the world), and the MST. The school is located within an MST agrarian reform project known as the Contestado settlement. The protocol of intentions for its creation was signed in January during the V World Social Forum.
The first undergraduate course in Agroecology already has 100 students enrolled and will be administered by the UFPR. The students, who are associated with peasant farmer organizations from all over Latin America, will become agroecology technicians. The course, which will alternate periods in school with periods in the community, will last three years.
According to the state coordinator of the MST, Roberto Baggio, the school is a groundbreaking project that will prepare a generation of professionals to act permanently with peasant farmers, "constructing a new technological matrix based on agroecology." This new matrix, he explained, will be geared to small-scale production and the domestic market, respecting the environment and contributing to the construction of a sovereign agriculture.
Translation: David Silberstein
This article is available:
http://internacional.radiobras.gov.br/ingles/materia_i_2004.php?materia=237421&q=1&editoria=
You can subsrcibe to the FoodFirst Bi-Weekly 'We Are Fighting Back' by visiting:
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26/08/2005
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[10/29/06]
Lula’s Presidential Victory in Brazil Opens up Challenge From Below
By Roger Burbach
Luis Inácio “Lula? da Silva’s resounding electoral victory with over 60 percent of the vote places Brazilian politics on a new footing. While many on the left remain critical of Lula for the limited reforms of his first term, his very victory has consolidated a shift in the country’s possibilities for deeper social transformations. As Francisco Meneses of IBASE, the Brazilian Institute of Social Economic Analysis, says, “The country is more polarized, it can no longer move back to the old order. The economy is different and social expenditures have been augmented to a level that is important for the lower strata of society.?
A major reason for Lula’s resounding victory is due to the support of the poor and dispossesed who make up the majority of Brazil’s population. Even in the first round of the elections on October 8 when Lula fell short of an absolute majority, garnering 48 percent of the vote versus his leading opponent’s 41 percent, the poor, particularly in the country’s impoverished northeast, provided the decisive margin of support. As Darci Frigo of the Land Rights Center in the state of Paraná states, “Agrarian reform may have been limited in Lula’s first term, but thanks to the Zero Hunger program and direct income subsidies many families have more food and are better off.?
In its international relations a victory by Lula’s opponent, Geraldo Alckmin, would have reversed the increasingly independent stance that Brazil has adopted. Alckmin endorsed the neoliberal free trade position advocated by the Bush administration and would have pursued the policy of privatizing the economy that has favored the multinational corporations. Regarding relations with the South, Alckmin attacked Lula for caving in to Bolivia’s nationalization in July of the holdings of Brazil’s Petrobras. This semi-autonomous state enterprise owned large natural gas reserves in Bolivia that supplied over half of Brazil’s domestic natural gas needs.
Lula responded by insisting that he would look after Brazil’s interests while respecting Bolivia’s national automony. Just this weekend as Brazilian voters went to the polls, Petrobras concluded a new agreement with Bolivia that cedes formal control over natural gas reserves to Bolivia’s state owned company and significantly increases the gas revenues that remain in Bolivian coffers. As Francisco Meneses of Ibase notes, “Brazil under Lula is aligning itself with the Southern bloc of nations, not subverting its interests to the United States.?
But many in Brazil remain skeptical of the chances for significant advances in a second Lula administration. Marcos Arruda of PACS, a research center on social and economic alternatives based in Rio de Janeiro, is highly critical of Lula. He notes that “the destruction of the environoment, particularly in the Amazon basin has continued apace,? and “the government has practiced irresponsible fiscal policies focus on repaying the international debt and keeping national interest rates high while social spending falls far short of what the county needs.?
During Lula’s first term, most of the country’s social movements felt that their agendas were largely neglected as Lula pursued economic and social stabilization policies. Darci Frigo of the Land Rights Center states, “The demands for a profound agrarian reform program advocated by the MST, the Landless Movement, were ignored. Some limited spending was directed to social and educational programs for the landless, but the large landed estates of the country were barely touched as the government encouraged agro-exports.?
While Lula in the final election round did come out forsocial spending, Brazil’s robust social movements are not sitting idly by, waiting on Lula’s volition. Seventeen social movements lead by the MST and the the Unified Workers Central mobilizied in the major cities of Brazil during the final days of the campaign. They released an action manifesto, titled “Thirteen Points for A Social Policy for Brazil.? Commiting themselves to “an intensification of the popular and democratic struggles throughout the country? during Lula’s second term, they outlined a program that called for profound changes in education, health, fiscal policies, and agrarian reform, all to be carried out “with the effective participation of the people and their social organizations.?
As Friar Betto, a radical Brazilian theologican notes, “Lula owes us much based on the promises he has made during his presidential campaigns.? Even more than Lula’s first campaign in 2002, this election polarized the country’s electorate, laying out two distinct visions. Francisco Meneses says, “Perhaps Lula on his own would not change much, but the reality is that the social movements realize that this election is their victory and they intend to sharpen the agitation for real transformations from below.?
~~~
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley, California and a Visiting Scholar at the Institue of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written widely on Latin America, including, The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice, Zed Books, 2003.
Dear Friends,
I am writing to you from the bolivarian planes in the state of Barinas, in the centre of Venezuela. I am here doing a percorrido as they say, to learn about the agrarian reform process in Venezuela. I am impressed. I am very impressed. After all, as the oriental proverb goes: "The eyes see more than the ears". Venezuela had a glorious past in the 19th century brought about by the heroic struggles for independence led by Simon Bolívar, Ezequiel Zamora with the aid of a brave Brazilian combatant who reached the rango [rank] of general: Abreu Lima, born in Pernambuco, whom Venezuelans are very proud of, even though we Brazilians regrettably do not even know his history.
Nevertheless, the 20th century reserved to Venezuela a true economic and social tragedy. Its territory sits on a giant oil sheet and the North American civilization built on energy derived from oil, has practically transformed Venezuela in its colony, in order to guarantee the supply of its main energy source to the United States. Venezuela is responsible for supplying 25% of all oil consumption in the United States. There was a "wholly alliance" between a local minority oligarchy, which took over the state and oil resources. It was locapleted! And on the other hand, the ideological-economic-political and military power from the northern empire, maintained them intact.
Consequence: 80% of the population immersed in deep poverty, while 2% lived sumptuously. Only 8% of the population has survived in rural areas, since the agriculture was completely marginalized. And the country was forced to buy 88% of all its food abroad.
It was in this historical context that finally in 1998, with the electoral victory of a young and impetuous colonel, banned from the army, change was initiated. They have entered the 21st century under a new perspective. Venezuela is no longer a US colony. It is now the Bolivarian Republic of the Venezuelan People.
In the beginning, it looked like he was going to be another one of those deceitful populist "army guys" that many times got to power in our continent. The local oligarchy lost the elections, but tried to maintain the same economic team from the defeated government, (have you seen this film in other countries?...). This cooptation attempt last for six months. But it looks like that young colonel Chavez was not kidding. He immediately changed the institutions. He called a constituent assembly, which altered all laws in the country and paved the way for popular participation. People believed and started to mobilize and participate in the government, which slowly transformed itself into a popular and revolutionary government. And they started incorporating more and more Simon Bolivar's anti-imperialist and independent feelings.
I was here in 2001, for a seminar on the challenges of humanity. I did not see significant changes then. On my return I could not report much to my friends from via campesina Brazil. Now, I see that progress was brewing. I have returned now and I can see enormous changes. In the government, among the people, in the process, in the way changes have been made. Only the elite, the oligarchy have not changed, they are holding on to their privileges like parasite ticks, trying to stop changes at any cost.
President Chavez went through six plebiscites, one referendum and two elections. He won each one of them. And still, he has been called a dictator and a despot. Some bit players from Brazilian bourgeoisie also say that
But wat is really changing?
The meaning of politics for the people has changed. People are aware, actively participating in all state and government decisions. This is the main path: to make the masses participate in the life of the country.
The direction of the economy has changed. Even more so here which is 80% dependent on oil. Very well, those billions of dollars from oil which in the past were used by only 8% of the population to indulge themselves in luxuries and extravagancies are now financing the universalization of public and health services for the population. They are now used for wealth distribution, to guarantee food at cost prices, free education, building popular housing and for land distribution,
It has changed its foreign policy. Now exercised with pride and a clear sense of independence from imperialism.
The role of the army has changed. I was impressed to see the level of political awareness of young lieutenants, majors, captains, who do not live in military quarters but rather take an active role in the administration of social projects: building roads, bridges, managing popular markets, etc. They have given meaning to their uniforms. Now I saw armed soldiers, but armed by the people, as in the song of Geraldo Vandré, helping to occupy Malquinesa farm, which recently had its totally unproductive 8,600 hectares expropriated, even though its soil is the best in the country, in the plains of Barinenha.
I saw poor, enthusiastic young people, who now have access to education, not only primary or secondary education, but they also can register for any university course. I saw the President announce the opening of 20 thousand spaces for medical students, as for this academic year. I saw the President participate in a television programme for seven hours, discussing all the problems in the country.
I saw a generous process of agrarian reform, which expropriates all land grilada by large farmers who cannot prove its source. But it still honors all properties up to 5 thousand hectares in size. I saw the oligarchy snarling like stinky dogs, stating that the law, which was approved by more than 80% congressmen, is an outrage to property rights!
I saw on the streets and popular libraries, the state distributing more than one million copies each of the classics of literature, such as The Miserable - Vitor Hugo and Don Quixote, etc.
I saw a highly mobilized and conscious people defending their interests and struggling for true economic and social transformation.
I saw the president of the Republic denounce on TV network, that there was an oil company operating 15 thousand petrol stations and three refineries, inside the United States, for 35 years, owned by the Venezuelan state, and that in these 35 years, before the Bolivarian Government, had not sent even a penny to Venezuela. And finally now, after many interventions, for the first time, in 2005, in only eight months, the new direction has sent to the country 500 million dollars net profit. Imagine what they have stolen in 35 years! And the president announced that this money which was not included in the budget, would be used for social investment, among the poorest layers of the population.
However it is also certain that they are facing enormous challenges. Many obstacles, such as eliminating their food purchase dependency. As well as the challenge to rebuild the productive structure of the country, using oil resources for other productive investments, generating work for all. They say that the greatest challenge is to build a new economic model, breaking away from oil dependency and the financial empire and moving towards socialism. They call it the process of building a new endogenous development model, local and Venezuelan.
I saw many changes which are improving the life of the poor in Venezuela. I saw men and women walking with pride and dignity with raised heads.
I saw that there is a way out for Latin America. All we need is conscious, organized and mobilized people. And a government committed to the people and not to capital.
Boys/girls I swear that I saw all that!
Joao Pedro Stédile,
Economist and National Leader of the MST
Member of the Direction of Via Campesina Brasil
Brazil's landless poised to end election truce
Thu 26 Oct 2006 13:29:00 BST
By Peter Blackburn
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Oct 26 (Reuters) - From Brazil's Amazon through arid northeast backlands to the rich cane country of Sao Paulo, some 150,000 families are camped by the roadside ready to resume the fight for a plot of land.
Leaders of the Landless Workers Movement have threatened to restart invasions of idle farmland even if Brazil's working-class president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wins a second term in Sunday's run-off election.
Land reform highlights the social divide in Latin America's largest country, the size of continental United States, where nearly half the land belongs to less than 1 percent of landowners.
Landless Brazilians complain that Lula hasn't fulfilled a pledge to settle 400,000 families during his first four-year term.
The Landless Workers Movement invaded 180 farms during the first eight months of 2006 before calling an election truce. Between 2003 and 2005 they occupied nearly 750 farms.
During the same period, 150 people were killed in land disputes, Pastoral Land Commission data show.
"While agrarian reform is unresolved, we aren't going to control the problem of (land) invasions. I'm against them, but they happen," Lula said in an election debate on Brazil's Record TV last week.
Lula enjoys a huge lead in opinion polls over his centrist rival, Geraldo Alckmin, the former governor of Brazil's richest state Sao Paulo. But he faces a tough task satisfying his traditional landless supporters.
LANDLESS LOSING PATIENCE
Brazil's landless are impatient with Lula who is lagging on a pledge to settle 400,000 families during his first mandate, which started in January 2003.
Data from the land reform agency Incra showed that in the first three years of his term only 245,000 families received farmland.
Rebutting criticism that Lula's government had moved too slowly on land reform, Incra said that between 2003-05 the government tripled spending on land purchase to $1.3 billion and distributed 22.5 million hectares (56 million acres) of land, against 8.8 million hectares between 1999-02.
But the Landless Workers Movement said that government figures were grossly inflated and that only 26,000 families were settled in 2005, compared with a government figure of 127,000.
A family can only be considered settled when it has water, electricity, sanitation as well as farm credit, according to the movement.
It says two-thirds of settlements were in the Amazon region, lacking roads and a long way from the nearest market.
Alckmin argues that the Lula government's land reform policy is chaotic and inefficient.
"Land reform must be orderly, respecting the law and accompanied by education, health, credit and technical aid to ensure the economic viability of settled families," Alckmin said in his election manifesto.
The settlements must be integrated into local farming and food marketing network, he added.
Landowners say Lula's land reform policy is outdated.
"Buying land and handing it out is expensive, inefficient, and open to corruption," said Joao Sampaio Filho, President of the influential Brazilian Rural Society.
Sampaio Filho said that the government needs to improve access to farm credit, technology, management and marketing.
"The government is shutting its eyes to land invasions, signs agreements, finances, feeds and transports these movements - indirectly it encourages them," he complained.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Upsurge in Violence against Landless
by Marcelo Netto Rodrigues
[11/3/05-11/9/05] Brasil De Fato - Edition #140
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s indifference toward agrarian reform has contributed to an increase in rural violence and to the criminalization of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). In under a week, three leaders of the struggle for land have been killed in Pernambuco; one landless person died after a conflict in Minas Gerais; four MST activists were sentenced to 10 years in prison in São Paulo; and in Rio Grande do Sul, a 12-year old girl was hit and killed by a passing vehicle in front of the MST encampment where she lived. In Brasília, in an attempt to associate the MST with corruption, Senator ÿlvaro Dias (PSDB-PR) received wide media attention by repeating his accusations that the Movement used public funds to finance the occupation of unused lands.
The official statistics on agrarian reform need to be considered when analyzing the aforementioned facts. With roughly one year remaining in the current government’s first term, only 117,000 families have been settled out of the 400,000 promised. And, of the 140,000 currently living in encampments, only 15,000 associated with the MST are being promised any land by the end of the term. The result is clear: a fertile ground for land conflicts and the death of landless rural workers.
PERNAMBUCO
In the four days following October 27th, Pernambuco has seen three rural workers (tied to three different land reform movements) murdered. Anilton Martins da Silva, leader of the Movement for the Liberation of the Landless (MLST), was shot 18 times in the face in the town of Itaíba. Antônio José dos Santos, encamped with the MST in Tacaimbó, was tortured and stabbed 14 times after he left a party where people were celebrating the expropriation of land they had occupied since the year 2000. Luís Manoel de Menezes, president of the Rural Workers’ Union of Taquaritinga do Norte, tied to the Federation of Rural Workers of Pernambuco (Fetrape), was shot twice and died. Also, on the 28th of October, an estimated 10 hired gunmen ambushed a number of encamped MST families in Altinho.
MINAS GERAIS
In Buritis, Minas Gerais, Miguel José Caetano of the MST died on November 1st after being wounded in a land conflict with families tied to the Federation of Workers on Family Farms (Fetraf). A lot in the MST settlement, Mãe de Conquistas, was being argued over by families from Fetraf. According to the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), the conflict occurred when a number of families tied to Fetraf tried to force the MST families out of the settlement.
SÃO PAULO
Also on the 28th of October, in the Pontal de Paranapanema region of São Paulo, judge Teodoro Sampaio sentenced MST leaders Clédson Mendes, Sérgio Pantaleão, José Rainha Jr. and Manuel Messiais Duda, to 10 years imprisonment. They are accused of burning crops and theft, during an occupation of unused land in 2000. As of November 1st, only Clédson has been arrested. The lawyers of the MST plan to enter a plea for Habeas Corpus because in these cases, defendants must remain free until the appeals process has been exhausted.
RIO GRANDE DO SUL
In Nova Santa Rita, metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, 12-year old Marisa Cardoso Lourenço died on October 30th after being run over by a speeding vehicle on Interstate 386 (BR-386), in front of the MST encampment where she lived. Marisa had been involved in the struggle for land for over five years, together with another 2,500 landless workers living along the interstates of Rio Grande do Sul – where a little over 100 families have been settled since 2003. The MST reports that they have made numerous requests to the Federal Highway Police to supply the appropriate traffic signs in the area, but they have yet to receive a response.
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The article was written by Marcelo Netto Rodrigues and published in the Brazilian weekly, BrasilDeFato: http://www.brasildefato.com.br/
The original text of this article (in Portuguese) can be found by visiting:
http://www.brasildefato.com.br/nacional/140violencia_contra_sem-terra.php
The Struggle for the Expropriation of Syngenta:
Showdown Between the Social Movements and Agribusiness in Brazil
by Isabella Kenfield
January 07, 2007
Published on ZNET @ http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=48&ItemID=11795
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Curitiba, Brazil - The recent decree by Roberto Requião, Governor of the state of Paraná, to expropriate the Syngenta corporation's experimental site in Santa Tereza do Oeste has become a powerful symbol for all interests in the struggle over the future of Brazilian agriculture. The magnitude of Requião's decision was highlighted on November 30th when members of the rural social movements the Via Campesina and the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) closed the first Meeting of Education in Agrarian Reform, in Cascavel, with a march to the Syngenta site. En route to the march, the movements' busses were halted by a blockade of tractors formed by about 100 members of the Rural Society of the West (SRO), an elite group representing the interests of large landowners and commercial agricultural producers in western Paraná. Some SRO members were on horseback and armed with guns. As the marchers began to cross the barricade on foot, a violent conflict began. Shots were fired into the air, and pieces of wood were used to beat the marchers. While no one was hospitalized, the confrontation resulted in the injury of nine people. According to Alessandro Meneghel, President of the SRO, the blockade was created "to show that the rural producers will no longer peacefully accept land invasions and political provocations."
The conflict over Syngenta began on March 14th when about six hundred members of the Via Campesina and the MST occupied the 127-hectare locale after the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA), the federal environmental agency, confirmed that Syngenta had illegally planted twelve hectares of genetically-modified (GM) soybeans there. The planting was illegal because the site is located within the protective boundary zone of the Iguaçu National Park, and under Brazilian federal law it is illegal to plant GM crops within this zone. The Via Campesina and MST justified their occupation of Syngenta's site with Article 186 in the Brazilian constitution, which stipulates that private property (including land) must serve a social function. Since the early 1980s, the MST has used Article 186 to justify non-violent occupations of unproductive land owned by large landowners in order to pressure the government to expropriate the land for the purpose of agrarian reform. The movements argue that the land at Syngenta's experimental site, through the illegal cultivation of GM crops, was not serving its social function because it endangered Brazil's natural resource base, upon which all Brazilians depend. The occupation stopped all of Syngenta's activities at the site, and cost the multinational millions of dollars. Additionally, the occupation successfully pressured IBAMA to fine Syngenta US $462,000 (which remains unpaid), and applied continuous pressure on the governor to expropriate the site.
Requião's decree to expropriate the site from Syngenta in the public interest was signed on November 9th, just days after he was re-elected Governor on October 30th. From the beginning of the occupation until he signed the decree, Requião ignored various municipal and state judicial orders to expel the occupants. According to the statement released by the Paraná government's press agency, the legal basis for the decree is founded on a constitutional clause that gives Brazilian states the sovereignty to "protect notable natural areas and the environment, combat pollution of whatever form, and to preserve the forests, fauna and flora." The decree also emphasizes the "fragility of the biggest and most important remnant of the semi-deciduous seasonal forest in the country, in the Iguaçu National Park," which was declared the Patrimony of Humanity by the United Nations Educational Social and Cultural Organization in 1986. Requião announced his intent to turn the site into a center for research and education in sustainable agriculture for small farmers and landless workers.
The efficacy of the occupation, and Requião's resulting decree, have elevated the social movements' struggle for Syngenta to be the current most powerful global symbol of resistance to the growing hegemony of multinational agribusiness corporations. This is true for the social movements and civil society in Brazil, as well as for organizations and movements in the anti-GM struggle worldwide. Syngenta, which realized profits of over US $8.1 billion in 2005, has the third largest share of the global seeds market. The corporation is at the forefront of research into agricultural biotechnology, and the effort to patent and privatize genetic material from seeds, including the development of Terminator Technology. This technology, which causes GM plants to produce sterile seeds, is perhaps the biotechnology most threatening to peasants and small farmers, as it is designed to force all agriculturalists to purchase seeds from agribusinesses, as opposed to choosing, saving and reproducing seeds. Given Syngenta's position as an agribusiness leader, for the anti-GM struggle the Paraná government's expropriation of the Syngenta site is strategic in the effort to resist the increasing control by multinational agribusinesses over global food and natural resource systems.
The expropriation is also vital to the effort to hold agribusinesses accountable for their crimes, and highlights the ability of social movements and civil society to affect them. According to José Maria Tardin, who works in the Sector of Production, Cooperation and the Environment for the MST and also coordinates the Latin American School for Agroecology in Paraná, the decree "calls the attention of the public to the abuses of these companies in the country, and signals to the social movements the need for action in order to combat and criminalize these companies, which operate in an illicit form and under the complacency of the state, disseminating transgenics in the country." With its immense geographic size and natural resource wealth, opening Brazil up to GM crops has been strategic to the survival and expansion of agribusiness' interests.
Since 2003, agribusiness has dramatically increased its presence and interests in Brazil, a development that would not have been possible without the Monsanto Company's illegal promotion of GM soy cultivation in the country. According to Darci Frigo, an attorney for the human rights organization Terra de Direitos, based in Curitiba, in 2001, when GM soy was still illegal to plant in Brazil, Monsanto encouraged farmers in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul to illegally pirate its Roundup Ready GM soy seeds from Argentine farmers and plant them. Monsanto then approached the Lula administration and demanded that it legalize cultivation of GM soy so that the corporation could collect 'its' royalties. Thus the process of fait accompli of how the cultivation of GM soy came to be legalized in Brazil. On May 8, 2006, the Correio Braziliense published an article reporting that Monsanto sold Paraná congressman Abelardo Lupion, of the Liberal Front Party, who represents the interests of the Brazilian rural elite, a farm for one-third of its market value in return for Lupion using his political power to legalize glysophate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. After the sale of glysophate was legalized in Brazil, Monsanto's sales of Roundup increased by more than 30%. In early 2004, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that despite a loss of $97 million for Monsanto that quarter, Brazil was "blossoming" and "becoming a bright spot" for the corporation.
Due to agribusinesses' increase of economic and political power, and criminal activities in Brazil, in recent years the rural social movements have increasingly focused their actions against these corporations. The expropriation of Syngenta is their latest victory in a struggle against biotechnology that has an established history in Paraná. "This victorious expropriation crowns the struggle of the peasant movements and organizations of civil society," says Tardin, "that since 2001 have intensified their mobilizations in Paraná, for a land free of transgenics and without agrotoxins, and for the promotion of agroecology amongst poor, rural families." The rural social movements and civil society organizations have applied strong and continuous pressure on Requião to reject GM technology, and to adopt various policies to impede the abuses of agribusiness corporations. Thus, while the rest of Brazil planted millions of hectares to GM soy, Requião signed the Paraná Law Free of Transgenics in 2003, which prohibits the planting of GM crops in the state, and prohibits the export of GM grains through the Port of Paranaguá, the largest port of agricultural export in Latin America. The decree to expropriate Syngenta is Requião's latest political maneuver in his already well-articulated anti-GM stance. The magnitude of the decree should not be underestimated; it is unprecedented in Brazil, as never before has any state or the federal government moved to expropriate land from an agribusiness multinational corporation. Without question, Requião's anti-GM policies are a result of the pressure applied by the social movements and civil society.
Therefore, for agribusiness, including the multinationals and their allies amongst the Brazilian rural elite, Requião's decree to expropriate Syngenta's experimental site is a direct threat to its economic and political power. This power is based on a neoliberal model of economic growth through agricultural production for export. Brazil's agricultural sector has experienced massive growth in recent years, boosted primarily by exports of GM soy (Brazil is now second only to the U.S. in soy production and export). While Meneghel claims that the SRO does not have direct financial interests in the Syngenta site, the organization's consternation about the expropriation is based on the fact that "the Rural Society of the West is historically constituted to represent the productive sector. Regionally, Syngenta performs the relevant research to raise the levels of productivity of agribusiness." Meneghel maintains that Requião's decree is "based on questionable legality, sending a negative message to investors, chasing them away and inflating 'Brazil risk.'" The expropriation, if upheld, will considerably weaken this current model of economic growth via agricultural export, and will strengthen the national and regional movements toward a sustainable agricultural model based on family farming, agroecology, and food production for domestic markets - all firmly grounded in a comprehensive agrarian reform. The success of these movements will necessarily entail the end of agribusiness in Brazil. For these reasons, Syngenta, the SRO, and all who have interests in Brazilian agribusiness are desperate to stop the expropriation.
The SRO and Syngenta have been mobilizing at the local and national levels to fight Requião's decree. Their tactic has been to criminalize the Via Campesina and MST by reframing the occupation by as 'invasion,' and by asserting Requião's decree has no legal basis. As the conflict of November 30th demonstrated, the SRO is attempting to resolve the issue by taking the law into its own hands. According to Meneghel, "The SRO does not defend violence as a form to resolve conflicts in the countryside, but the SRO also does not accept the invasion of land, provocation and impunity of the invaders…For every invasion of land that occurs in the region, there will be one similar action by the SRO…The position of the SRO is simply to defend the productive sectors of society against the free will and the abuse of power by the Governor…We are not going to permit the agriculturalists that generate these riches for the country, and toil from sunrise to sundown, to be insulted by ideological political movements of whatever form."
While Syngenta has not yet publicly responded to Requião's decree, its tactic to fight it has been to utilize its economic power to change Brazilian law and garner support from state and federal politicians in order to disprove that it committed any criminal activity. On October 31st, President Lula signed a provisional measure that reduced the distance of the protective boundary zone for national parks from 10 kilometers to just 500 meters. This maneuver, a result from local agricultural interests and of pressure from Syngenta, complicates the effort to find that Syngenta illegally planted GM soy, as it planted the soy six kilometers from the park. This measure was approved by the lower house of Congress in December, and will likely be approved by the Senate early this year. Additionally, on November 30th the Federal Public Minister of Paraná, through the Municipal Prosecutor of Cascavel, annulled the civil suit against Syngenta filed by Terra de Direitos on October 4th. This decision is currently waiting to be ratified by the Minister of Justice in Brasília.
Syngenta has also enlisted the support of congressman Lupion to do its political bidding, despite the fact that there are currently two unresolved federal inquiries into his alleged corruption, including one into his connection to Monsanto. On December 13th the federal government's Commission of Agriculture, Livestock, Supply and Rural Development (CAPADR), under the direction of congressman Eduardo Sciarra, also of the Liberal Front Party in Paraná, approved a proposal submitted by Lupion on June 28th to investigate IBAMA's "administrative procedures" in regard to the fine it imposed on Syngenta for the illegal planting. Through the CAPADR investigation, Lupion intends to negate the legality of IBAMA's fine. The investigation also intends to discredit the occupation by establishing that the site was 'productive,' and therefore serving its social function. Finally, it is an attack on Requião for refusing to comply with judicial orders to forcibly expel the occupants from the Syngenta site.
Yet the evidence remains that Syngenta illegally planted GM soy within the Iguaçu National Park, and therefore broke a federal law. As Tardin points out, "In addition to Syngenta, there were 12 other farmers that committed the same crime of planting transgenic soy and corn in the protective zone of the Iguaçu National Park, an act duly prohibited by federal legislation." IBAMA fined every single farmer found to have planted GM crops within the zone. According to Maria Rita Reis, the attorney for Terra de Direitos responsible for the case against Syngenta, "The Federal Justice already declared that the planting was illegal."
It is clear that all interests in the struggle over Requião's decree to expropriate Syngenta's test site understand that the outcome is critical to the future of agribusiness in Brazil. If Syngenta and the SRO are successful in their effort to annul the decree, and discredit the criminal charges against the corporation, the case will strengthen the power and confidence of agribusiness in Brazil, setting the stage for future crimes, increased hegemony, and further environmental destruction. In his article, "Trangenics: Concentration of Power of Multinationals and the Deconstruction of the Patrimony of the People," presented in Caracas, Venezuela, in April 2005, Tardin writes: "The absolute and unhindered control over humanity's natural resources by the multinationals is a key factor to the establishment, maintenance, and amplification of imperialism. It is in this context that agriculture occupies a strategic place in the accumulation of wealth, and biotechnology especially offers the multinationals the best techniques to gain absolute global control, and to manipulate that to their interests and necessities. It is through biotechnology that [the multinationals] make a concerted effort to achieve the maximum concentration of power over humanity's food system, and biotechnology therefore offers them an instrument of geopolitical-military control as never before."
Requião and the social movements face what could be termed 'an uphill battle' against various powerful interests in Brazilian agribusiness before the decree to expropriate is upheld. Yet if it is upheld, the expropriation will serve to drastically curb agribusiness' power. It will strengthen the local, national and regional movements toward alternative, sustainable agricultural systems, based on agrarian reform, food security, food sovereignty, and conservation of natural resources. Requião is one of the increasing number of leftist politicians in Latin America that are a part of this movement, which also includes Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. The occupation of, and Requião's decree to expropriate, the Syngenta site is the most powerful tangible example that currently exists in the world of how common people and civil society have been able to affect a multinational agribusiness corporation and the state. For this reason, success of the expropriation could help to stimulate popular resistance to agribusiness on a global scale. According to Tardin, Requião's decree "is the greatest global victory in this battle, that reverberates around the world…energizing the struggles in all of the countries where these same companies commit the same crimes." Requião's decree sets new precedents for the interpretation of the social function of private property, in particular how land, natural resources and food systems must be prioritized for Brazilian society - not the wealth of agribusiness. If agribusiness can be weakened in Brazil via expropriation of Syngenta's experimental site, this will have profound impacts throughout the world.
While the United Nations (UN) insists that the soldiers of peace – known as MINUSTAH – are securing their objective of social and economic stability in Haiti, a number of social movements disagree with this view.
According to the Mission of Investigation and Solidarity with the Haitian People, Haiti’s problem is not a military problem. As such, there is no reason for the ongoing occupation of Haiti by foreign military forces. The Mission of Investigation and Solidarity with the Haitian people is led by Noble Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, and includes a number of representatives from social movements.
In Brazil, the MST is of the same opinion. The Landless Workers’ Movement demands the immediate withdrawal of Brazilian troops, who currently lead the MINUSTAH forces. For the MST, the presence of foreign troops on Haitian soil jeopardizes her sovereignty. According to figures compiled by the group, close to 246 Haitian men and women have been killed by MINUSTAH and National Police forces during the October 2004 – August 2005 period.
Haiti, the poorest country in Latin America, has been under UN occupation since the removal of Haiti’s president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in February of 2004. MINUSTAH forces had been led by Brazilian General Urano Bacellar, until last Saturday (01/07/2006), when he was found shot to death in Porto Príncipe. A new General is to be identified by Brazil in the coming days to replace General Bacellar.
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In Portuguese –
The text above is available in its original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1481.htm
Tired of waiting almost 11 years for compensation from the government, the rural workers who are representatives of the victims of the massacre of Corumbiara announced on January 9, that they intend to send a commission to Brasilia in March in the hopes of meeting with President Lula.
They ask that justice be done for the death of nine people and for the dozens of wounded left by the police and gunmen who in August 1995, expelled 600 families who were camped on the Santa Elina Ranch in the township of Corumbiara, Rondonia.
The representatives of the victims of the massacre will also attempt to be heard by the Public Ministry, by the Senate Commission on Human Rights, and by the Chamber of Deputies.
The announcement emphasizes that the images and reports from Corumbiara went around the world, creating indignation wherever they went. They showed farmers being tortured, the body of seven-year-old Vanessa, dead from a shot to her chest, and the testimony of a rural worker who was forced by the police and gunmen to eat part of the brain of another rural worker who had been killed.
by Antonio Diniz from Brasília, Agência Notícias do Planalto
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In Portuguese –
The text above is available in its original form by visiting:
http://www.noticiasdoplanalto.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=768&Itemid=43
Also, a similar update is available at the MST's website:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1484.htm
In 2004, rural workers living in 20 settlements on the Pirituba Ranch located in the Itapeva region, southeast of São Paolo, realized that they needed to take a different approach to caring for their lands — an approach that would also preserve the environment. During the Regional Settlements Forum, motions were proposed including: improving the treatment of the soil, diversifying the commercialization of products, and establishing an environmental pact.
Among the objectives of the environmental pact were the reduction of the use of agrotoxins, elimination of the use of fire, re-forestation of degraded areas, and preservation of springs at the source of rivers. Following the objectives of the pact, a core group from each settlement was made responsible for putting the pledges into practice. For example the core group from Agrovila III began to develop a community garbage collection program and the production of propane gas from the by-products of raising pigs.
The first attempt to recuperate the spring feeding the Lavrinha River took place in July of 2005. This river begins in one of the settlements and supplies water to the city of Itaberá. The effort was made possible by the participation of members of the settlement, as well as members of Sem Terrinha who form part of the core group called Che Guevara.
At the end of 2005, work done to recuperate the springs gained momentum and the support of other groups concerned with restoring the area near the Lavrinha River. On the 21st of December, children, educators, members of the settlement, and of the Associated Friends of Itaberá (AMAI) collaborated to perform the second planting of trees on the banks of the river.
One of the goals for 2006 is to combine consciousness-raising with the ongoing restoration work performed by the members of the settlement and those living in Itaberá. Another idea is to include small-scale farmers living on the edges of the river in the restoration efforts and transform the work into instructional material for local city schools.
Translated by Friends of the MST volunteer Amy Catelani
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In Portuguese –
The text above is available in its original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1491.htm
News
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: AMR 19/002/2007 (Public)
News Service No: 007
12 January 2007
Available online @ http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGAMR190022007
Brazil: Another victim in the Guarani-Kaiowá’s struggle for land
Kuretê Lopes, a 69-year-old Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous woman, has become the latest victim of land-related violence which blights the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Kuretê Lopes died when she was shot in the chest by a private security guard during an eviction from farm lands that the Guarani-Kaiowá claim as ancestral.
The death of Kuretê Lopes fits into a pattern of violence and intimidation against indigenous peoples fighting for the constitutional right to their ancestral lands in Mato Grosso do Sul, a state which has become an epicentre of human rights abuses against indigenous peoples.
On Friday, 5 January, a group of around 50 Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous people occupied land they claim as ancestral in the Madama farm in the region of Kurusu Mba, Mato Grosso do Sul. According to reports, in the early morning of 9 January about 40 armed men working for a private security company entered the farm in a convoy of trucks to remove them. During the eviction Kuretê Lopes was shot dead and 22-year-old Valdecir Ximenez was shot three times in the leg. All the Guarani-Kaiowá, including the body of Kuretê Lopes and the wounded Valdecir Ximenez, were then forced onto the trucks and a bus and driven off the farm. They were left by the side of a highway, near the Taquapery indigenous village where they live. The Guarani-Kaiowá are now fighting for the right to have the Kuretê Lopes’s body buried on the spot where she was murdered, which is customary for the Guarani.
There are fears that the men who killed Kuretê Lopes worked for the same private security company whose employees shot dead another member of the Guarani-Kaiowá community, thirty-nine-year-old Dorvalino Rocha, a week after a violent eviction in December 2005.
Amnesty International is calling on the Federal authorities to thoroughly investigate the death of Kuretê Lopes. There is also an urgent need for more stringent controls on private security companies, which have long been implicated in violence and intimidation against indigenous peoples throughout Brazil.
The Brazilian authorities must set out clear policies and specific strategies for tackling the persistent human rights issues that affect Brazil’s indigenous population. Unless the Federal government intervenes decisively to speed up the process of land demarcations, provide protection for the state’s indigenous peoples, and peacefully resolve land conflicts, Mato Grosso do Sul will continue to be a byword for violence against indigenous peoples.
Background Information
Despite being one of the most populous indigenous peoples in Brazil, the Guarani-Kaiowá have one of the smallest ratios of land per person for any indigenous group in the country. The majority of the Guarani-Kaiowá live in 27 officially recognised territories in the south of Mato Grosso do Sul state - rural pockets of poverty surrounded by large soya and sugar cane plantations, and overcrowded urban reserves where life is plagued by malnutrition, ill-health, squalid living conditions, suicide, violence and alcoholism. Since the 1990s, the Guarani-Kaiowá have been trying to reverse the process of dispossession and impoverishment to which they have been subject for centuries. A series of indigenous leaders have been killed while peacefully occupying ancestral lands, including Marcos Veron, who was beaten to death by farm labourers and hired gunmen in January 2003. In December 2005, thirty-nine-year-old Dorvalino Rocha was shot in the chest by a private security guard hired by local landowners, in the aftermath of a violent eviction.
[01/23/07] Food Sovereignty at the World Social Forum
by Stephen Bartlett, Agricultural Missions/ National Family Farm Coalition/ Via Campesina
Standing outside Gate # 14 of the Kasarani Sports Stadium on the outskirts of Nairobi with ears of organically grown white corn and a sign that said: "Food Sovereignty: Strategies for Transformation" was the only way we could think of to get the word out. The programs were scarse still, thousands of people appeared to be wandering around lost, and non-stop drumming and dancing out on the tarmac was a balm to the eye and ear. But came they did, about 120 people from dozens of countries North and South, East and West.
On the panel facilitated by Agricultural Missions, Inc (AMI) were women and men speakers from tough African American farm communities facing agrarian extinction, rural villages in Bungoma District of Western Kenya hammered by governmental neglect and depleted soils, farm labor camps in Florida, US (the Dis-United States), small-scale farmers from Missouri, and a respondent speaker working with small
farmers in South Africa. Including the facilitator, three of these were members of the Via Campesina movement by membership in the US based National Family Farm Coalition!
And by the time the session was finished, we had heard from knowledgeable and engaging participants from Ethiopia (former minister of agriculture there, now working with peasant struggles), India, Germany, Haiti, Jamaica, the U.K., Kenya, and Uganda, among several others.
The topics of most intense dialog during the 2.5 hour session? The role of food aid in undermining food security and trumping food sovereignty in African countries; the common interests and varied complementary struggles among farmers in the industrialized north with those of rural peoples in the more agrarian south; the importance of gender equity and empowerment in community development; erasing the stigma from eating (for example) millet, diverse tubors and bananas and other hardy and resilient African crops, and ways of breaking down the hegemony of corporate virtual monopoly agriculture, fast food culture and export commodity dumping regimes.
We talked strategies for reigning-in corporate mafiosos, and lending grit to weak-kneed politicians. We explained the importance of low-input organic production, value-added activities and fair trade in helping farmers get out of chemical dependency and input-debt, and the bottom line of basic human dignity and decency sought through sometimes powerful strategic movements (such as farmworker movements in the U.S.) by those displaced from their livelihoods by structural impoverishment and forced migration, due to neoliberal policies and savage capitalism worldwide.
And we repeated the clarion call and platform of the Via Campesina: Agrarian Reform, No to Privatization of Life (ie Seeds) or other Common Goods, the WTO, IMF, WB, Free Trade Agreements Out Of Agriculture, and embracing all those: Food Sovereignty! The millenial birthrite that is agriculture (culture!) can be denied only at the risk of annihilation of the human species. We were here to say, that is not going to happen while we draw breath! And the breathing is sweet here in Kenya these days of Solidarity with the Struggles of Africa! Viva!
Globalize Struggle! Globalize Hope!
Mapambano Ya Dunia! Tumaini Ya Dunia!
(hence a new language is added to the repertoire of the Via Campesina, Swahili!)
January 21, 2007, Nairobi, Kenya
Via Campesina Delegation in Nairobi:
phone: + 254-728-9059, e-mail: vcafrica@gmail.com
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Article found in its original version at:
http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=270&Itemid=34
SAO PAULO (Dow Jones)--The Swiss multinational seed and crop science corporation, Syngenta AG (SYT), is in the crosshairs of an anti-transgenic seed dispute it might not win in Brazil.
On Nov. 9, for the first time ever in a Latin America nation, Syngenta had one of its genetically modified crop research facilities shut down and expropriated by the Parana state government in southern Brazil. No financial figure has been given, but some estimate losses in the millions of dollars for Syngenta.
The 123-hectare property was located roughly six kilometers from the Iguacu National Park in western Parana state. The park is also home to the immense Iguacu Falls on the Brazil-Argentine border, and is considered a world historic landmark by the United Nations.
Parana governor Roberto Requiao, a transgenic-foe since he was elected five years ago, signed a decree to confiscate the property in November on the grounds that it broke federal environmental laws. Those laws said genetically modified crops could not be planted within 10-kilometers of a nature reserve.
Syngenta argues it was given permission by the biosafety agency of the federal government, CTNBio, to test transgenic corn and soy on the site. Syngenta has owned the property since 1986 and in November managed to get a federal court to agree that the company had been operating legally in the area. Moreover, in early 2006, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva changed the 10-kilometer law. The distance between genetically-modified crops and nature reserves has been shrunk down to just 500 meters.
The Parana government, the Brazilian Environmental Protection Agency, known as Ibama, agrarian reform activists and their lawyers say the 500 meter ruling doesn't count for Syngenta because they were experimenting with the seeds before the presidential decree was signed. So far, theirs is the dominant view.
"Syngenta has been notified time and time again that they cannot plant, test, or do anything with GMO on that site and they have arrogantly ignored the state," said Roberto Requiao's spokesman Benedito Pires.
"They cannot plant there. CTNBio does not interpret the law. We are following the law. Syngenta has been fined for breaking that law and to this day they have not paid it," he said.
According to Andrea Vulcanes, the manager of Ibama Parana, the agency fined Syngenta 1 million Brazilian reals ($476,000) in March 2006. The company has contested the fined.
"We fined them because they cannot be testing GMOs near that park," Vulcanes said.
"We know what CTNBio and others have said and we are considering it. But whether we retract our fine our not, that doesn't mean Syngenta can get its property back from the state. That's a whole other matter," she said.
Syngenta sells over $8 billion in seeds and agrochemicals each year under the Callisto, Garst and Dual Gold brands to name a few. Only Monsanto and DuPont sell more.
This week, the company asked a Parana court to review the governor's decision to expropriate the land, located in Santa Tereza do Oeste. It marks the second time Syngenta has asked a court to get involved in the dispute with the state. Parana is one of Brazil's top two agricultural producers.
Syngenta's problems began in March when over 600 rural workers and unemployed peasants, that make up part of the Via Campesina agrarian reform movement, invaded the site. The occupation argued that the company had no rights to plant genetically modified crops in the area.
They remained on the property for months before police finally kicked them out. Once Requiao said he was interested in turning the site into a center for the study of environmentally friendly agriculture, Via Campesina invaded again, arguing they had to harvest the corn they planted to eat during their time there. Parana is already the home to an agro-ecology center. It is run by some members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, or the MST, long considered an arch rival of middle class and elite farmers and land owners.
Requiao's anti-transgenic policies have been the result of pressure groups like the MST and others.
"The anti-GMO movement is very different here than it is in Argentina or the U.S. There are social movements of small farmers who are very much against transgenics and they will continue pressuring the governments here," said Darci Frigo, a lawyer for the group Terra de Direitos in Parana.
The group specializes in labor rights. Frigo was the lawyer who alerted Ibama to the Syngenta property being inside the transgenic-seeds buffer zone set by the government.
Small producers argue that genetically modified seeds cross-pollinate with other local varieties, harming biodiversity. It also makes it harder for farmers to sell once their crops have been contaminated, because if it is discovered that their plants have genetically modified traits from Monsanto, currently the only transgenic brand allowed for sale here, those farmers will have to pay royalty payments for the seeds.
Monsanto has genetically modified soy and cotton in the Brazil market and partners with a handful of companies to make varieties of those seeds.
Requiao has fought Parana transgenics and won small victories in the past. He banned transgenic crop exports from the massive Paranagua port for some four years. But in 2006, by the order of a federal judge, the port was required to permit genetically modified soybean exports once again. Syngenta is hoping a similar ruling will fall in favor of the company in the near future and they can move back in to Santa Tereza do Oeste.
Brazil is the world's No. 2 soy producer behind the U.S.
Source: Kenneth Rapoza; Dow Jones Newswires; 55-11-3145-1488
http://news.morningstar.com/news/ViewNews.asp?article=/DJ/200702021012DOWJONESDJONLINE000619_univ.xml&Cat=ForMkts
Convictions have not brought justice in nun's murder
Friday, February 10, 2006
David Stang and Emily S. Goldman
A year ago Sister Dorothy Stang was shot and killed in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The gunmen had been hired by wealthy ranchers and loggers who feared her efforts to protect the human rights of the poor and landless.
Two men were tried and found guilty in December and given stiff sentences - quite a rarity in land-access cases in Brazil. We applaud the successful trial as a positive step toward ensuring justice. This is the first time that such a crime has been brought to trial in less than a year.
The case is one of hundreds of similar murders of religious, union and community leaders who were fighting to end social and economic injustice in Brazil. Full justice must be done in Stang's case, and a legal precedent set, if Brazil is to begin to systematically combat the widespread violence against the landless and the impunity shrouding those crimes.
Stang, born in Dayton, spent the last 30 years of her life working with the poor in the Amazon. She faced overwhelming challenges with courage and determination. Her long-term vision centered on human rights and the sustainable use of natural resources. She confronted Brazil's state and federal governments and asked that they combat the lawlessness of the ranchers and loggers.
Brazil is one of the world's largest economies, but it is marked by severe economic inequality and a grave disparity between landed haves and the have-nots. Less than 3 percent of Brazil's population owns two-thirds of the arable land. Illegal ranchers and loggers appropriate public lands, create false deeds to prove their ownership, and are often in cahoots with local and state authorities.
There has never been a land reform that has fully addressed these issues.
Between 1985 and 2002, there were 1,280 recorded murders and 6,330 arrests of rural workers, lawyers, union leaders and religious workers aligned with the struggle for land. Of these murders, only 121 have been prosecuted. Of those who ordered the murders, only 14 were charged, resulting in seven convictions. Of the intermediaries, four were charged, resulting in two convictions. Of the 96 gunmen tried, 58 were convicted.
Structural problems are also at fault. For more than a decade, the World Bank has been funding its "market-based" land reform to facilitate land transfers while overlooking pressing social and environmental concerns. Many of Brazil's social movements strongly oppose the World Bank model and instead support a human rights-based land reform that ensures the dignity of the landless and sustainable environmental practices.
INCRA, the Brazilian land reform ministry, is grossly underfunded and unable to make a dent in the land- lessness problem. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has failed to secure the vital funding needed to enable INCRA to fully carry out the land reform mandated by the Brazilian Constitution, the ideas for which Stang fought.
What should justice in Sister Dorothy Stang's case look like?
While the successful legal proceedings thus far give us reason to believe that there is potential for a legal precedent to be set, much more needs to be done to ensure justice in this case and break the historic pattern of impunity.
We call for a prompt joint trial of the two wealthy landowners and one intermediary who were directly implicated by the gunmen in open court as having promised them $22,000 (U.S.) to kill Dorothy. We urge the Brazilian government to carry out a full investigation to identify the other members of a consortium of wealthy ranchers who helped plan and finance the murder.
Furthermore, we call on the Brazilian government to implement the systemic changes to which Dorothy dedicated her life as a way to address and overcome the historic problems of land inequity, environmental destruction and lawlessness.
Land reform based on socioeconomic justice and environmental sustainability would go far toward reducing violence in land-access cases. President Lula now has the opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to what he has sought for more than a generation: land and dignity for the landless. His concrete steps now will help ensure Stang's legacy of social justice.
Stang is the youngest brother of Sister Dorothy and a former missionary in Tanzania. Goldman is senior program officer at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C.
© 2006 The Plain Dealer
© 2006 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.
Written by Newsroom
Monday, 12 February 2007
About 250 Kaingang, Guarani and Charrua indigenous people from Brazil performed rituals in memory of the death of Sepé Tiaraju 251 years ago on February 7 in São Gabriel, state of Rio Grande do Sul.
They performed rituals in Sanga da Bica, where the Guarani leader died, and Coxilha do Caiboaté, where 1500 Guarani were murdered by Portuguese and Spanish troops on February 10, 1756.
In the afternoon, the group visited a camp of the Landless Movement (MST) next to the Southall farm and showed solidarity to the almost 300 families camped there to press for the area to be expropriated.
Attended by indigenous communities from Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Argentina, the gathering strengthens the continental struggle of the Guarani people and contributes toward organizing their struggle for a land of their own.
The Kainkang and Charrua also reaffirmed that they will carry out joint actions for the purpose of reoccupying their lands.
Evergelino Nascimento, the vice-chief of the Kaigang who lives in an indigenous reservation in Lajeado, was deeply touched when he visited the location where the indigenous people died fighting for their land.
Evergelino was born in a reservation in the city of Nonoai, but he said that he left the place because of its precarious physical and basic sanitation framework.
"I was thinking to myself that when Sepé was here this place was a forest, that perhaps there was a pine tree here, there was game, all kinds of animals. And now all we see is a farm without a single pine tree. This is why Sepé was butchered, for defending his culture, his forest," he said.
There are ten indigenous camps alongside highways in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Altogether, there are about 25 Guarani communities in the State, most of which concentrated in the Larger Porto Alegre area and on the shore.
The Kaingang also have about 20 communities mainly located in north region of the State. The Charrua da Capital community is fighting today for 10 hectares of land in the city, but there are other members of this community in the region of Bagé. (Raquel Casiragui, Chasque Agency, state of Rio Grande do Sul)
Poor Brazilians Get a Chance to Be Operated on in Cuba
Written by Érica Santana
Thursday, 23 February 2006
Two Cuban ophthalmologists who are part of the Miracle Mission, which treats visual deficiencies and ailments such as cataracts, glaucoma, and strabismus (squinting), paid a visit, Wednesday, February 22, to the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) encampment in Brazlândia, on the outskirts of the Federal District.
The MST signed a partnership with the mission, which should begin offering treatment to patients in the encampments at the end of March.
According to Ada Madariaga, a physician and coordinator of the Miracle Mission, "the project is directed at poor patients without the economic means to have access to this type of operation in their countries."
The project is currently active in 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries and has already provided care to 210,000 people, all of whom have been treated in Cuba.
Madariaga explained that the Cuban ophthalmologists who work in the associated countries indicate which patients should receive treatment.
"The patients go to Cuba to be operated. Their travel is provided by the Cuban Aviation company, and they are always accompanied by medical teams," she informed.
The project was inaugurated a little over a year and a half ago by the Cuban government and gets help from the government of Venezuela. The doctors who visited Brasília were invited by social action groups to discuss the work of the Mission.
They are part of a delegation of 131 Cuban ophthalmologists attending the 30th International Ophthalmology Meeting, in São Paulo.
The Cuban ambassador to Brazil, Pedro Nunes, said that the mission's objective is to treat 100 million people in the next ten years. According to Nunes, this represents Cuba's contribution to achieving the goal set by the World Health Organization (WHO) of erasing the number of cases of curable blindness around the world by 2020.
"Over 200,000 people have already recovered their vision and are once again able to see the light, which is so indispensable to people's quality of life," he observed.
WHO data show that more than 37 million people suffer from some type of visual deficiency, caused, for the most part, by cataracts, and that 6 million Latin Americans are victims of some form of ophthalmological disease.
Agência Brasil
Available Online at:
http://www.brazzilmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5634&Itemid=53
Nyéléni 2007
Brazil: Social Movements Change Strategy for Lula’s Second Term
Originally Posted @ http://www.nyeleni2007.org/spip.php?article242
~~~
The most important social movements in Brazil will conduct in 2007 a strategic change in their relationship with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration, of the leftist Workers Party, known as PT. The change will be led by peasant movements such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement (known as MST in Portuguese), and the Small Farmers Movement (known as MPA in Portuguese), to “put the issue of agrarian reform in the government’s agenda.? The new strategy was explained to Radio Mundo Real by Elsa Nivia, from MST’s national coordination, and Maria Tavares, from MPA’s national board.
About 15 delegates from several Brazilian organizations and movements will participate at the Global Forum for Food Sovereignty, which is taking place now in Selingué, a village in the countryside of Mali, to present their experiences in the struggle for an agrarian reform and to coordinate actions at the regional and global levels with other movements that fight for food sovereignty.
According to Elsa Nivia, in the last stage of Lula’s first term, rural social movements placed a bet on the strategy of dialogue to advance their main demands, abandoning mobilization and the occupation of unproductive lands or of the headquarters of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (known as INCRA).
Energy and motivation for this change in strategy came from “the frustration of great expectations�? of popular sectors in the rural area, which hoped to have access to their own lands and credits to develop productive tasks.
“Be it landless families that were not settled, or small family farms that did not get needed support to keep their production going, expectations were large and so was frustration with so little done by the government,�? MPA’s Maria said.
In this scenario, Lula’s second term will see “much mobilization and much fermentation of popular demand�?. MST has already drawn, along with other peasant and popular movements, an agenda of struggles for the first semester of 2007 that will end at the National Congress taking place in Brasília in June.
“This year we prepared for March and April a deepening of the struggle with great mobilizations and land occupations,�? said Elsa Nivia to Radio Mundo Real. The demands will be the same MST has repeatedly presented in the last few years: denunciation of the penetration of agribusiness and large food corporations; of the slowness in sharing the land; and of the lack of support policies for small farmers.
“The strategy now toward the government will be the stick-and-carrot,�? said literally Elsa Nivia. “We will not anymore behave as previous years, when dialogue was our first tool. Now we are ready to go into a period of confrontation.�?
On Tuesday morning, the MST of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) mobilized over 2,000 people from 14 encampments and occupied the latifundio [large, unproductive estate] known as Fazenda Guerra. The property is located in the municipality of Coqueiros do Sul, northern region of RS. The MST has not conducted such a massive land occupation, with members from many encampments, since the end of the 1990’s. According to Ana Hanauer, of the MST’s Coordinating Body in RS, the occupation has certain unique characteristics since, besides bringing together landless workers from a number of encampments, the occupying families have begun to build permanent housing on the site – turning the property into an MST settlement.
One indication of the encampments’ permanence is the use of wooden construction material, instead of the typical and more temporary, black plastic tarps or lona preta. One of the first structures built has been a educational facility. The demands of the MST are simple: the immediate settlement of the 2,500 families living in encampments throughout the state of RS. Some of these families have spent 7 years living under lona preta. In the last 3 years, only 220 families have been settled in new settlements.
The majority of families who participated in Tuesday’s land occupation are from an encampment built on the side of Highway RS-406, in Nanoi. These landless workers suffered a forced displacement by the Military Police on February 23rd. “The Federal Government doesn’t meet the goals of the National Plan for Agrarian Reform and the State Government treats the land question as a police affair, forcing us to live on the sides of the highway. Our only other option is to occupy unproductive lands and denounce to society the fact that Agrarian Reform is stopped in our state. It is not a priority for Lula or for our governor, Rigotto. There is more than enough land for settlements‿, affirmed Edenir Vassoler, of the MST’s Coordinating Body for RS.
Fazenda Guerra is one of the largest latifundios in RS, with 7,000 hectares in the municipalities of Coqueiros do Sul, Carazinho and Pontão. The owner of the property, Felix Tubino Guerra, has a history of unpaid debts and violations of labor laws. The area is large enough to settle roughly 350 families. This is the third time the MST has occupied the estate.
---
In Portuguese –
The text above is available in its original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1642.htm
Also, Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo reported the following:
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u76153.shtml
Protests and Toughest Security Scheme Ever Await Bush in Brazil
Written by Elma Lia Nascimento
Tuesday, 06 March 2007
@ http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/7988/54/
~~~
Brazilian social movements and workers unions are vowing to bring thousands of people to the streets to protest the visit of American President, George W. Bush, which starts this Thursday night, March 9, in South America's largest city, São Paulo.
Using the slogan "Off with Bush and his Brazil and Latin America Policy" the protests organizers wish to bring 10,000 people to Avenida Paulista, a central thoroughfare used for political rallies and for big celebrations like the World Cup championship. The manifestations should also target some of the most obvious American companies like McDonald's and US banks.
The manifestations against Bush should start March 8 before the US president sets foot in the country. Protesters want to use the occasion to also celebrate the International Women's Day, which happens today. Created in 1909 in the United States, the date was celebrated initially on February 28.
There will be a little cat and mouse play between the Brazilian authorities and the demonstrators. While the protesters vow to "chase Bush wherever he goes" the São Paulo federal police promise that the US president will never see any of the protests.
Bush's schedule in Brazil hasn't been made public and according to Flávio Luiz Trivella, chief of the Federal Police's Institutional Defense Police Bureau, the protests will not be forbidden, they will just be kept far away from the Yankee president.
"There are several manifestations scheduled," said Trivella, "and the police in concert with the Army, is monitoring everything and making plans so that the US president will never even notice them."
Trivella disclosed that the Brazilian authorities will use top security procedures during Bush's visit in what is called "level one operation." The actions have been discussed for two months with Washington and everything is done by mutual agreement.
The police chief wouldn't reveal, however, how many policemen will be taking part in the operation Bush. It's estimated that 400 Brazilian men will be used. Bush is expected to bring another 300 American agents some carrying even anti-missile weapons.
All his movements by car will be followed from the sky by Brazil's Air Force helicopters. Upon arriving in São Paulo the US president should be taken to a hotel whose name hasn't been revealed but that had already been closed to any outsider since Monday.
The fact that the US is in a war in Iraq and Afghanistan complicates things:
"It will be the same kind of work that we do every time we get an authority of this level," said Trivella. "However, since it's Bush, and due do the war being fought by the United States, the situation gets a little more delicate."
The Avenida Paulista protests are being organized by feminist groups plus over 30 national entities that are part of the CMS (Coordenação dos Movimentos Sociais - Social Movement Coordination). They include the Unified Workers Federation (CUT), the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the National Students Coalition (UNE).
In Brasília, the capital, some leftist congressmen are promising a public manifestation by the Congress entrance ramp. Protesters are also getting ready to go to the streets in other Brazilian capitals like Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul state) and Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais).
The so-called "anti- Bush journey" has already started yesterday, March 5, with the distribution of leaflets and pasting of posters. One of the signs compares Bush to Hitler, showing a doctored image of the US president with a Hitler-like moustache. The protesting leaders intend to lambast Bush for what they call "the United States' imperialistic policy."
For Sônia Coelho from the World Women's March equality of sexes and abortion rights are going to be brought up during the marches together with protests against the Iraq war: "The world in which Bush puts forward his war is the same world in which women live. They also suffer the consequences of war and of Bush's imperialistic policy."
Porto Alegre, March 6th 2007
Via Campesina Brazil occupy large green desert land holdings in Rio Grande do Sul
Approximately 1,300 women from Via Campesina, who are mostly organized by the Landless Movement - MST, held four land occupations in Rio Grande do Sul this morning. Those actions are part of a series of National Struggles of Via Campesina Women held during the whole week of March 8th. The slogan of the mobilizations is “Peasant Women Struggling for Food Sovereignty against Agribusiness?.
In Rio Grande do Sul, women occupied various areas belonging to the corporations on tree monoculture, to denounce that green desert is stopping the agrarian reform and making peasant agriculture unfeasible. The occupations were held in Santana do Livramento, an area controlled by Aracruz; Candiota, controlled by Votorantim, São Francisco de Assis (in the border with Manoel Viana) controlled by Stora Enzo and in Eldorado do Sul, Porto Alegre metropolitan area, controlled by Boise.
Together these four companies own more than 200 thousand hectares of land in Rio Grande do Sul, an area which would allow the settlement of 8 thousand families generating work, income and dignity in the countryside.
The movements which are part of Via Campesina denounce that green desert is taking over the “gaucho�? land assuring profits only for the companies involved. For society the consequences are the increase of droughts, environmental loses, unemployment and poverty in the countryside. Studies prove that wherever green deserts have advanced, peasant agriculture was destroyed, and women are the first ones to be excluded from agriculture since they work mainly in food production and breeding of small animals for family consumption or to supply local markets. Strengthening Agribusiness will increase the social exclusion of women.
As an alternative for Agribusiness Via Campesina women defend the agrarian reform, peasant agriculture and Food Sovereignty.
~~~
See Also:
Brazilian farm workers invade paper and pulp plantations
The Associated Press
Published: March 6, 2007
SAO PAULO, Brazil: About 500 farm workers protesting environmental damage by Brazilian and Finnish paper companies on Tuesday invaded plantations they said were creating a "green desert" in southern Brazil, police said.
The protesters, mostly women from the Brazilian branch of the Via Campesina farm workers rights group, occupied two plantations owned by Finland's Stora Enso Oyj and another owned by Brazil's Votorantim Celulose e Papel SA, said Rio Grande do Sul state police Col. Paulo Roberto Mendes.
Another plantation owned by an independent producer who is negotiating a partnership with Aracruz Celulose SA also was invaded in the pre-dawn raids Tuesday in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southern most state.
Via Campesina said in a statement that some 1,300 women participated in Tuesday's invasions, aimed at denouncing the social and environmental impact of the growing "green desert" created by the paper companies in Latin America's largest country. Via Campesina also wanted to promote agrarian reform.
Cellulose companies tend to cut down native forest and replant trees like eucalyptus and pine which are easy to harvest, but environmentalists say monocultures reduce biodiversity and harm the environment.
Police evicted the protesters from the Stora Enso plantations and were awaiting court orders to evict the protesters from the other lands, Mendes said.
The invasions were peaceful and apparently did not damage the plantations, located about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of Sao Paulo, Mendes said. The companies said they were still evaluating whether any damage was done.
About a year ago, Via Campesina protesters went on a multimillion-dollar (euro) rampage at installations owned by Aracruz. They overpowered security guards before destroying a million saplings and trashing a laboratory at the site 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Sao Paulo.
Tuesday's raid was timed to coincide with International Women's Day on Thursday, Via Campesina said.
Available online @ http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/06/america/LA-GEN-Brazil-Plantation-Invasions.php
Brazil's Ethanol Plan Breeds Rural Poverty, Environmental Degradation
Written by Isabella Kenfield
Wednesday, 07 March 2007
~~~
On January 22 the Lula administration announced it will increase federal funding for Brazil's sugar-based ethanol industry by almost US$ 6 billion over the next four years. One day later, U.S. President George W. Bush declared in the State of the Union address his goal to reduce U.S. use of gasoline 20% by the year 2017.
The general response in Brazil to Bush's announcement was overwhelmingly positive. Luis Fernando Furlan, Minister of Industry, Development, and Commerce, was quoted in the Gazeta Mercantil as saying he received Bush's announcement "with applause."
"It is a fantastic business opportunity," Luis Carlos Correa Carvalho, an industry consultant, told Reuters. "We have never had such a great opportunity for the substitution of petroleum."
The United States is currently the largest importer of Brazilian ethanol. Last year it imported 1.74 billion liters, or 58% of the total three billion liters that Brazil exported. For the United States to reach Bush's target reduction of gasoline use, the country will need an additional 135 billion liters of ethanol annually. Because it will not be able to produce the entire amount, no doubt a large portion will come from Brazil.
Brazil is the global leader in ethanol exports. In 2006, the country exported about 19% of the total 16 billion liters it produced, providing 70% of the world's supply.
This amount will soon increase. A partnership between the Ministry of Science and Technology and the University of Campinas in São Paulo is currently conducting a study to plan Brazil's ethanol exports as a substitute for 10% of the global use of gasoline in 20 years.
If this plan is successful, the country's ethanol exports will total 200 billion liters by 2025 - an increase of almost 67%. The geographic area planted with sugarcane will increase from 6 million to 30 million hectares.
Ethanol: Solution or Problem?
Many citizen organizations in Brazil are concerned that what appears to be an economic panacea may be a social and ecological disaster. They claim that as the industry expands and more hectares are planted mono-cropping sugarcane, existing problems in rural areas of landlessness, hunger, unemployment, environmental degradation, and agrarian conflicts will be exacerbated.
A recent declaration from the Forum of Resistance to Agribusinesses, a consortium of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) throughout South America states, "The implementation of the model of production and export of biofuels represents a grave threat to our region, our natural resources, and the sovereignty of our people."
There is concern that while expansion of the ethanol industry may boost Brazil's GDP and some Brazilians will become very wealthy in the process, the majority of the population will not benefit from the ethanol export boom. Given U.S. plans to increase imports of Brazilian ethanol and the alliance slated to be forged during Bush's South America visit in March, it is likely the livelihoods of many Brazilians, especially the rural poor, will be subordinated to maintain U.S. consumption.
"The era of biofuels will reproduce and legitimize the logic of the occupation of rural areas by multinational agribusiness, and perpetuate the colonial project to subvert ecosystems and people to the service of the production and maintenance of a lifestyle in other societies," states the Forum. The group alleges that Brazil's effort to supply the Global North with ethanol is simply a repeat of the same model of economic growth via agro-export that has been practiced since Portuguese colonization.
Agricultural production for export in Brazil has traditionally been a model imposed on the country by more powerful nations in the North, alongside a small group of Brazilian landowners. Agro-export generates vast amounts of wealth for a few Brazilians, and exploitation and poverty for many others. Brazil's high rate of income inequality is inseparable from the fact that it also has one of the most unequal rates of land distribution. The sugar industry is a classic example of Brazil's land and income inequality.
A Bittersweet Future
Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane, which has always been a primary agricultural commodity for the country. Because ethanol relies on sugarcane as its primary material, the industry is linked to the social and economic dynamics in rural areas that have developed from sugarcane production since the colonial era, most importantly labor exploitation and land concentration.
According to Marluce Melo of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in the northern Brazilian city of Recife, Pernambuco, "Rural poverty has always been intrinsically related to the economy of sugarcane. Even in the 1970s, when Pernambuco was the largest national producer of sugarcane, the levels of poverty were amongst the highest in the world."
In many ways, things have changed little on the sugarcane plantations since colonial times.
"The problems with [sugarcane's] production today are very similar to the problems it generated hundreds of years ago," says Maisa Mendonça, Director of the São Paulo-based NGO Rede Social. Sugarcane fieldworkers endure some of the hardest labor in the world.
According to Mendonça, Brazil has the lowest cost of production in the world because of the industry's dependence on labor exploitation, including massive slave labor, and its refusal to implement environmental regulations. In São Paulo the cost of production is US$ 165 per ton; in Europe it is US$ 700 per ton. I n São Paulo the median monthly salary for a field laborer on a sugar cane plantation is US$ 195; in Pernambuco it is US$ 167.
It is estimated that 40,000 seasonal migrant laborers from the Northeast and Minas Gerais state work in the annual harvest in São Paulo. They work long hours in extremely hot temperatures, cutting as fast as they can because their pay is based on the weight of their cuttings.
Maria Aparecida de Morães Silva, at the State University of São Paulo, reports that the required rate of productivity for cane cutters is increasing. In the 1980s, the average rate of productivity demanded of an individual cutter was between five and eight tons of sugarcane cut per day; today it is between 12 and 15 tons. From 2004 to 2006, the Pastoral of Migrants registered 17 deaths from excessive labor in São Paulo, and in 2005 the state's Regional Delegation of Labor registered 416 deaths of workers in sugar-based ethanol production.
Concentration in the Industry
As it grows, the sugar-ethanol industry has undergone a process of increasing concentration and vertical integration, as large corporations invest in land and production. According to a banker who finances loans to the ethanol industry in São Paulo and asked to remain anonymous, in the past control of the industry was dispersed among smaller businesses. Sugar mills were owned by individual owners who controlled both cultivation and milling.
Today Brazil has 72,000 sugar producers, and the ten largest producers still control less than 30% of production. However, the banker says, "The current trend is toward concentration, with a large number of mergers and acquisitions."
Many of the larger companies that are buying out the smaller companies are multinational agribusiness corporations. "The participation by foreign capital in the production of sugar and ethanol is currently 4.5%, and this number is going to grow. Recently many foreign groups are looking to invest in this industry in Brazil, due to one of the lowest costs of production in the world," says the banker.
Sugarcane seems to be following the same pattern of foreign investment and concentration as that of soybeans. Today almost all soybean production in Brazil is controlled by a handful of multinational agribusinesses.
Many of the corporations that control soybeans are now investing in the ethanol industry. Among the multinational agribusinesses investing in the industry are, according to the banker, Louis Dreyfus Commodities and Tereos, both based in France, as well as U.S.-based Cargill.
The Louis Dreyfus site states the company is one of the three largest sugar traders in the world, and owns three Brazilian sugar mills with a fourth mill currently under construction in Mato Grosso do Sul . The company produces 450,000 tons of sugar and 150,000 cubic meters of ethanol annually.
According to the Cargill website, in addition to being Brazil's largest soybean exporter and second-largest processor, Cargill is the largest operator of sugar, both in terms of Brazilian sugar production and export sales, as well as global sugar trading.
As more land is planted as a monoculture of sugarcane, and control of the industry becomes more concentrated, rural poverty increases. According to Melo of the CPT, "Monoculture has created a huge dependency on the sugarcane economy in the [Pernambuco] region, and impedes the creation of other forms of work and income. The monoculture of sugarcane also leads to an increasing concentration of lands in the hands of the sugar mills.
"For about 15 years, there were 43 sugar mills and alcohol distilleries in Pernambuco. Currently only 25 of these companies control practically all of the land in the 43 municipalities of the sugarcane growing region of the state ...
"In the last two decades, practically all of the small properties in the region have disappeared, with the forced destruction of the sites, and the expulsion of the workers to the periphery of the 43 municipalities of the sugarcane region and to the larger cities of the neighboring metropolitan region.
"In this same period, about 150,000 jobs were lost when 18 companies closed and the lands and sugarcane processing was concentrated in the 25 sugar mills and distilleries that remain ... This has provoked a generalized 'slumming' of the workers, which has aggravated hunger."
Economic Boom or Environmental Bust?
Industry, government, and mainstream media in Brazil generally argue that increasing ethanol exports will boost economic growth and sustainable rural development, while simultaneously helping to curb global warming by helping the world reduce its dependency on fossil fuels.
But contrary to the "green" image evoked by industry advocates, the monoculture of sugarcane leads to massive environmental destruction. According to Melo, in Pernambuco only 2.5% of the original forest of the sugarcane region remains. In order to satisfy future global demand, Brazil will need to clear an additional 148 million acres of forest, says Eric Holt-Gimenez of the NGO FoodFirst, based in Oakland, CA.
The damaging environmental effects of monocropping sugarcane are, in the São Paulo banker's mind, the most troubling aspect of the sugar-ethanol industry. He claims that the sugar takeover is "pushing other crops to the agricultural frontier."
He explains that, "because sugarcane generates a high price per hectare, the regions with better climactic conditions are dominated by this crop, which results in sugarcane occupying lands that before were planted to grains and used for grazing livestock. Grain producers move to more remote regions, such as the center-west, which before were used for cattle. The result of this flux is that cattle ranchers seek new areas such as the Amazon region."
Resisting Changes in Land Use
As the expanding ethanol industry spreads rural poverty and loss of rural livelihoods due to increased land concentration and environmental destruction, the number and intensity of agrarian conflicts has risen.
Brazil has one of the highest rates of income and land inequality in the world, and a well-articulated and organized agrarian reform movement of the rural poor. This has created a smoldering socio-economic fire that could very well be ignited with ethanol.
On February 19 the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) and the Central Union of Workers (CUT) organized about 2,000 MST members and rural workers to non-violently occupy 12 plantations totaling 15,600 hectares in nine municipalities of São Paulo state.
According to the newspaper O Estado de S, Paulo, "MST leader José Rainha Júnior said the objectives of the occupations are to force the government to acknowledge the emergency need for agrarian reform, and to call attention to the social problems resulting from the expansion of sugarcane in the state."
Melo reports that in 2005, Pernambuco registered 194 conflicts over land - a rate higher than the previous five years. She also reports that in the same year a general strike by sugarcane workers was violently repressed.
"The employed and unemployed workers who struggle for agrarian reform are constantly threatened and coerced by the landowning companies and by the police at their service," she says. CPT data shows 60 labor conflicts for 2005 alone, while between 2000 and 2004 the highest number of labor conflicts was nine.
As the Lula administration proceeds full-speed ahead with ethanol export as a model for economic development, it is turning its back on the millions of Brazilians who voted for the Workers' Party based on its promises to implement real social and economic changes, especially agrarian reform.
According to Melo, "The Lula government has strengthened the historical cane-production model imposed on the country based on monoculture, and concentrated landholdings and large companies. He has not shown any interest in creating alternatives to this perverse model."
Can there be viable economic alternatives to sugarcane monocropping? " Our evaluation is that the government needs to combat hunger," says Mendonça. "The government wants to become a factory to supply rich countries with cheap energy. This is compromising agrarian reform and food production."
What the social movements, many NGOs, and other organizations agree on is that Brazil needs to incorporate the concepts of food sovereignty into its development policy, prioritizing the land to produce food for Brazilians.
Food sovereignty includes both the obligation of governments to ensure that their populations have access to nutritious foods in adequate quantities, and the right of people and countries to define their own agrarian policies, and produce foods destined to feed their populations before producing for export.
But food sovereignty will be unattainable without a comprehensive agrarian reform to keep family farmers on the land, producing and distributing healthy food to local populations.
As it is currently developing, the Brazilian ethanol industry represents a direct challenge to food sovereignty and agrarian reform. Ethanol production to sustain the enormous consumption levels of the Global North will not lead the Brazilian countryside out of poverty or help attain food sovereignty for its citizens.
~~~
For More Information:
Acción por la Biodiversidad
www.biodiversidadla.org
Accion Ecológica (Ecuador)
www.accionecologica.org
Centro de Políticas Públicas para el Socialismo (CEPPAS) (Argentina)
www.ceppas.org
Fórum de Resistência aos Agronegócios:
www.resistalosagronegocios.info
resistalosagronegocios@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
GRAIN
www.grain.org
Investigaciones Sociales (BASE) (Paraguay)
www.baseis.org.py
OilWatch Sudamérica
www.oilwatch.org
Pastoral Land Commission (Brasil)
www.cptnac.com.br
Red de Accion en Plaguicidas e Alternativas de América Latina (RAP-AL) (Network against Pesticides)
www.laneta.apc.org/emis/sustanci/plaguici/rapal.htm
Rede Social (Brasil)
www.social.org.br
Sección Latinoamericana de Pesticide Action Network (PAN)
www.pan-international.org
Terra de Direitos (Brasil)
www.terradedireitos.org.br
~~~
Isabella Kenfield is a freelance journalist based in Brazil and a contributor to the IRC Americas Program -www.americaspolicy.org.
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 7 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Brazilian peasants briefly occupied an iron ore
mine on Wednesday and invaded a sugar mill in the latest of several protests ahead of U.S.
President George W. Bush's visit to the country.
A spokeswoman for the Via Campesina (Peasant Way) group said over 500 female activists had
occupied the Capao Xavier mine owned by Brazil's CVRD (VALE5.SA: Quote, Profile , Research)
(RIO.N: Quote, Profile , Research) -- the world's biggest iron ore miner -- in Minas Gerais
state early on Wednesday. Police quickly removed them from the premises.
The four-hour-long protest was aimed "against transnational companies and the financial system,
which seek control of the natural resources in the country," the group said in a statement.
The group also invaded U.S. grain trader Cargill's Cevasa sugar and ethanol mill in Sao Paulo
state on Wednesday, but the company said its operations were not affected.
Bush is due to arrive in Brazil on Friday, where he is expected to discuss agriculture and raising
exports of sugar cane-based ethanol to the United States.
CVRD confirmed the occupation and said it had prevented the production of 12,000 tonnes of ore.
Occupations of other CVRD installations by indigenous Indians for several days last year caused
delays to ore shipments.
The Via Campesina group comprises workers of small farms and landless peasants and is working
closely with Brazil's radical leftist Landless Peasants Movement (MST).
The Rio Grande do Sul State Association of Forestry Companies said Tuesday's occupation of two
plantations owned by world's top paper and pulp maker Stora Enso (STERV.HE: Quote, Profile ,
Research) ended the same day without damage to trees or installations.
Police stood by but did not intervene, an association spokesman said.
Protesters occupying two other plantations, one run by Brazil's Votorantim group and another a
private firm supplying Aracruz (ARA.N: Quote, Profile , Research)(ARCZ6.SA: Quote, Profile ,
Research) pulp and paper maker, were due leave on Wednesday on judge's orders, the association
said.
In Rio de Janeiro, several dozen women peasants linked to the MST staged a protest at the
headquarters of BNDES national development bank.
The MST said in a statement the aim of the protest was to show support for small farmers working
for the domestic market and to condemn "multinational companies... who bring hunger, devastation
and unemployment".
It said Bush's visit was aimed at "guaranteeing supplies of low-cost ethanol" which would consume
lands that otherwise could be used by small family-run farms to produce food.
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
~~~
Article originally available @
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&symbol=&storyID=2007-03-07T173133Z_01_N07217048_RTRIDST_0_BRAZIL-PROTESTS-PEASANTS.XML&pageNumber=0&WTModLoc=InvArt-C1-ArticlePage2&sz=13
Brazilians Protest Upcoming Bush Visit
By STAN LEHMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 7, 2007; 5:34 PM
~~~
SEE ALSO:
(1) "Reuters Reports: Brazil Peasants Stage Protests Ahead of Bush Visit"
@ http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=reutersonbushbrazilvisitprotests
(2) "AP Reports: Brazil police clash with protesters demonstrating against Bush visit"
@ http://news.bostonherald.com/international/americas/view.bg?articleid=187292
~~~
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Landless farmers invaded a mine, a bank and other corporate property in Brazil on Wednesday to protest the impact of big companies on the poor and President Bush's visit to Latin America's largest nation.
Protesters, most of them women from the Via Campesina farmworkers movement, briefly shut down an iron ore mine, invaded an ethanol distillery and took over the Rio de Janeiro offices of Brazil's National Development Bank on the eve of Bush's visit.
Fresh graffiti reading "Get Out, Bush! Assassin!" in bright red letters popped up along busy highways near the locations in Sao Paulo where Bush will appear as he kicks off a five-nation Latin American tour.
Protest leaders plan to draw as many as 15,000 people for a two-mile march Thursday before Bush arrives in South America's largest city to forge an ethanol energy alliance with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
"Bush is coming to Brazil as a messenger boy for the multinational companies, the agribusiness companies, the oil companies and the automobile companies that want to control the biofuels," said Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the powerful Landless Rural Workers' Movement, which helped organize Wednesday's protests.
Organizers denounced foreign investment in the vast sugarcane fields that are used to produce Brazil's ethanol.
U.S. policy in Latin America has been built around free-trade agreements, anti-narcotic programs and the war against terrorism.
On Wednesday, Bush defended free trade against criticism it is one-sided and favors the United States. "I truly believe that one of the most effective ways to eliminate poverty is through free and fair trade," the president said in an interview with CNN En Espanol.
The United States is the world's largest ethanol producer _ using corn _ but Brazil is the biggest exporter and has much more land to dedicate to ethanol production as international demand grows. The left-leaning protesters say large corporations are bound to pocket most of the profits while poor cane cutters will continue to receive meager pay.
"The pact between Brazil and the U.S. for the promotion of ethanol is sinister," said Bishop Tomas Balduino, head of the Roman Catholic Church's Land Pastoral group, which helps poor farmers. "It's just going to promote death, marginalization, poverty and the destruction of the environment because it defends the interest of large multinationals."
Bush's visit is also aimed at shoring up support for America in a region that has seen a sharp political tilt to the left.
"It is obviously an offensive to contain the progressive, democratic forces that are struggling for the independence and emancipation of other countries," Balduino said.
Bush will head on Friday to Uruguay, where marches and protests were planned in the capital of Montevideo and the city of Colonia de Sacramento where he will meet with Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez. Army. Gen. Jorge Rosales said elite army units will provide security alongside thousands of police officers.
Bush will not visit Argentina. However, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has established himself as a regional leftist rival of the United States, will travel to Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires to lead protests against Bush in a soccer stadium on Friday.
Argentina's Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group still seeking sons and daughters missing from the country's 1976-83 dictatorship, will join the event.
Brazil is mounting what has been described as its biggest security effort ever in Sao Paulo. About 4,000 security personnel _ including Brazilian troops and FBI and U.S. Secret Service agents _ will be on hand during Bush's almost 24-hour visit.
Bush is expected to travel in a 60-car caravan through streets that will be closed to traffic, and sharpshooters will be posted on rooftops, Brazilian media reported.
___
Associated Press Writer Bill Cormier in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.
___
Article originally available @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030701842.html
Via Campesina women protest against a Cargill ethanol plant in São Paulo
~~~
This morning, more than 900 women from Via Campesina occupied the Cevasa sugarmill in the region of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo state. Cevasa is the largest sugarcane company in Brazil, and was recently sold to Cargill, one of the largest agricultural transnational corporations in the world.
The protest is part of a national "week of struggle", under the slogan "Women in defense of food sovereignty". The Ribeirão Preto region concentrates the largest sugarcane industries in the country, which are known for labor violations (including slave labor). Since 2004, 17 rural workers have died in the region due to excessive work. The industry is also responsible for environmental destruction.
The women want to contradict the false idea that the production on ethanol can benefit small farmers and protect the environment. They dennounce air, soil and water pollution, and respiratory deseases caused by the sugarcane monoculture. Also, the expansion of this industry cretates greater land concentration, increases poverty and other social problems.
In addition, the protest is against the proposal by the United States government to benefit large ethanol companies in Brazil, which is not in the interest of the majority of the Brazilian population.
Via Campesina women defend another agriculture policy, which gives priority to small farmers, who are responsible for 70% of food production in the country. Also, they defend a broad agrarian reform to deal with the serious problem of land concentration.
In order to guarantee food sovereignty, rural workers protest against the visit of president Bush, and against his proposal to use of country´s resources to deal with the United States energy problems.
Background -
In Brasil, beginning in the 1970s, during the so-called world oil "crisis", the sugarcane industry began to produce fuel, which justified its maintenance and expansion. The same was repeated in 2004, with the new Pro-Alcohol program, which principally serves to benefit agribusiness. The Brasilian government began to stimulate the production of biodiesel as well, principally to guarantee the survival and expansion of large extensions of soy monoculture. To legitimate this policy and camouflage its destructive effects, the government stimulated the diversified production of biodiesel by small producers, with the objective of creating a "social certificate". The monocultures have expanded into indigenous areas and other territories of native peoples.
In February of 2007, the United States government announced its interest in establishing a partnership with Brasil in the production of biofuels, characterized as the principal "symbolic axis" in the relation between the two countries. This is clearly a phase of a geopolitical strategy of the United States to weaken the influence of countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia in the region. It also justifies the expansion of monocultures of sugarcane, soy, and african palm in all Latin American territories.
For more information, please contact:
Igor Felippe - 55-11-3361-3866
[03/08/2006] Women confront military police at International Conference on Agrarian Reform
Porto Alegre – The morning of 03/08 a group of rural women confronted the military police of Rio Grande do Sul, who had attemped to prevent the women from presenting their letter of discontent to the delegates of the 2nd International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD), held at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) of Rio Grande do Sul.
At the main entrance of the ICARRD, military police prevented the women from entering the conference site. After a great deal of confusion, with shoving from both sides, conference organizers granted the women entry into the parking area. The women then held a symbolic burial of a number of agribusiness concerns, responsible for the exploitation of rural workers in Brazil.
Another group of 50 women were allowed to enter the main meeting area of the ICARRD where they read their letter of discontent to the delegates from over 80 countries. Their letter included demands for a new agrarian reform model which favors small farmers, preserves and protects biodiversity, and forces changes to the current practices of the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB).
Adriana Maria dos Santos, a leader of Brazil’s Movement of Rural Women (MMC), criticized the conduct of the military police for attempting to deny the women their right to enter the conference. “On the 8th of March, International Women’s Day, we had to fight through police barricades to express our discontent. As such, this has been one more victory in the woman’s struggle‿, stated Adriana.
According to Adriana, prior to the dramatic events at PUC over 3,000 rural workers had conducted a march in the streets of Porto Alegre. The march of the MMC went towards PUC after a one-hour demonstration in front of the offices of Aracruz Celulose. The rural workers accused the company of environmental crimes, for the planting of Eucalyptus in monocultural plantations throughout the country.
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1676.htm
March 8, 2006
Before dawn on International Women’s Day, around 2000 women from La Via Campesina invaded the tree nursery belonging to the cellulose corporation Aracruz Cellulose (the world's biggest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp) in Barra do Ribeiro, Rio Grande do Sul. The objective of the mobilization was to denounce the social and environmental consequences of the advance of the “green desert‿ created by the monoculture of eucalyptus. The Barba Negra Farm contains the greatest number of eucalyptus and pine saplings and includes a laboratory for cloning the saplings.
“We are against the green deserts, the enormous plantations of eucalyptus, acacia, and pines to make cellulose that cover millions of acres in Brazil and Latin America. Wherever the green desert advances, biodiversity is destroyed, soils deteriorate, and rivers dry up. There is also enormous pollution created by the cellulose factories, which contaminates the air, the waters, and threatens human health‿, state the women in a manifesto issued by La Via Campesina.
The women of La Via Campesina also expressed solidarity with the indigenous people who had their lands invaded by Aracruz Cellulose in the state of Espírito Santo. In January of this year, the indigenous families were violently expelled by the Federal Police, who used the corporation’s own machines to carry out the eviction.
Aracruz is the agribusiness that has received the most public money. Almost $R 2 billion was received in the last three years. However, a corporation such as Aracruz creates only one job for each 185 hectares planted, while a small farm property creates one job per hectare. “If the green desert continues to grow, we will soon be lacking water to drink and land to produce food. We do not understand how a government that wants to end hunger can sponsor the green desert instead of investing in Agrarian Reform and in agriculture for the small farmers‿, states the manifesto.
The mobilization of La Via Campesina also was aimed at denouncing the environmental impacts of the monoculture of eucalyptus that is advancing in Rio Grande do Sul with three large corporations: Votorantim, Stora Enso and Aracruz. The green deserts of eucalyptus ruin the soil and consume a lot of water: each foot of eucalyptus can consume 30 liters of water per day.
The mobilization of the women of La Via Campesina marks International Women’s Day. “On this March 8, we stand in solidarity with the peasant women and women workers of the whole world who suffer from various forms of violence imposed by this capitalist and patriarchal society‿, concludes the manifesto.
After the mobilization at Aracruz, the women from La Via Campesina joined the International Women’s Day march in Porto Alegre that marched to the Catholic University to bring their demands for agrarian reform to the FAO Conference in session there.
SPECIAL REPORT BRAZIL
Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom
Tom Phillips in Palmares Paulista
Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian
Behind rusty gates, the heart of Brazil's energy revolution can be found in the stale air of a squalid red-brick tenement building. Inside, dozens of road-weary migrant workers are crammed into minuscule cubicles, filled with rickety bunk-beds and unpacked bags, preparing for their first day at work in the sugar plantations of Sao Paulo.
This is Palmares Paulista, a rural town 230 miles from Sao Paulo and the centre of a South American renewable energy boom that is transforming Brazil into a global reference point on how to cut carbon emissions and oil imports at the same time.
Inside the prison-like construction are the cortadores de cana - sugar cane cutters - part of a destitute migrant workforce of about 200,000 men who help prop up Brazil's ethanol industry.
Biofuels are mega-business in Brazil. Such has been the success of the country's ethanol programme - launched during the 1970s military dictatorship - that it is now attracting attention from around the world. Yesterday President George Bush arrived in Sao Paulo to announce an "ethanol alliance" with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva. The bilateral agreement has been touted by the Brazilian media as the first step towards the creation of an "ethanol Opec".
Last year sugar and alcohol were Brazil's second biggest agricultural export products, worth an estimated $8bn (£4bn). Producers, meanwhile, expect the country's sugar cane production to jump by 55% in the coming six years, largely because of growing demand from the US and Europe. They hope that closer trade ties with the US in particular will help accelerate the ethanol industry's growth, providing jobs and funding the construction of dozens of new processing plants in the region.
But drive to the outskirts of Palmares Paulista and a much bleaker picture emerges of what President Lula has dubbed Brazil's "energy revolution". On one side, thick green plantations of sugar cane stretch out as far as the eye can see; on the other lopsided red-brick shacks crowd together, home to hundreds of impoverished workers who risk life and limb to provide the local factories with sugar cane.
Economic refugees fleeing the country's arid and impoverished north-east, these men earn as little as 400 reais (£100) a month to provide the raw material that is fuelling this energy revolution.
Palmares Paulista is both a burgeoning agricultural town and a social catastrophe. "They arrive here with nothing," said Valeria Gardiano, who heads the social service department in Palmares, a town of 9,000 whose population swells each year with the influx of between 4,000 and 5,000 migrant workers.
"They have the clothes on their bodies and nothing else. They bring their children with malnutrition, their ill mothers-in-law. We try to reduce the problem. But there is no way we can fix it 100%. It is total exploitation," she said.
Activists go even further. They say the "cortadores" are effectively slaves and complain that Brazil's ethanol industry is, in fact, a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.
"They come here because they are forced from their homes by the lack of work," said Francisco Alves, a professor from nearby Sao Carlos University who has spent more than 20 years studying Sao Paulo's migrant workforce. "They will do anything to get by."
That includes working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat and earning just over 50p per tonne of sugar cane cut, before returning to squalid, overcrowded "guest houses" rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords, often ex-sugar cutters themselves.
Faced with exhausting work in temperatures of over 30C (86F), some will die. According to Sister Ines Facioli, from the Pastoral do Migrante, a Catholic support network based in nearby Guariba, 17 workers died between 2004 and 2006 as a result of overwork or exhaustion.
But the annual exodus from the northeast continues, and as foreign investment in the ethanol industry increases the numbers are expected to grow further.
Among the newest arrivals in Palmares are the Santos family, four brothers aged 19, 22, 24 and 26 who last week stepped off an illegally chartered bus after a 24-hour journey from the arid backlands of Bahia state. "We need the work," said Sidney Alves dos Santos, 24, sitting in the stuffy shack that will be his home until the harvest ends in December. "There's no other way."
In another tatty hovel Pedro Castro, a 26-year-old from Bahia, remembered last year's harvest. "It's like you are inside a bread oven," he said of the thick protective clothes needed in the plantations to protect workers from their sharp machetes. "But there's no work back home. What else are we supposed to do?"
At just after 5pm the square outside Palmares' church fills with the growl of bus engines. A fleet of a dozen battered Mercedes coaches rattle through the town centre, filled with exhausted workers returning from a day in the fields.
"It breaks your heart," said Cristina Vieira, a member of the local Catholic mission that offers support to the workers. "They think it rains money in Sao Paulo but they are chasing an illusion. When you talk to them a lot of them say: 'If I'd have known it would be like this I would never have come.' They have no rights and they can't complain to anyone - in a certain way they don't exist."
In numbers
£4bn
Annual value of Brazil's sugar and alcohol exports
55%
Anticipated increase in sugar cane production over the next six years
£100
Equivalent value of the average sugar cane cutter's monthly wage
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,,2029962,00.html
[03/10/2006] Land, Territory & Dignity Forum reports on their activities in Porto Alegre
Land titles for small farmers, guarantees for children who inherit farmland, and a sustainable agrarian reform that serves to develop rural areas. These are just a few of the questions that need to be addressed in the countryside.
Members of social movements fighting for the rights of rural people, women, youth, indigenous peoples and pastoral and fishing communities, prepared an overall analysis of the ‘Land, Territory and Dignity Forum’ held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS), city of Porto Algre (RS).
Lisiane Cunha, youth delegate of the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), stressed gender equity as the principle demand of participating women. She sited, for example, the fact that only 20% of rural land titles are held by women, even though 60 – 70% of these women work in crop/food production.
Participants also pointed to the need for global policies that grant inherited lands to women and the young. In the struggle, the women present committed themselves to strengthening women’s participation and working towards the upcoming Global March of Women.
According to Nivaldo Ramos Silva, forum participant and youth delegate of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the lack of quality educational opportunities and the lack of incentives for local food production, which would allow young people to become independent of their parents, are two major problems that organized youth plan to change. Eighty percent of young men and women under 20 currently live in the ‘underdeveloped’ world, where they make less than $1,000 per capita per year.
Indigenous peoples and fishermen/women defend the right of traditional cultures and the need for social movements to resist the neoliberal model of privatization, domination and militarization. These same indigenous groups point to the need for governments and international organizations to consult indigenous peoples before deciding upon public policies related to their livelihoods.
Paul Nicholson, representing rural social movements in name of the International Via Campesina, addressed the responsibility of governments everywhere to urgently implement agrarian reform. The underlying principles of this agrarian reform should be sustainability and self-determination.
In closing, the UN Organization for Food and Agriculture and forum organizers insisted upon the creation of a functioning body that will guide the implementation of agrarian reform, as well as a fund that will serve to support small farmers.
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1691.htm
In English -
The International Press Service (IPS) News Agency Reports:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32462
The proposal defended by the Brazilian government at the Third Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP3), has been called into question by social movements. During a debate initiated by the Global Civil Society Forum, Maria Rita Reis, of the organization Terra de Dirietos, expressed the collective discontent with Brazil’s decision to allow another four years to pass without proper labeling of products that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In Ms. Rita’s view, the contradictory position of the government serves only to benefit the agribusiness lobby, which happens to make up a large part of the Brazilian delegation to the MOP3 meeting, currently taking place in the Brazilian state of Parana.
Joao Pedro Estedile, of the MST’s National Coordinating Body, speaking on behalf of the Via Campesina, also expressed concerns with the Brazilian government’s proposal. He went on to denounce the clandestine commercialization of transgenic soy, and the destruction of indigenous peoples’ villages by the multinational, Aracruz Celulose S/A, in the state of Espirito Santo.
Ignoring the harsh criticisms from civil society, Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, attempted to defend Brazil’s “proactive position‿. According do Minister Silva, Brazil is helping to develop a model which allows for the co-existence of both GMO and non-GMO products. Minister Silva stressed the importance of both sustainable development and environmental conservation. The governor of the state of Parana, Roberto Requiao, expressed his admiration for the work of Minister Silva and reiterated the importance of legislation that will force the labeling of products based on their GMO or non-GMO content. Governor Requiao also referred to the Minister of Agriculture as the Minister of Transgenics.
In a letter released by a number of important entities tied to the questions of land and the environment, Brazil’s social movements denounced the government stance by directing it to article 18.2(a) of the Cartagena Protocol, which requires information be made available relating to the packaging, transporting and manipulation of products that contain GMOs. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Movement of the those Impacted by Dams (MAB), two of the movement who signed the document, affirmed that Brazil’s position has nothing to do with biosafety, and everything to do with the pressure placed on the government by agribusiness lobbyists.
On this same occasion, Terra de Direitos denounced the existence of an illegal experimental site where genetically modified seeds are being produced by the transnational, Syngenta Seeds. This site is located in forested zones of the National Iguaco Falls Park, and its existence has been confirmed by Brazil’s Environmental Protection Agency (IBAMA). The site was occupied by members of the Via Campesina yesterday, March 14th.
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1718.htm
In English -
Reuters reports of Brazil's 'strong' stance on GMO lableing:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-03-14T160357Z_01_N1472385_RTRUKOC_0_US-FOOD-BRAZIL-GMO.xml
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's government said on Wednesday a plan to tap the Sao Francisco river for drinking and irrigation water was environmentally sound, responding to days of protests against its largest public works project.
The proposal would pump water to residents and farms in Brazil's dry Northeast, where President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva grew up, by constructing 435 miles of concrete canals.
"We are respecting Brazilian environmental law," Environment Minister Marina Silva told protesters, according to a ministry statement.
"Our decision is not in favor of the government or (social) movements. It is an absolutely technical decision," she said.
The venture will cost up to 6.5 billion reais ($3.1 billion) and construction will span years.
The bidding process for the first of several construction contracts was announced on Tuesday in the government's official gazette.
Hundreds of protesters, including landless rural workers, Indians, and small-scale farmers have camped out in the capital Brasilia to pressure authorities to halt construction.
They say the project costs too much and benefits too few. Environmentalists fear that reducing the river's water level could affect navigability, fish migration and biodiversity.
Already, damming and deforestation has caused considerable silt accumulation along the river's banks.
Critics say the government would also have difficulties ensuring the fair distribution of water.
The prosecutor general asked the Supreme Court in February to suspend the environmental license.
---
Article originally available @ http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN1429127220070315?pageNumber=1
Militant Brazilian Opposition to Bush-Lula Ethanol Accords
By Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach
São Paulo – During Bush’s visit to Brazil thousands of poor, rural members of the international Via Campesina social movement and the Brazilian Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) orchestrated massive, non-violent occupations of multinational agribusiness corporations throughout the country. Nine hundred women occupied the Cevasa ethanol distillery in São Paulo. According to the press statement released by Via Campesina, the protest was against “the proposal by the United States government to benefit large ethanol companies in Brazil, which is not in the interest of the majority of the Brazilian population. Cevasa is the largest producer of sugarcane in Brazil, and last year 63% of its shares were bought by the US-based Cargill corporation.
Other occupations included paper mills in Rio Grande do Sul owned by Stora Enso Oyj of Finland, and Votarantin and Aracruz of Brazil. All of these actions were to protest the model of economic growth via industrialized agriculture for export. The social movements and their supporters in civil society assert that while Brazil’s agroexport boom may boost Brazil’s GDP, it is increasing poverty and marginalization for the rural poor due to land concentration, environmental destruction, unemployment and labor exploitation. According to the Via Campesina press statement, for every 100 hectares planted to sugarcane (from which Brazilian ethanol is produced) only one job is generated, while on a family farm 35 jobs are generated. In Brazil, agribusiness is controlled by a handful of multinational corporations that are usurping more and more Brazilian territory, and expelling more rural poor to the already-swollen urban centers.
The occupations’ organizers were careful to highlight that their critique is not of ethanol itself, but with the paradigm being imposed on the industry – large scale, industrialized production for export to the Global North (especially the US), entirely controlled by multinational agribusiness corporations. At a press conference held by the Via Campesina, the MST, the Central Union of Workers (CUT), and the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Bishop Tomás Balduino said, "The pact between Brazil and the United States for the promotion of ethanol is sinister. It's just going to promote death, marginalization, poverty and the destruction of the environment because it defends the interests of large multinationals.�?
Ethanol is emerging as a way for powerful international capital interests to ally, merge and strengthen. João Pedro Stedile, of the national coordination of the MST and Via Campesina, declared, “Bush came to Brazil as a messenger boy for the multinational companies, the agribusiness companies, the oil companies and the automobile companies that want to control the biofuels.�? George W.’s brother, Florida state Governor Jeb Bush, was recently appointed to co-chair the Interamerican Ethanol Commission (IEC), which has as its mission to “promote the usage of ethanol in the gasoline pools of the Western Hemisphere.�? The other co- chairs are Roberto Rodrigues, President of the Superior Council of Agribusiness of Brazil and Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter American Development Bank. Formation of the IEC highlights the alliance being built between US and Brazilian petro and agro capital, and reveals why the current discourse of ethanol as a renewable and sustainable form of energy is cast in neoliberal language that ignores the disastrous impact this corporate model has on society and the environment.
The social movements and their supporters propose that Brazilian ethanol production should be in the hands of small farmers, as part of a diversified agricultural system in which local food production for Brazilians is prioritized, thereby assuring land, livelihoods and jobs for the rural poor. Brazil should focus on producing ethanol for its large internal market – not to sustain US consumption.
Yet despite the widespread protests and opposition by the very segments of civil society that helped bring Lula to power in 2002, and re-elected him for a second term last October, an accord between Brazil and the US has been signed for joint research and cooperation to increase ethanol production, export, and trade as a global commodity. The accord indicates that Lula is cooperating with Bush and agribusiness in order to ensure the industry remains controlled by large capital interests while the Brazilian rural poor sink deeper into poverty. “Today there is no more agrarian reform, there is agribusiness,�? said Bishop Balduino. “Make no mistake, this accord will only benefit the multinationals and the elite.�?
Regardless, the voice of dissent articulated through the occupations by the Via Campesina and MST during Bush’s visit garnered national and international attention and strengthened the resolve of the social movements. The MST is determined to challenge the Lula government and is stepping up its land occupations, including the seizure of lands that could be used for ethanol production. According to João Pedro Stedile of the MST, “the Lula government is supporting the mode of agricultural production known as agribusiness that allies the landowners with the transnational corporations. This is going to provoke a popular reaction sooner rather than later.�?
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Isabella Kenfield is an Associate of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) based in Berkeley, California. Currently she is a journalist living in Curitiba, Brazil and has written on social movements, multinational corporations and biofuels.
Roger Burbach is the director of the CENSA. He has written extensively on Latin America, including, “The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice.�? He is also the co-author with Jim Tarbell of: “Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire.�?
An international delegation of activists, defending biodiversity and genetic resources, held a solidarity rally today in support of the 600 rural workers currently occupying a test site owned and administered by the multinational corporation, Syngenta. The 600 workers, tied to the Via Campesina, occupied Syngenta’s experimental farm in Teresa do Oeste, state of Parana, on March the 14th.
The solidarity rally began at 9:30am, with the delegates visiting the site currently held by the rural workers. They visited the area illegally planted in transgenic soy, as well as the facilities where experiments were conducted. Delegates went on to pronounce their support of the rural workers who decided to occupy Syngenta’s illegal test site.
Present at the rally were members of the International Via Campesina and Via Campesina – Brasil, along with representatives of Greenpeace, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Terra de Direitos (or Land of Rights), the Landless Workers Movement (MST), and members of Brazil’s Workers Party (PT).
Around 2:00pm the international delegation traveled to the local municipal courthouse, where they provided Judge Fabricio Priotto Mussi with a hand written letter in support of the workers. Judge Mussi is the judicial authority responsible for the March 16th ‘reintegration of possesion’ declaration that protects Syngenta’s right to the lands in question.
The purpose of the demonstration was to make clear to Judge Mussi that there is no justification for returning the lands to Syngenta – since the corporation has been experimenting with transgenic crops in an environmentally sensitive area near the Iguaçu Park, an act which violates Brazil’s Law of Biosecurity.
Just yesterday, the superintendent of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) for the state of Parana, fined Syngenta R$1,000,000.00 for the illegal testing.
On March 8th, IBAMA conducted a site visit and confirmed the presence of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on 12 hectares of the corporation’s experimental farm.
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1752.htm
Also, Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo reports on the R$1M fine to Syngenta Seeds:
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u76874.shtml
BRAZIL:
No Consensus on Success of Land Reform
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 22 (IPS) - Brazil's land reform programme has settled nearly one million families on small farms of their own in the last 20 years. But there is no consensus on the effort, which the government touts as a success, the landless movement sees as insufficient, and the opposition criticises as wrongheaded.
During President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's first term (2003-2006), 381,419 families were granted a plot of land, according to the Ministry of Agrarian Development.
Complementary policies were also adopted, which made credit more widely available, provided for price supports (guarantees of minimum prices), and offered greater technical education and assistance to small farmers, Caio França, a high-level Ministry of Agrarian Development official, told IPS.
In that same period, the National Programme for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF) quadrupled the funding that goes towards financing agriculture, to 10 billion reals (4.75 billion dollars), which meant 1.9 million families benefited, twice the total from four years ago, added França.
But the agrarian reform plans for Lula's second term (2007-2010) have not yet been defined. Nor has the minister of agrarian development been named.
This government "has failed to live up to its own national agrarian reform plan. And of the seven promises made before the late 2003 march by landless rural workers, it has fulfilled only one: to distribute food baskets to the families living in camps," said Joao Pedro Stédile, one of the coordinators of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), one of the largest and best-organised social movements in Latin America.
The goal for the 2003-2006 period was to distribute land to 400,000 families, and according to the government's own estimates, it fell short of that target by only 4.65 percent.
But the MST says the official figures have been inflated, because they include families who merely received formal titles to land that they were already living on, and families who left the property that they had been granted. Besides, the MST continues to call for broader, faster land reform. In Brazil, one of the countries in the world with the most uneven distributions of land, around 3.5 percent of landowners hold 56 percent of the arable land while the poorest 40 percent own barely one percent. The MST also complains that families who have been living in the movement's camps for years, waiting to be assigned land of their own, have not been given priority treatment, and that the rural productivity index has not been updated. The index is one of the tools used by the government to decide when land has been left idle and unproductive, and thus qualifies under Brazilian law for expropriation and redistribution within the framework of the agrarian reform process. The Brazilian constitution explicitly states that land must be used for the benefit of society.
França, meanwhile, said advances were made with respect to other commitments, like the strengthening of the country's land reform institutions. He pointed out that the budget of the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) grew threefold, and that a law on family farming was passed last year. In addition, mechanisms for the support and training for farmers were bolstered, he said.
Nevertheless, conflicts over land remain a problem in Brazil. Tens of thousands of families are still living in camps, organised landless families continue to stage occupations of property that they see as unproductive and subject to agrarian reform, and violent clashes periodically occur between landowners, their private militias, and families who have moved onto, and begun to work, fallow private land. People are often injured or even killed in these disputes.
However, the problem no longer seems to mobilise the same level of public support as it did in the past.
The landless movement has also expanded its targets. In its last major offensive, on the eve of International Women's Day on Mar. 8, 2006, thousands of women occupied eucalyptus plantations in southern Brazil, a state development bank in Rio de Janeiro, a mining company in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais and an ethanol plant in the southern state of São Paulo.
The rural movement now holds protests against the paper pulp industry's monoculture forestry plantations, which have been dubbed "green deserts" because they rob the soil of nutrients and consume enormous amounts of water; genetically modified seeds; mega-hydroelectric dams; free trade treaties; transnational corporations; export agribusiness; and even biofuels, which are displacing food production.
In Brazil, Vía Campesina -- the international peasant movement made up of organisations from 56 countries -- includes rural groups with links to the Catholic Church, communities affected by hydropower dams, small farmers, women farmers, and the MST.
Each group has its specific demands, but they are all united against "The common enemy: the agribusiness model of agriculture, controlled by international financial capital," said Stédile.
The MST leader was pessimistic with regards to Lula's second term, saying the president -- a former trade unionist -- was becoming "centre-right" as a result of his "commitments to the agribusiness sector and conservative forces."
"We don't expect anything from this administration," said Stédile, who argued that only stronger mobilisations by rural activists could achieve "speedier and broader agrarian reform."
Opponents of land reform, who are mainly large landowners, agree with the view expressed by Francisco Graziano, environment secretary in the state of São Paulo, when he predicted in an article in the O Estado de São Paulo newspaper that Brazil's agrarian reform would become "the world's biggest failed public programme."
Graziano argued that the roughly one million families settled on land through the agrarian reform programme occupy around 60 million hectares, nearly equivalent to the 62 million hectares worked by large agribusiness interests, and that there is no indication of how much they actually produce, while "they have failed to improve on the wealth of the countryside; on the contrary -- they have spread poverty around."
But França responded that these figures have been "loosely" thrown about, because the area that went towards land reform between 2003 and 2006 amounted to 31 million hectares, which included non-arable forest areas set aside for conservation.
Under the agrarian reform programme, new settlers must preserve forested areas on their land, in a proportion that varies from 20 percent to a high of 80 percent in the case of land granted in the Amazon jungle region.
Family farms in Brazil occupied a total of 110 million hectares, equivalent to 45 percent of the 244 million hectares in the hands of large landholders, according to the 1995-1996 agricultural census.
But the gross production value of family farms represented 62.6 percent of that of the large landowners -- who only cultivated 62 million hectares of land -- which shows that family agriculture had a productive advantage over agribusiness.
The new agricultural census, whose results will be released next year, will make it possible to effectively assess the impact of land reform -- its contribution to local economies and rural development, said França.
For now, there are "indirect indicators" in studies by several universities that identified three results shared by the farms granted to families through land reform: the land's performance improved under the new owners, the families' quality of life was enhanced, and the farms' productivity level was similar to the regional averages.
Moreover, since each family farm generates year-round work for three people on average and indirect work for another two or three people in the production chain, one million new farms represent 5.4 million people with incomes, França underscored. (END/2007)
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Article originally available @ http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37053
Marina dos Santos, of the MST’s National Coordinating Body, discusses the Movement’s recent actions in this exclusive interview:
Q] In March, the MST conducted land occupations in 17 states. Why?
A] Though the mainstream media would like the public to think these occupations are the result of agitation by our national leadership, this is not the case. Instead, the mobilizations across the country represent an understanding by MST families, that we have reached the government’s final year in office without any of our problems being solved. There are families who have been living under black plastic tents for 5, 6 years, who see no solutions presented for the problems they continue to face. Another issue is the economic policy of the government, with the high taxes and the like. The government has not contributed to the strengthening of family-based farming, which is responsible for providing food to the Brazilian people. The economic model being implemented leaves no money for social programs, and for this reason, there are insufficient resources for implementing Agrarian reform.
Also, we continue to question the social function of land with regards to the Federal Constitution. We reiterate our demand that several considerations be made before land is declared productive. For example, its relationship to the environment, the use of slave-labor by landowners, and whether or not the land produces food and fiber for the population. The updating of the productivity indices is another issue. The government continues to use indices from 1975 and has not fulfilled its commitment to update.
In addition, the MST has over 120,000 families currently living in roadside encampments, and the government has not advanced the settlement process for these families. To summarize, the recent land occupations have to do with all of the above: the settlement of families, the updating of the productivity indices and the economic model, which has stalled efforts towards Agrarian Reform.
Q] Updating the productivity indices and the settling of MST families were some of the demands made during the National March for Agrarian Reform, which took place in 2005. Were your other demands met?
A] Some commitments were fulfilled, but very little was accomplished. We advanced in the areas of education, allowing us to better educate our members and prepare for a better future. With regard to the Agrarian Question, nothing has been resolved.
Q] Will the mobilizations continue in April?
A] Certainly. Many of our people will be leaving the countryside to join urban workers throughout the country. They will be holding vigils and insisting upon trails for those responsible for the El Dorado dos Carajas Massacre (in which 19 MST members were shot dead during a peaceful march). 2006 marks the ten-year anniversary of the massacre. The scenario in which we find ourselves today continues to be one of impunity, where the crimes of the latifundio continue to go unpunished. We will also join with urban workers in the fight for an increase in the minimum wage, with mass demonstrations planned for May the 1st.
Q] How does the MST view the departure of ex-Minister Antonio Palocci?
A] Since Palocci probably best represents the continuation of the economic policies of the previous government (President Fernando Henrique Cardoso), we think the switch is important. However, in no way are we going to manifest ourselves behind any particular new Minister. That is the government’s problem. We believe that the president has been held hostage by the economic order imposed before his arrival. This could represent an opportunity to modify the policies of high taxes and exports. Those benefiting most from the current model are the transnational corporations and a few national enterprises. Who knows, maybe some changes will allow for social questions to be addressed and the Brazilian peoples’ problems to be solved – the reason for which President Lula was elected.
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/biblioteca/entrevistas/marina.htm
Strong opposition to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its exploitation of the Global South united urban and rural workers as they protested today in Parana’s capital city, Curitiba, forcing a change in the daily routine of one of Brazil’s larger state capitals.
In the early morning of March 29th, over 10,000 marchers from La Via Campesina, the Union of Educational Workers of Parana (APP), the MST, and other social movements marched to say “enough‿ to the WTO. Held as part of the agenda of the Coordination of Social Movements, this protest also included the demands of Parana’s teachers, who are fighting for better wages in the public sector.
Joao Pedro Stedile, of the MST’s National Coordinating Body, affirmed that the fight against the WTO is in the interest of all segments of Brazilian society, since the WTO is forcing their government into a number of agreements that serve only to benefit transnational corporations and harm important sectors such as agriculture and education.
Jose Lemos, president of the APP, reiterated the importance of unity between the rural social movements and the struggle of urban workers. “Unity is essential if we are to put an end to the WTO, who is trying to transform public goods, such as water and education, into commodities‿, Lemos stated.
According to Nalu Faria, one of the organizers of the World Women’s March, the WTO should be called the World Transnational Organization. “We do not want a project of neocolonization that serves only to export soy. We want food sovereignty‿, Faria affirmed.
After the demonstration, members of APP continued their march toward the Palacio Iguaco, site of the Legislative Assembly, to meet with elected representatives and discuss their demands. The 6,000 plus members of La Via Campesina also marched until they reached the site of the COP-8 (8th International Conference on Biodiversity), where over 100 Heads of State are meeting through this Friday, March 31st.
In a public declaration, members of La Via Campesina presented three of their principal demands to Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva: 1) a moratorium on the use of ‘terminator technology’ (a genetic modification that makes seed sterile after the first harvest), 2) the labeling of all products that contain genetically modified organisms, and 3) the immediate destruction of all illegally produced, genetically modified crops.
Roberto Baggio, of the MST’s State Coordinating Body in Parana stated, “It was a very important demonstration. All the political, popular, social and environmental forces stood together against the project proposed by the transnationals who seek to privatize our biodiversity, our environment and our seeds. At the same time, demonstrators made it clear that the true protectors of biodiversity and seeds are the peasants.‿
In Portuguese –
The above article is available in its’ original form by visiting:
http://www.mst.org.br/informativos/minforma/ultimas1776.htm
[03/29/2007] Call for April 17: International Day of Peasant’s Struggle
The 17th of April is the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle, established after the massacre of 19 landless peasants belonging to the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil on the 17th of April 1996 during the second conference of La Via Campesina in Tlaxcala Mexico.
In commemoration of the International Peasant’s Struggle Day, La Via Campesina and its allies are organizing activities and actions all over the world. Peasants and friends will rally around the following demands:
1. The WTO negotiations should not resume.
We want the WTO to permanently remain in the lethargy state it entered in July 2006. Under the WTO policies, the crisis of food, agriculture and family farming has deepened in every corner of the world.
We call peasants’ organizations and other social movements to urge their governments to put an end to the so-called Doha Development Agenda (DDA). In reality there will not be any development as long as countries are competing with each others to grab each others food and agriculture markets.
Challenging the Doha Development Agenda, peasants, fisher folks, pastoralists, workers, women and ordinary people in the world are demanding the implementation of food sovereignty.
(Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.
It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers. Food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal - fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability.
Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just income to all peoples and the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. It ensures that the rights to use and manage our lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food.
Food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social classes and generations. (Excerpt of the Declaration of Nyeleni 2007, International Forum on Food Sovereignty in Selingue, Mali, February 2007))
We call peasants organizations and other social movements to discuss with their governments about trade and production alternatives based on food sovereignty and out of the WTO.
2. Stop Free Frade Agreements (FTAs) and Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in food and agriculture.
FTA and EPAs are just a breakthrough created to deal with the collapse of the WTO negotiations and to speed up the liberalization process. They are not alternatives to the WTO, but the other side of the same sharp blade, the blade of neo-liberalism.
Bilateral agreements and partnerships should be made between peasants and ordinary people based on the principle of solidarity. People to people relations in solidarity will create brotherhood and sisterhood, while FTA will pave the way for transnational corporations to destroy people’s economies.
3. End with the colonial model of monoculture.
History shows that that exploitation of other countries’ agricultural wealth usually happens through monocultures farming. This was the colonial mode of production because the rulers were only concerned about getting commodities in huge volume at the cheapest price. They did not care about the impact of monocultures on the land and on the workers. It led to environmental destruction and slavery.
Until today, agriculture systems based on monocultures keep exploiting human beings and the environment. They create overproduction, which in turn destroys the peasants’ economy because of the dumping of agricultural produces.
We urge all governments to phase out from monoculture farming and to develop a sustainable agriculture based on family farms that respects the ecology or agro-ecology and produces healthy and nutritious food.
4. Oppose the World Bank policies on land and rural development
The World Bank has been imposing policies leading to privatisation of land, water, public services, seeds, etc. As a consequence, farmers and rural communities are kicked out of the land and are loosing their livelihood, while big corporations are grabbing most of the world resources.
Those policies are even implemented under the name of “agrarian reform�? (the Market Assisted Land Reform of the World Bank).
We call people’s organisations not to be cheated by those neo-liberal policies and to keep struggling for genuine agrarian reform which ensures the rights of communities to access and control of their land, territories, water and agricultural biodiversity.
Instead of listening to the World Bank and IMF’s advice, governments should work with their people towards social justice.
5. Reject the G8 domination!
The G8 countries are only representing 13,5 % of the world population, but they control 62,6% of the world economy. They are shaping the world order (economy, development, conflicts, environment…) in a way that affects every human being. This world order drives us in a situation where the number of hungry people has increased from 840 to 854 million in 2006 while a tiny group of millionaires have doubled their capital from 16 to 33 billion dollars.
A few months before the G8 summit in June in Germany, we are denouncing the policies put forward by the G8 governments in order to maintain their power and to protect the interests of the big companies, at the expense of the great majority of the world population.
JOIN THE ACTIONS FOR APRIL 17 ! - More on www.viacampesina.org
1. Organize public debates, workshops, discussions, seminars, cultural events, and rallies on food sovereignty as the alternative to the neoliberal model. You can use the results of Nyeleni 2007, the Forum for food sovereignty (Mali, February 2007) to disseminate information and to make sure that food sovereignty principles are implemented in your country. Invite government officials, academics and social movements to take part. (more information at www.nyeleni2007.org)
2. Take part in the global action and activities on 19th of April to stop EU-ACP EPAs.
3. Join the campaign against green deserts!
4. La Via Campesina, together with many other social movements, will take part in the mobilizations against the G8 in Rostock, Germany, June 2 and 3 to show that alternative policies are possible. We call people to go to Rostock for the mobilizations against the G8.
La Via Campesina calls all its member organizations in the world to prepare and organize activities, events and actions in commemoration of 17 April. We invite all Via Campesina members to commemorate this event in their farmlands with their communities and organisations in their villages, provinces and countries.
We also call other social movements to celebrate this event.
Please inform us about the activities you are planning. We will publish all actions and activities in our website.
If you want to get more information please contact:
International Operative Secretariat of La Via Campesina
(Contact Person: Tejo Pramono)
Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV No. 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790 Indonesia.
Phone : +62-21-7991890 Facs : +62-21-7993426 Email: viacampesina@viacampesina.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
And/or join the April 17 listserv by sending a blank message to viacam17april-subscribe@yahoogroups.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Or contact our regional staffs that are close to where you live:
Africa (Isabelle Dos Reis)
Maputo - Mozambique Tel/Fax : (+258) 2132 7895
Email: vcafrica@tvcabo.co.mzThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
South-East and East Asia (Irma Yanni)
Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV No. 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790 Indonesia
Phone : +62-21-7991890 Facs : +62-21-7993426 Email: petani@indosat.net.idThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Caribbean (Francisca Peguero)
Av Independencia No 1063, Zona Universitaria, Distrito Nacional, Apdo Postal 905-2, Feria.
Tel/Fax: 00-1-809 686 7517 Fax: +1-809-682 0075
Email: conamuca@verizon.net.doThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Europe (Morgan Ody)
Rue de la Sablonnière 18
B - 1000 Bruxelles - Métro: Madou
tel + 32 2 2173112 fax: + 32 2 2184509
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Central America (Wendy Cruz)
Colonia Alameda, 11 Avenida (Alfonso Guillen Zelaya), entre 3 y 4 Calles, Casa 2025, Apartado Postal 3628 Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. – Honduras, C.A. Tel/fax:+5042359915/ +5042324679. Email: wendy_cruz_s@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
South America (Rita Zanotto)
Alameda Barao de Limeira, 1232 - 01202-002 - Sao Paulo -SP – Brasil Phone - 61 3325 3909
Email: lavia.campesina@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
North America(Jessica Roe)
110 Maryland Ave., N.E. Suite 307 Washington , DC 20002 - USA email: jroe@nffc.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
South Asia (Gayathri Girrish)
Email : gayathri_krrs@yahoo.co.inThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Selling Biofuel to the Rich Is Just a New Phase of Brazil Colony
Written by Edivan Pinto
Recent research on the impact of fossil fuels has contributed to making the subject of biofuels the order of the day. The acceleration of global warming is a fact that places the life of the planet at risk. However, it is necessary to demystify the principal solution that is now being proposed and disseminated by propaganda about the supposed benefits of biofuels.
Opposed to this idea that biofuels are the answer, Professor Mae-Wan-Ho, of the University of Hong Kong, a long-time critic of genetic engineering, explains that "Biofuels have been considered erroneously to be 'carbon neutral.' The costs of carbon dioxide emissions and energy to make fertilizers and pesticides have been ignored."
A report by the Belgian Cabinet of Scientific Studies shows similar results. "Biofuels cause more health and environmental problems because they create more particulate pollution and liberate more pollutants that increase the destruction of the ozone layer."
Soy has been presented by the Brazilian government as the principal source of biodiesel. Soy culture is like the jewel in the crown of Brazilian agribusiness, affirm Embrapa's (Brazilian Company of Farming & Cattle Raising Research) researchers.
In this context, the role of Brazil would be to furnish cheap energy for rich countries, which represents a new phase of colonization.
The current policies for the sector are sustained by the same elements that marked Brazilian colonization: appropriation of the land, of the natural goods and labor, which represents greater concentration of land, water, income and power.
It is estimated that more than 90 million hectares could be utilized to produce biofuels. What is more, the "efficiency" of our production is due to the availability of cheap labor, including slaves. These characteristics are made known by governmental departments and by some intellectuals, who created the idea that the production of biofuels would bring great benefits.
"Our country has the largest extension of land in the world that is still available to be incorporated into the productive process," say Embrapa researchers. They estimate that the production of biomass "will be the most important component of Brazilian agribusiness."
With respect to the expansion of ethanol production, they conclude that there is the "possibility of sugar cane expansion in almost all the national territory."
Brazil now produces 17 billion liters of alcohol annually. According to the BNDES (National Bank of Economic & Social Development), eight billion liters more are necessary to serve just the internal market. Therefore, the bank predicts that Brazil must expand its production to other countries.
With the intention of controlling 50% of the world ethanol market, BNDES estimates that the country must produce 110 billion liters per year. In just the arid regions, there will be more than 20 million hectares available for planting," the report of Embrapa reveals.
In the Northeast, according to the researchers, "for castor bean plants alone there is an area of 3 million hectares appropriate for cultivation." They say too, that "The Brazilian Amazon region has the greatest potential for planting dendê (African oil palm) in the world, with an area estimated at 70 million hectares.
But this product is known as "the diesel of deforestation." Mass production of palm oil (as it is known in other countries) has already caused devastation of large forest areas in Colombia, Ecuador and Indonesia. In Malaysia, the world's largest producer of palm oil, 87% of the forests have been devastated.
Brazil can also fulfill the mission of legitimating the U.S. foreign policy. In his visit to Brazil in February, 2007, Nicholas Burns, U.S. sub secretary of State, said that "Research and development of biofuels can be the symbolic axis of a new and stronger partnership between Brazil and the U.S."
The two countries control 70% of the world's production of ethanol. Recently, in response to the impact of this subject on society, the Bush government announced that it intends to reduce consumption by 20%.
According to Burns, "Energy tends to distort the power of some countries that we think have a negative impact on the world, like Venezuela and Iran."
Expansion of bioenergy production is of great interest to companies involved in GMOs. They hope to obtain greater public acceptance if they push the transgenic products as sources of "clean" energy.
"All the companies that produce transgenic plants - Syngenta, Monsanto, Dupont, Dow, Bayer, BASF - have investments in seeds created for the production of biofuels, like ethanol and biodiesel.
They have, in addition, collaborative agreements with multinationals such as Cargill, Archer, Daniel Midland, and Bunge, which dominate world commerce in cereals," explains Silvia Ribeiro, investigator of the Group ETC of Mexico.
According to Eric Hold-Gimenez, coordinator of the organization Food First, "Three huge companies (ADM, Cargill and Monsanto) are forging their empire: genetic engineering, processing and transportation - an alliance that will anchor the production and sale of ethanol."
And he adds that other agribusinesses like Bunge, Syngenta, Bayer and Dupont, became allies with the oil multinationals like Shell, Total and British Petroleum, as well as car manufacturers like Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault and Saab, to form an unprecedented partnership expecting huge profits from biofuels.
Experiences like the planting of castor beans by small farmers in the Northeast have demonstrated the risk of dependence on large agribusiness that controls prices, processing and distribution of the product. The farmers are utilized to give legitimacy to agribusiness, by means of distributing certification of "social fuel."
Expansion of biofuel production puts food independence at risk and could profoundly exacerbate the problem of world hunger. In Mexico, for example, the increase in corn exports to supply the ethanol market in the U.S. caused a 400% increase in the price of corn, which is the principal source of food for the population.
Discussion of new sources of energy implies, in the first place, a reflection on whom the new source will serve. The construction of a new energy source must take into account who will benefit or what purpose will it serve.
Marluce Melo and Maria Luísa Mendonça also contributed to this article.
Brasil de Fato
[04/11/2007] Reuters Reports: Thousands of Brazilian Peasants Occupy Farms
By Todd Benson
SAO PAULO, April 10 (Reuters) - Thousands of peasants have occupied four farms and demonstrated in six states as part of a wave of protests to push for land reform in Latin America's largest country, a spokesman for the group said on Tuesday.
The protesters belong to the Landless Peasants' Movement, or MST, a nationwide group that routinely occupies large plantations to lobby the government to grant plots of land and financial aid to poor family farmers.
The latest campaign, which began last week and is known as "Red April," has included largely peaceful demonstrations by landless rural workers.
One occupation began on Sunday in Itapetininga in the interior of Sao Paulo state, where peasants set up camp on land owned by Suzano Bahia Sul Papel e Celulose, one of Latin America's biggest pulp and paper producers.
The MST said it chose the target to protest the expansion of eucalyptus plantations at the expense of food crops and to push for agrarian reform in Sao Paulo, an agricultural powerhouse state where farming is dominated by large agribusiness companies.
"It's time for the government to accelerate agrarian reform," said Joaquim da Silva, an MST spokesman. "We're going to keep invading properties until they do so."
Suzano, which has previously been the target of MST occupations, said in a statement that it had taken legal action to have the protesters evicted.
Some 300 families also occupied a 45,000-hectare (111,000-acre) ranch in the northern state of Maranhao on Tuesday, the MST said in a statement. They were later joined by 450 other squatter families hoping the government will expropriate and redistribute the land.
In Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil, some 400 families occupied two idle farms and demanded the permanent settlement of 12,000 landless families in the state.
In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, 300 MST militants occupied the public works office in the state capital Porto Alegre demanding road improvements, rubbish collection and school transport in four settlements, MST activist Emerson Giacomelli said.
Some 5,000 MST militants started a 110-kilometer (63-mile) march in Bahia from Feira de Santana to the state capital Salvador demanding the acceleration of land reform.
In the northern state of Piaui, activists occupied the state governor's palace in Teresina to press demands for rural development and respect of workers' rights.
MST protesters are usually evicted after a few weeks, then pick a new target. In some cases they have remained as occupiers on abandoned farms no longer used by their owners.
Land squabbles have long been common in Brazil, which is slightly larger than the continental United States. Millions of Brazilians live in poverty but 1 percent of the population owns almost half of all arable land, according to official data.
The disputes frequently turn violent, especially in remote regions of the Amazon rain forest. At least 1,690 violent clashes over land took place in Brazil last year, according to a recent report by 30 local human rights groups.
The MST has traditionally occupied unproductive land tracts. But in recent years it has also targeted plantations owned by large agribusiness interests, a shift that has strained its relations with the left-leaning government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN1033899620070411
SAO PAULO, Brazil: Thousands of landless workers invaded government property in Brazil's arid northeast to try to stop a controversial river-diversion project critics claim will hinder agrarian reform and lavish benefits on agribusiness, a spokeswoman for the workers said Sunday.
About 7,500 people invaded plots of government-owned land Saturday near Petrolina, 2,200 kilometers (1,360 miles) north of Sao Paulo in Pernambuco state, said Cassia Bechara, a spokeswoman for the Landless Rural Workers Movement, or MST.
While the MST said 2,000 families took part, Pernambuco state authorities told local media only 800 families were camped out following the land invasions.
The MST said in a statement the protest was launched because thousands of rural workers were forced to leave their lands because of the diversion project involving the Sao Francisco River, Brazil's fourth largest. The MST also said the project will give agribusiness companies the best land, while poor rural workers will be left with unproductive areas.
The project is meant to benefit some 12 million poor people in one of Brazil's most destitute regions by irrigating large areas nearly as dry as a desert. It has also generated fierce opposition from environmentalists, who say the diversion could dry up the river for part of the year.
Brazil's environmental protection agency Ibama last month approved the US$2 billion (€1.5 billion) project to shift the river's course. Congress still must approve funding for parts of the project.
The project, first proposed as far back as 1886, would create a new channel for the 1,600-mile-long river, which could speed its flow toward the ocean and cause it to dry up during parts of the year, critics say.
In 2005, Roman Catholic Bishop Luiz Flavio Cappio held an 11-day hunger strike in an attempt to stop the project. He called it off after the federal government agreed to open the project to further discussions.
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/15/america/LA-GEN-Brazil-River-Protest.php
BRAZIL: Dispossessed Demand Land, Health, Justice
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 16 (IPS) - The Brazilian capital woke up to another "red April" Monday. Eight hundred landless peasants occupied the headquarters of the government office in charge of land distribution, while 1,000 indigenous people camped out on the Ministries Esplanade, demanding better healthcare and the formal demarcation of their territories.
Demonstrations by indigenous and rural people have been spreading all over Brazil ever since last week, as part of "Indigenous April" and the Campaign for Land Reform led by the Landless Workers Movement (MST).
Tuesday, Apr. 17 is International Peasant Struggle Day, which marks the anniversary of a 1996 massacre in Eldorado de Carajás, in Brazil's eastern Amazon region, when the police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration by some 3,000 landless peasants marching in support of land rights that day, killing 19 members of the MST.
In addition, Thursday, Apr. 19 is National Indigenous People's Day in Brazil. The "Free Land Camp" in the centre of Brasilia, where leaders of many of the country's indigenous groups have gathered, is to end on Thursday with a hearing that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is expected to attend.
The camp is organised as an annual event, and this year's is the largest yet, "with over a thousand participants," the coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Espíritu Santo (APOINME), Ilton Tuxá, told IPS. He said it indicated a greater degree of mobilisation and an opportunity for change in the relations between the Brazilian state and indigenous people.
In addition to the demarcation of a number of indigenous territories that are awaiting official recognition, the demonstration is calling for the creation of an Indigenist Policy Commission to define broader, "non-authoritarian" policies, according to Jecinaldo Cabral, coordinator of the Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon.
They hope that President Lula will sign a document creating the Commission at the hearing on Thursday, Tuxá said.
Health conditions for indigenous people in the Amazon region is another urgent question, especially for people living in the Javari valley, on the borders with Peru and Colombia, who are being "decimated" by malaria and hepatitis due to government negligence, Cabral said.
But the land issue is paramount for indigenous people in northeastern Brazil, and it has prompted "alliances with other social movements, especially the MST, which is politically the strongest in the country," Tuxá said.
The lands that are the traditional homes of indigenous people, peasants and forest peoples, such as those living along riverbanks, fisherfolk, rubber tappers and fruit gatherers, are threatened by the advance of agribusiness, hydroelectric stations that flood extensive areas of the Amazon jungle, and highways and large mining projects, he said.
On Monday, some 500 indigenous people occupied a hydroelectric plant in Estreito for two hours, and later blocked the highway joining Brasilia with Belém, capital of the northern state of Pará. The hydroelectric station is under construction in the central state of Tocantins, and the lands and rivers of several indigenous groups and riverside peoples are threatened by it.
The 800 peasants belonging to the MST and other rural workers' movements who occupied the headquarters of the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) at 5 a.m. this Monday are demanding land to settle 150,000 families living in camps on occupied land and alongside highways all over Brazil, waiting for the government's land reform programme to assign them plots of their own.
There are 1,800 families in this situation on the outskirts of Brasilia alone.
In Brazil, one of the countries in the world with the most uneven distributions of land, around 3.5 percent of landowners hold 56 percent of the arable land while the poorest 40 percent own barely one percent.
Occupations of land considered to be lying idle and that could be redistributed under the land reform law have mushroomed around Brazil since last week.
In the northeastern state of Pernambuco, where disputes over land are particularly numerous, the MST occupied two estates considered to be underproductive on Monday, with 100 families setting up camps on each.
But the largest occupation took place on Saturday, when more than 2,000 families entered the Pontal Sur area, a huge irrigation project along the banks of the Sao Francisco River, which flows from the centre of Brazil to the northeast.
The occupied property is "a publicly owned latifundium (underutilised estate)," as it is a government project with an area of 33,526 hectares where irrigation infrastructure is to be installed, although the project is presently at a standstill, according to the MST.
Similar actions aimed at speeding up agrarian reform were taken in the south, for instance in the wealthy state of Sao Paulo, and in parts of the Amazon region, in the last few days.
But the peasant demonstrations are also demanding an end to violence with impunity in Brazil's rural areas. The Campaign for Land Reform is critical of the fact that the 150 military police responsible for the massacre at Eldorado de Carajás, 11 years ago, have gone unpunished. Those in command of the operation have been sentenced to prison, but they are still at large pending a final verdict from higher courts.
Violence is still surrounded with impunity in rural areas, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) of the Catholic Church confirmed Monday in Brasilia, on the occasion of its annual report on rural conflicts.
In 2006, 39 people were killed in land conflicts in Brazil, one more than in 2005. But there were 72 attempted murders, an increase of 177 percent on 2005, the CPT report said.
Between 1985 and 2006, the period during which the CPT has monitored rural violence, there were 1,104 conflicts resulting in murders, and 1,464 rural workers were killed. However, only 85 of the cases went to court, and only 71 murderers and 19 instigators were convicted. (END/2007)
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37371
BRASILIA, April 16 (Reuters) - Hundreds of rural workers occupied the Brazilian government's land-reform headquarters in the capital Brasilia on Monday, demanding faster settlement of small farmers and peasants.
The protesters stormed the building of the National Agrarian Reform Institute at dawn. After shutting the doors to staff, they took mattresses and cooking equipment into the building. There are no reports of injuries.
Three activist groups demand that the government accelerate the expropriation of unproductive farms and grant land to squatters throughout the country.
"The movement demands the federal government meet its obligation to settle 150,000 families living under plastic sheets throughout the country in the name of the struggle for agrarian reform," the Landless Rural Workers' Movement, or MST, said in a statement.
The MST routinely occupies large plantations to lobby the government to grant plots of land and financial aid to poor family farmers.
During the latest campaign, which began two weeks ago and is known as "Red April," thousands of landless peasants occupied farms, torched sugar cane, and staged rallies in several states.
Left-leaning President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met with land reform groups on Friday and pledged to consider their demands to ease the criteria for land expropriation.
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16292983.htm
Brazil's homeless and landless unite
By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo
~~~
Brazil's landless and homeless movements have been on the march in April, bringing renewed attention to their demands in a month of protests.
In the countryside, protest action is led by the controversial and better known organisation of landless workers, MST, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra.
Critics say not all its members are rural workers, and condemn its tactics of illegally occupying land, but it remains one of the best organised social movements in Latin America.
In a typical headline grabbing move, its activists invaded the headquarters of the government's land reform agency to make a point about what they see as the slow pace of reform.
Crammed inside -
In cities like Sao Paulo, a variety of groups are involved - including the organisation of "roofless" or homeless, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto.
In the last fortnight this group, among others, has been organising renewed illegal occupations or invasions of empty buildings in Sao Paulo.
In one such building - 460 families who live there are crammed into small rooms on 22 floors.
Prestes Maia has been occupied since 2002, but once again this week the residents have been living with the threat of eviction.
That immediate threat appears to have been lifted - due it seems, to an intervention by the Lula government, and alternative accommodation is being sought for the residents.
Billons of dollars of government funding towards housing and sanitation in Brazil is now due, money that comes from the government's main development plan, offering promise for the future.
For the residents of Prestes Maia, it cannot come soon enough.
Keeping afloat -
As you make your way up the stairs, the walls are potted with holes, water escapes from leaking pipes and rusty window frames and exposed electrical cables are a further sign of decay.
"I consider here my home, it's not what you would dream of - there is not even proper walls...Prestes Maia is a big struggle, one to get through every day", states Maria, a Prestes Maia resident.
But as you reach floor after floor you find scores of families trying to eke out an existence, determined to maintain some dignity. Several floors below, a free library is the only bright spot where the children can escape.
Maria told us: "I consider here my home, it's not what you would dream of - there is not even proper walls... Prestes Maia is a big struggle, one to get through every day."
At a rally at Itapecerica da Serra, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, where homeless groups have invaded land and set up a huge sprawling tent city, homeless groups and the MST shared a platform.
They deny they are running a joint campaign, but can see benefits in taking action at the same time.
"We are fighting for the same objectives, because each one has specific objectives, but in essence we are fighting the same enemies... and demanding from the federal and state governments answers to the problems of the majority of the Brazilian people," says Gilmar Mauro of the MST.
In the MST there is also growing impatience with the government, which in turn would argue that much has been done for the landless in Brazil. It points to land that has been distributed to almost 400,000 families.
But there are signs that the MST is going to make plain its irritation with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, an old friend of the landless movement.
Its leaders say Lula's government has been too timid, too slow to take on the big landowners.
Over the next few months the protest could get personal.
~~~
Article originally available @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6563359.stm
Land Reform not only benefits the Landless, it brings development to entire regions where settlements are established. Replacing the large unproductive estates, hundreds of working families plow the soil in order to harvest crops and bring them to local markets. Along with the increase in food available in the region, the entire economy is stimulated by the activity of these families and those who work with them.
To demonstrate that Land Reform is not only an issue of importance for the MST, close to 2,000 people gathered in Coqueiros do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, for a public solidarity rally on April 21st.
Demonstrators manifested their support for the expropriation of Fazenda Guerra, an unproductive estate comprised of over 7,000 hectares. Occupied by the MST in February of this year, Fazenda Guerra could provide sufficient land for close to 420 families. Also, a settlement project in the region could generate a great deal of job opportunity, stimulate the local economy, and produce staple crops that would surely end up on the plates of citizens of the surrounding area. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reports that 86% of jobs in the countryside are generated by small farmers. For this reason demonstrators defended Land Reform as an instrument for resolving the problems of the Brazilian people – from the countryside to the cities.
Demonstrators included those in solidarity with the encampment of Fazenda Guerra, local union members and activists, the mayor of Coqueiros do Sul, religious figures and other representatives of the local government.
By: Gissela Mate
RIGHTS-BRAZIL:
Homeless Join Month of Protests
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 25 (IPS) - The Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) blocked three access roads into Sao Paulo on Wednesday, continuing a month-long struggle during which they have invaded a large number of buildings and unoccupied urban sites in several state capitals.
In greater Sao Paulo, the movement's actions escalated on Mar. 16, when about 500 families occupied an area of 1.2 million square metres in Itapecerica da Serra, a municipality of 160,000 located 38 kilometres from Sao Paulo's city centre.
This Wednesday the invasion had grown to some 3,000 families, a total of 12,000 people, camping in shelters made of bamboo and black plastic sheeting.
The MTST and other organisations demanding housing, like the National Union for Popular Housing (UNMP) and the Downtown (Sao Paulo) Homeless People's Movement, stepped up their mass protests this month, holding street marches and rallies in front of government buildings and occupying abandoned old buildings.
The MTST's activities have expanded the traditional "Red April", when social movements take action to commemorate International Day of Peasant Struggle on Apr. 17 and the national Indigenous People's Day on Apr. 19.
This year these actions extended over several weeks, and in the case of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) are still continuing.
"Red April" gets its name from the red flags that are the hallmark of MST demonstrators and carried prominently in their marches.
"The biggest social movement in Brazil today is the Landless Movement (MST)" which is campaigning to accelerate the agrarian reform. It joins forces with other movements with common aims, such as protesting social injustice, Breno Bringel, a political scientist and visiting researcher at Campinas University, told IPS.
Apart from the landless MST and the homeless MTST, who are "revitalising urban protest," organisations of indigenous peoples, garbage pickers, and people affected by dams are also active, he noted. There are also organisations fighting for education or health; youth culture groups, such as hip hop; and the Afro-Brazilian movement, Bringel said.
Social movements emerged as political actors in Brazil during the 1970s, when they "organised opposition to the military regime," developing new forms of grassroots organisation. In the 1980s they acquired new dimensions, going on to claim social rights like the rights of women, the environment, and sexual and ethnic minorities, he said.
But in the 1990s, with the advance of free-market policies, "the influence of organised social movements declined. They lost ground to non-governmental organisations, as public criticism of the system ebbed away," Bringel said.
"The demonstrations this April are seeking to break the state-market-service sector tripod, while rejecting policies based on welfare or charity," and they signal a return to the fundamental demand for social transformation, said Bringel, who holds a doctorate in the theory of social movements.
The growing strength of social movements, which played an important role in the Brazilian elections "by cementing the forces of the left," contrasts with the crisis in trade unionism which has been exacerbated by the rise in unemployment, the growth of the informal labour market, and the "flexibilisation and increased precariousness of labour relations," he said.
The fundamental contradiction between capital and labour has been displaced outside the factory, with "workers being excluded or rejected by the formal employment structures," said the academic.
"If they do not adapt, trade unions with a vertical structure will only plunge deeper into crisis, because of their disconnection from the new realities," he predicted.
The high level of social unrest this April is also a response to political circumstances in Brazil, as President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who began his second four-year term on Jan. 1, has belatedly only just completed the appointment of his ministerial cabinet, historian Dulce Pandolfi, head of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE), told IPS.
The trend is for social movements to take more of a leadership role, in Brazil as well as in other countries, because of their "broader and more horizontal action," which makes them capable of responding to more tenuous demands, such as those of the informal economy and of segments of the population lacking many effective rights, like people living in "favelas" (shantytowns), Pandolfi said.
Whereas trade unions are very much tied to negotiating salary issues for those who have jobs, the social movements have "novel" ways of organising in networks that are horizontal and flexible, equipping them for confronting "more complex relations between social classes," she said.
That is the sort of outcome achieved by, for example, an initiative from Rio de Janeiro for the "right to the city," which mobilises homeless people, favela dwellers and other sectors, such as people concerned about public security, or about recreational and cultural areas, to participate, she said.
The MST, which has multiplied the number of its occupations of land considered unproductive, and has even invaded land belonging to the army, has recently abandoned its previous willingness to negotiate with the Lula administration. For years, it considered Lula an ally, but impatience with the slow pace of agrarian reform has led to an apparently confrontational attitude now.
"The dozens of demonstrations this April do not indicate a growth of the grassroots movements, but rather greater indignation among activists" in response to the slow implementation of the ongoing agrarian reform, Joao Pedro Stédile, one of the national coordinators of the MST, told IPS.
"The MST's struggles provide a kind of education for the masses, by showing disorganised and apolitical sectors that struggle is the only way to improve people's lives," Stédile said.
Indeed, the acronym of the MTST and its way of operating, by occupying buildings but then pulling out if the courts order them to do so, are very similar to those of its rural counterpart. (END/2007)
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37496
[04/26/07] Brazil: 11 Years After Police Massacre of 19 Landless Nobody Has Been Punished
Written by Nina Fideles
Thursday, 26 April 2007
Brazilians just commemorated the 11th anniversary of the Massacre at Eldorado dos Carajás on April 17, 2006. On this day, 19 rural workers were assassinated in the state of Pará, in nothern Brazil. Under the order of then governor Almir Gabriel and under the command of Major José Maria Pereira and Colonel Collares Pantoja, 155 military police circled a group of landless workers who were marching for agrarian reform and opened fire.
Of the 144 who were incriminated, only the two commanding officers were found guilty, and they are roaming freely as they await their appeal. Both of their cases are paralyzed in superior courts.
According to Marco Aurélio Nascimento, the public prosecutor for the case, it is just another instance of impunity: "We lament this mentality on the part of Brazilian court officials, who think that a person can eternally appeal a case and never go to jail.
"This does not happen in other countries. Only in Brazil, unfortunately. The mentality is that persons have this right to appeal, which is called presumed innocence, but is translated as what? Total and absolute impunity."
In 2002, through a decree of then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, April 17th became the National Day of Struggle for Agrarian Reform. Along with the Massacre at Carandiru (1992) and the Shooting at Candelária (1993), the Massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás is considered one of the most brutal police actions in recent Brazilian history.
What Happened
The autopsy at the time showed that many of the dead had been beaten up and killed in cold blood by the police. Members of the Movement of the Rural Landless families (MST), to which the assassinated belonged, denounced that the police hid the bodies of women and children killed in the attack on the landless group.
Around mid-day on April 17 approximately 1200 landless people blocked highway PA 150. The highway links the state capital, Belém, with the south of the state. The group was one of several groups of landless families which has occupied unused land to put pressure on the government to carry out an agrarian reform.
The MST had arranged a meeting for that day with the head of INCRA (the federal government land agency) in Pará, Valter Cardoso, in Marabá. The state government as part of the agreement had undertaken to send 50 buses to transport the landless people to the meeting. The buses were not sent.
Two days previously (April 15) the Governor of Pará, Almir Gabriel, his secretary for security, Paulo Sette Camara and the general commander of the military police in the state, Fabiano Lopes, had a meeting to discuss the proposed blockage of the highway by the landless.
At the meeting it was decided that no concessions would be given to the landless. The local commander of the military police, Mário Colares Pantoja, was ordered personally by Governor Gabriel to free the highway.
Military police surrounded the landless from the front and from behind. At approximately 5 pm the police attacked with tear-gas. The landless responded by hurdling stones and work implements at the police who opened fire with machine guns. Many of the landless took refuge in nearby wooded areas but were sought out by the police.
In all, the police operation lasted approximately an hour. Official figures claimed that 19 landless had been assassinated by the police and there a further 45 - 41 landless and 4 military police were injured.
Initially the autopsies were carried out by two forensic doctors from Belém and by a team of the local police experts. Human rights groups insisted that they should be redone by Dr. Nelson Massini from São Paulo. After initial resistance to the idea at local level, officials from the federal government intervened and Dr. Massini carried out another autopsy.
His findings were devastating. In the case of at least 7 of the victims he found clear indications that they were executed in cold blood. "It is too much. There are cases which clearly show that the victims were dominated and killed with their own work implements such as knives and sickles. There are two cases of bullets from behind, one in the neck which indicates that they were executed" commented Dr. Massini.
According to Massini, the majority of the bullets were lodged in the thorax and heads of the victims and claimed that "this shows that the shots fired were not meant to intimidate but to kill people".
An example is that of assassinated MST leader Oziel Lima. Many witnesses testify that 17 year old Oziel was alive after the police operation on the highway. TV reporter Marina Romão guarantees that he and approximately 50 other people took refuge in a hut where she also had hidden when the police opened fire.
"I saw them (the police) dragging Oziel out onto the highway. They beat him, they called him a 'good for nothing' and made him shout 'long live the landless movement'". Yet the autopsy results show that Oziel who was alive after the police operation was shot in the head at close range - in other words he was assassinated in cold blood by the military police.
The initial official response was of condemnation of the violence and of the police. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso declared that what happened was "unjustifiable" and went on to state that he was convinced that those responsible would be punished. The President's remarks were in large part a response to international protest which began to pour into Brazil hours after the landless were assassinated - CNN carried news reports of the massacre soon after it took place.
President Cardoso promised agility on the part of the government to pass law projects already in parliament to speed up agrarian reform. On Monday April 22 he held a meeting with the presidents of the Congress, the Senate and of the Supreme Court to speed up the passing into law of these projects. Initially there seemed to be sufficient political support amongst parliamentarians to pass the laws quickly.
However, by mid week it was obvious that conservative interests in both houses of parliament, would block the passing of laws favoring agrarian reform. In a move which seems not to be linked to the massacre, Agriculture Minister Andrade Vieira resigned on April 19.
His ministry had been responsible for the agrarian reform question. Indications at the moment are that a special ministry for agrarian reform will be established. The names of the likely candidates to head the ministry leaked to the press so far have not the support of groups who defend the urgent necessity of an agrarian reform in the country.
In Brazil, religious funeral services for the dead usually take place on the seventh day after the death. Such services were schedules for April 24 and turned into an act of protest throughout the country.
The Conference of Catholic Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) at its annual meeting during the week decided that a mass would be celebrated in all the Catholic churches in the country on this date as a way not only to remember the assassinated but to protest the violence.
A message of condemnation of the assassination arrived from the Pope for the occasion. All over the country the religious act became a protest. For example, thousands participated in an ecumenical religious celebration in Sao Paulo after a march through the city center.
Here the leadership of the MST blamed President Cardoso, Governor Gabriel and Minister for Justice, Nelson Jobim for the bloodshed. Calls were made for the resignation of the Minister Jobim.
Brasil de Fato
~~~
Article originally available @
http://www.brasildefato.com.br/v01/agencia/nacional/comandantes-do-massacre-de-eldorado-dos-carajas-seguem-em-liberdade
Sister Dorothy Stang to be immortalized
By Sr. Roseanna Murphy
Issue date: 4/26/07 Section: News
Published in The Argonaut @ www.theargonaut.net
~~~
Sr. Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN, was walking along a dirt path to a meeting of poor farmers in the middle of the Amazon Forest on Feb. 12 of 2005. She wanted to assure them that they had a right to the land where they had built their bamboo shacks. Those shacks had been burned by men paid by wealthy ranchers to "get rid of those people" so they could take over the land and raise more cattle.
The exploitation of the forest, its destruction and the murder and brutality against the poor farmers had fired Sr. Dorothy to work for justice and the rights of the poor for 39 years in Brazil. She was in the way. She had reported illegal logging and the burning of homes to the police.
Her name was on the death lists of several ranchers despite the fact that she was awarded the 2006 Humanitarian Award by the Brazilian Bar Association, had been called the Woman of the Year by the state of Para where she lived, had been made an honorary citizen of Brazil, and was given an award for her work by the Brazilian bishops.
As she reached the crest of the hill, two gunmen stepped out to block her path. She greeted them kindly and began to speak to them about the rights of the farmers. She spread out the map she was carrying showing the land was designated by the government agency charged with providing protected reserves for the poor.
For about 15 minutes, she spoke to the two men whom she knew had been hired by the wealthy ranchers. One of them asked if she had a gun. She smiled and pulled her Bible out of her plastic bag saying, "This is my only weapon." Then she opened the Bible and read from it ending with, "Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God."
Then one of the men reached for his gun and shot her at point blank six times. She fell forward, her body lying in the mud and rain for five hours. The farmers were too afraid to go near her for fear that they would also be killed.
News of Sr. Dorothy's death was broadcast all over the world. The president of Brazil sent 2,000 troops into the area to quell any violence that was threatened against the poor. They stayed in the area for nearly five months, as the killing did not end with her death.
Memorials for Sr. Dorothy were held all over the world. She was honored at the United Nations and the U.S. Congress for her work for the poor and oppressed. She was awarded honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degrees by four universities beginning with NDNU in May 2005. Last July, she was inducted into the National Freedom Railroad Museum in Cincinnati which honors leaders who have fought against slavery.
Sr. Dorothy embodies the qualities of the mission of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She models the Hallmarks of NDNU. At her funeral, one of the sisters said, "Today we do not bury Dorothy; we are planting her here."
Her spirit lives on in the hearts of the people who have found their rights and are determined to continue her work for justice and peace in that troubled area.
~~~
Sr. Roseanne Murphy, professor emerita and executive director of planned giving at NDNU, was asked to write the biography of Sr. Dorothy who graduated from NDNU in 1964. The book, published by Orbis Press, will be released next September.
For the first time, a Sem Terra defends doctoral thesis
“One of the priorities in the MST is education, and the conquest of the title of
Doctor means the achievement of this priority. The effort to research and write
the thesis also demonstrates that the Movement is concerned with the elaboration
of new concepts whose objective, among others, is to make science accessible to
the social movements�, states Juvelino Strozake, 38, MST lawyer, who is about to
become the first doctor in the history of the Movement.
Nei, as he is more commonly known, defends the doctoral thesis “Access to land and
the Public Civil Action Lawâ€?, at PUC-SP (PontifÃcia Universidade Católica of São
Paulo), on Monday (05/08). It is a long story that began in the encampments,
occupations, hearings and trials.
Since the founding of the movement, in 1984, education has been as important a theme
as Agrarian Reform. Currently, the Movement has 40 partnerships with 13 public
universities. In addition to this, there are 24 higher education courses in progress
in 14 states, 4 courses of Youth and Adult Education (elementary education),
involving 156 classes, in four states, 53 secondary and technical education and five
specialization courses in four states.
In this way, the Movement creates conditions so that the example may be repeated.
Nei, like all of the rural Landless workers, camped at the side of the highway, in
the town of Guaraniaçu, in the west of Paraná, and in 1985 participated in the
occupations in the region. Soon after, he took advantage of the opportunity to study
in a seminary of priests. In 1989, he came to São Paulo and, three years later,
began to study law in Unifieo (Fundação e Instituto de Ensino de Osasco).
In 1995, the Landless lawyer assumed the responsibility of managing the Human
Rights sector of the MST, which works in the legal defense of Landless workers
persecuted by the Court. After realizing the necessity of deepening the study of
the legislation that involves the Brazilian agrarian question and the social
movements, he decided to continue his studies. In 2001, he defended his Master’s
dissertation about the social function of land with regards to diffuse and
collective rights.
Nei began his Doctorate in 2003 and now defends his thesis with the objective of
building a new legal concept to use a civil process instrument, such as Public
Civil Action, to pressure the State to carry out the Agrarian Reform process.
�The Landless settlement in the projects of reinclusion of the men and women of the
field is the fulfillment of the constitutional and human principle of the
existential minimum, or of human dignity, and in the case of the families who are
denied land, this right can be made viable through the use of Public Civil Action�,
he states.
Education facts about the MST:
-40 partnerships of Agrarian Reform entities with 13 public universities;
-24 higher education courses in progress in the states of MT, SE, PA, PR, PB, BA,
MS, ES, MG, CE, RN, RO, PE and SP;
-4 Youth and Adult Education courses (elementary education), involving 156 classes,
in the states of Mato Grosso, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais;
-53 high school and technical courses;
-5 specialization courses in progress (PR, SC, MG and ES) and 1 specialization
course in rural education and health in negotiation in RS;
-3 extension courses with federal universities in RJ, PB and SC;
-50 middle schools in the settlement areas.
Brazil Man Guilty in Killing of US Nun
Tuesday May 15, 2007 9:01 PM
Guardian Unlimited
~~~
BELEM, Brazil (AP) - A Brazilian rancher was found guilty Tuesday of ordering the killing of American nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang, a judge announced following a two-day trial.
Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura was convicted of masterminding the killing of 73-year-old Dorothy Stang, on Feb. 12, 2005, along a muddy stretch of road deep in the rain forest.
Judge Raymond Moises Alves Flexa sentenced Moura to 30 years in prison, the maximum sentence in a case seen as a crucial test of whether the government could crack down on lawlessness in the Amazon.
This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
BELEM, Brazil (AP) - The gunman convicted of killing an American nun recanted previous testimony and said the rancher accused of masterminding the slaying did not offer him money, bolstering the defense before closing arguments that began on Tuesday.
Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura is accused of ordering the killing of 73-year-old Dorothy Stang, who was shot to death on Feb. 12, 2005, along a muddy stretch of road deep in the rain forest.
All three men convicted so far in connection with the killing - a gunman, his accomplice and a go-between - recanted earlier testimony that the rancher had offered them 50,000 reals - about $25,000 - to kill the nun.
``This thing about money isn't true. This thing about me and Bida talking isn't true,'' said Clodoaldo Carlos Batista, referring to Moura by his nickname, during Monday's court session.
Batista who was sentenced to 17 years in prison as an accomplice to gunman Rayfran Neves Sales, claimed he had been coerced into implicating Moura by two American FBI agents who traveled to Brazil shortly after the murder to monitor the police investigation.
Both Batista and Sales, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison, claimed the agents threatened to send them to the United States, where they could face the death penalty if they did not cooperate. Brazil does not have the death penalty and the most a convict can serve at a single stretch is 30 years.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Mei said that Brazil does not allow the extradition of its citizens to other countries for crimes committed in Brazil.
``Our FBI folks are very familiar with that law,'' he said.
During Monday's proceedings, lawyers for Moura accused Stang of inciting poor Brazilians to invade private property and of distributing to firearms to settlers.
``The charges against her are absurd,'' responded Stang's brother David, who flew from the United States with his twin brother Thomas to attend the trial.
He added: ``Her reputation is sterling. When she was alive they tried to called her a gunrunner, a witch, and that's why they killed her, because they couldn't make those charges stick.''
Moura is one of two ranchers accused of ordering Stang's killing in a conflict over land he wanted to log and develop.
``I had no participation whatsoever,'' Moura, told the judge in his opening statement Monday, adding that he did not even know Stang, who had been organizing poor settlers around the jungle town of Anapu for the last 23 years of her life.
Prosecutors and Stang's supporters said they had expected the convicted men to recant.
``They have already been convicted so they have nothing to lose. I believe they made a deal with the defendant but I don't think the jury will buy it because it's obviously a setup,'' said Jose Batista Afonso, a lawyer for the Catholic Church's Land Pastoral who is working as an assistant to prosecution.
Stang, a naturalized Brazilian originally from Dayton, Ohio, helped build schools and was among the activists who have tried to defend the rights of impoverished and often exploited farmers drawn to the Amazon region. She also attempted to halt the rampant jungle clearing by loggers and ranchers that has already ripped away some 20 percent of the forest cover.
Human rights defenders said the trial is a test of whether the powerful masterminds behind land-related killings can be held accountable in the Amazon state of Para. Of nearly 800 such killings in Para during the past 30 years, only four masterminds have been convicted and none are behind bars.
Shortly after Stang's killing, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered the army into the region, suspended logging permits, and ordered large swathes of rain forest off-limits to development.
~~~
Article originally available @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6634878,00.html
IPS Reports -
BRAZIL: Dorothy Stang Sentence - More Than Symbolic?
Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 16 (IPS) - Forty percent of the 1,237 murders linked to land disputes in Brazil between 1985 and 2001 took place in the northern state of Pará. But things could begin to change there if the sentence handed down to the rancher who ordered the killing of U.S.-born nun Dorothy Stang does not end up as merely symbolic, said French priest Henri Burin des Roziers.
Wealthy landowner Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura was given the stiffest possible sentence, 30 years, on Tuesday for being one of the masterminds behind the February 2005 murder of the 73-year-old defender of the Amazon rainforest and landless people.
The verdict "is very important, first of all because it was the maximum sentence and secondly because he is actually in prison," unlike what occurred in three similar cases in the region, Roziers, who like Stang before her murder is on a death list in Pará, told IPS.
But "it would be overly hasty to come up with an optimistic analysis" said the priest and lawyer, who has worked for over 15 years with the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Xinguara, in the southern part of the state, helping landless peasant farmers gain legal title to their land and fighting slave labour.
"We have to wait to see if Sister Dorothy's case means a real change or was only an exception brought about by the enormous international repercussions that it had because she was from the United States," said Roziers. Stang was a nationalised Brazilian citizen who lived in this country for 23 years.
"It is still early" to say that the sentence may contribute to bringing about peace in Pará, which is characterised by a heavy concentration of land and economic and political power in the hands of a few elite landowning families, and impunity surrounding the frequent killings of human rights, environmental and land reform activists.
"Other landowners who have ordered the murders of trade unionists and activists are fugitives from justice, and the state and federal police have not yet captured them," he pointed out. "The sentence could have a dissuasive effect. But we will have to wait and see, because this is the first case of someone being sentenced and jailed for ordering one of these murders. Also, the case is being appealed in a court in Brasilia, and we have to see what happens there."
Stang was shot six times in the back on a lonely rainforest path in Pará. She had received death threats ever since she started to work on behalf of landless farmers in the region of Anapú in sustainable development projects, and to fight the illegal logging practiced by large landowners in that part of the Amazon jungle.
In 2005, farm hands Rayfran das Neves Sales and Clodoaldo Carlos Batista were found guilty of shooting Stang, and were sentenced to 27 and 17 years in prison, respectively.
Amair Feijoli da Cunha, the rancher who Neves Sales worked for, was given a 27-year sentence for hiring the two killers. Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, another landowner accused of masterminding the murder, was released on bail while he awaits trial.
After Stang's death, murders in the area not only continued but actually increased in number, with 39 more killings in 2006 than in 2005, said Roziers.
"The concentration of land is a scandalous problem. There is a great deal of land in the hands of a few, and on the other side are rural workers with little or no land. That is what causes the conflicts," said the priest, who did not disregard, however, other causes like the interests of logging companies.
Stang, whose 23 years in Brazil were spent in Anapú, began to help local residents when the logging companies started to force them off their land to seize their wood. Her activism made her one of the top enemies of powerful local landowners, who were used to resolving land dispute problems with their own methods.
Roziers' analysis of the situation was echoed by the leader of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), João Pedro Stédile, a powerful national group that is fighting for faster, more effective land reform and is involved in other activities, such as combating abuses by agribusiness.
In an interview with IPS, Stédile applauded Moura's conviction and sentencing, pointing out that "in Brazil there is a tradition of impunity for those in power and for the murderers of workers and land reform activists."
"We hope this will serve as an example for other landowners and that it will encourage other judges to speed up the prosecutions in more than 700 cases of rural murders that have gone unpunished, including the (April 1996) ‘massacre of Carajás' in which 19 members of the MST were killed," said Stédile.
Although the sentence will not resolve land problems in the region, it could contribute to that aim if public institutions like the Brazilian Environment Institute, the National Land Reform Institute and the federal police "act together to combat the illegal occupation of land (by large landowners), slave labour and illegal logging, and to regularise land ownership" for landless farmers who occupy unproductive rural property, he argued.
Another route, said Stédile, would be to ban lumber exports to Europe, since "Europeans also share in the responsibility."
But the activist said he did not believe Moura's sentence would help achieve peace in the region, because "on one hand we have these retrograde landowners who don't really care about the justice system or the press. They are used to simply buying everything. And on the other hand, we have the logging companies that just want to turn a fast profit."
In his view, while one of the historic roots of the conflicts is the lack of a broad, profound land reform programme that would put limits on the size of privately-owned rural properties, the current causes are the lack of an integral development project based on the rational use of land and oriented towards the needs of the local population.
According to the Pastoral Land Commission, 3.5 percent of Brazil's landholders own nearly 60 percent of the best farmland, while the poorest 40 percent of farmers have a mere one percent.
Aton Fon, a lawyer for the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights, told IPS that the verdict was "very positive," because those who order this kind of crime are not generally tried, "much less jailed."
"In theory, the conviction should play a role in reducing human rights violations" and contributing to bringing about peace, said Fon, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case.
"But for this to be meaningful, a greater number of masterminds will have to be sentenced. If in five years, for example, between 80 and 90 percent of intellectual authors were convicted, we would begin to see practical repercussions" -- a scenario that is overly optimistic for Brazil in the short- to medium-term, however, said the attorney. (END/2007)
---
Article originally available at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37757
IRC Americas Program Report
Allied with Brazilian Agribusiness, Syngenta Resists Governor's Decree to Expropriate Site
Rennie Lee | May 17, 2007
Americas Program, International Relations Center (IRC) americas.irc-online.org
March 14 marked the one-year anniversary of the Via Campesina's non-violent occupation of Syngenta Seeds' experimental test site in Brazil. Last year 600 members of the Via Campesina occupied the 123-hectare site in Santa Tereza do Oeste, in the state of Paraná, after it was discovered that Syngenta had illegally planted 12 hectares of genetically modified soybeans at the site. Syngenta's plantation was located within the protective boundary zone of the Iguaçu National Park (the boundary distance has since been modified), which was declared Patrimony of Humanity by the United Nations in 1986. The occupation has become one the most powerful symbols in the world of civil society's resistance to agribusiness, as it continues to paralyze all of Syngenta's activities at the site, costing the corporation tens of millions of dollars. It also spurred Paraná state Governor Roberto Requião to sign a decree on November 9, 2006 to expropriate the site for the public interest. Yet despite Requião's decree, the magnitude of Syngenta's environmental crime, and continuous pressure from social movements and civil society around the world, the realization of the expropriation of the site from Syngenta is threatened due to the immense power of agribusiness in Brazilian politics.
Syngenta
Syngenta is a multinational agribusiness corporation headquartered in Switzerland. Sygnenta has operations in over 90 countries, and employs over 19,500 people. In 2006, Syngenta's sales totaled US$8.1 billion, with 80% of its revenue deriving from agrochemicals and 20% from seed production. The corporation ranks third in global seed sales.
Syngenta is the result of more than two centuries of mergers of European chemical companies. According to Brian Tokar, author of Earth for Sale , Syngenta's oldest predecessor was J.R. Geigy Ltd., which was founded in Switzerland in 1758, and commenced to produce industrial chemicals including paints, dyes, and other products. Geigy's rise to fame and fortune began in 1939, when it discovered the insecticidal efficacy of Dicloro Difenil Tricloroetano (DDT). Syngenta also has roots in Industrial Chemical Industries (ICI), an explosives company founded in Britain in 1926 by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. ICI would supply the Allied Forces during WWII with both explosives and chemicals for chemical warfare. In 1940, ICI discovered the selective properties of alphanapthylacetic acid, leading to the synthesis of the herbicides MCPA and 2,4-D. T he herbicide Agent Orange, derived from ICI's 2,4-D, would later be used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to obliterate dense jungles. In 1970 Geigy and Ciba merged to form Ciba-Giegy, a massive corporation with operations in over 50 countries. In 1994 Zeneca Group PLC was established after ICI demerged its pharmaceutical, pesticide, and specialty chemicals. Zeneca merged with Astra AB of Sweden in 1998, becoming AstraZeneca. In 1996, Sandoz, another Swiss company formed in 1876, merged with Ciba-Giegy to form Novartis, the largest corporate merger in history to that date. In 2000, Novartis merged with AstraZeneca's agribusiness to form Syngenta, the first global group to focus exclusively on agribusiness.
Biotechnology is particularly important to Syngenta. Between 2001 and 2004, Syngenta was responsible for the largest case of genetic contamination in history, when it illegally sold unapproved genetically-modified (GM) Bt10 corn seeds to farmers in the United States, resulting in the entrance of this corn into human and animal food chains. Syngenta has also been at the helm of the development of "Terminator Technology," a process of genetic engineering which renders the seeds of crops sterile in an effort to force farmers to repeatedly purchase its seeds, as opposed to small farmers' traditional practice of selecting, saving, and sharing seeds independently.
Syngenta's Crime and the Occupation
Ciba-Geigy began operations in Brazil in 1971 and became Syngenta in 2001. In early March of 2006, Terra de Direitos, a non-governmental human rights organization in Curitiba that works closely with social movements, filed a grievance against the corporation with the Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA) accusing it and 12 farmers of illegally planting transgenic soy within the protective zone of the Iguaçu National Park. Given their threats to biodiversity, under Brazilian federal law, it is illegal to plant GM crops within the protective zones of national parks. An IBAMA investigation confirmed that Syngenta and the farms were in violation of federal environmental law and fined each one. Syngenta's fine came to about US$465,000. However, while all of the farmers appealed the fine, lost, and subsequently paid their fines, Syngenta has refused to acknowledge that it broke the law and is the only producer to fail to pay the fine.
Following the IBAMA investigation that found Syngenta in violation of environmental law, the Via Campesina non-violently occupied the Syngenta site. The movements and Terra de Direitos legally defend the occupation based on a constitutional clause that states that land must serve a social function. They argue that the Syngenta farm was not fulfilling its social function, and that the illegal cultivation of transgenic soy within the protective boundary zone of the Iguaçu National Park constituted a direct threat to Brazilian society since it put at risk the nation's biodiversity, natural resource wealth, and food system.
In July, Terra de Direitos and Via Campesina launched an international solidarity campaign to support the occupation, garnering the support of over 75 organizations around the world. The campaign sent emails directly to Pedro Rugeroni, the head of Syngenta in Brazil, demanding that the corporation pay the fine to IBAMA, and acknowledge its wrongdoing. The campaign also sent emails to Requião, urging him to expropriate the site from Syngenta. In response, Syngenta bought a full-page ad in two of Brazil's largest newspapers, and published a PR message in its defense. In its hostile response to campaign supporters, it continued to deny any crime and attacked the "illegal invasion" of its site.
Requião's Decree to Expropriate
Throughout the occupation, Governor Requião has been sympathetic to the Via Campesina. Days after the occupation, a state judge ordered the "return of property" to Syngenta, whereby the state was required to evict the occupiers (with police force if necessary) and return the property to Syngenta. Requião appealed the decision. In October, a state judge ruled that unless Requião complied with the order of "return of property" by Nov. 3, he would incur a daily fine of US$25,000. In a strategic move to avoid the fine to be levied against Requião, on Nov. 1 the Via Campesina de-occupied the Syngenta farm and camped on the roadside just outside of the property.
On Nov. 9, days after Requião was re-elected as governor, he signed a decree to expropriate the site from Syngenta, and the Via Campesina reoccupied the site in anticipation of the expropriation. According to a statement released by the Paraná government, the legal basis for the expropriation decree is founded on a constitutional clause that gives Brazilian states the sovereignty to "protect notable natural areas and the environment, combat pollution of whatever form, and to preserve the forests, fauna, and flora." The decree also emphasizes "the significant fragility of the biggest and most important remnant of the semi-deciduous seasonal forest in the country, in the Iguaçu National Park." Requião announced his intent to turn the site into a center for research and education in sustainable agriculture for small farmers and landless workers.
According to Maria Rita Reis, lawyer for Terra de Direitos, "The decree is totally legal because the government in Brazil has the option to expropriate anything under the concept of public interest. In Brazil, the municipality can expropriate, just as the state or the federal government can utilize expropriation." Reis notes that the state is required to pay Syngenta for the infrastructure and market value of the land.
The implications of the expropriation decree are significant for the social movements as well as multinational and Brazilian agribusiness interests . The decision by the State of Paraná to expropriate land from a multinational agribusiness corporation is unprecedented in Brazil, and indeed worldwide. It has dealt a blow to agribusiness, shaking its power in the country. The decree is also an important political win for the social movements. All around the world, Via Campesina's occupation of Syngenta has become one of the most powerful symbols of the ability of civil society to resist and challenge agribusiness.
However, the combined power of Syngenta and Brazilian agribusiness threatens to block implementation of the expropriation decree. Syngenta has vowed to fight the decree and has formed a strategic political alliance with the rural caucus (bancada ruralista) in the Brazilian legislature, a group of federal and state politicians representing the interests of the Brazilian rural elite. Rural caucus members and multinational agribusiness are determined to maintain the dominant economic model of agricultural production for export, through which both groups derive their power. Since Requião's decree would strengthen opposition to this model of agricultural production, the rural caucus has a strong interest in overturning the decree.
Land Concentration, the Rural Caucus, and the MST
Agroexport production has dominated the Brazilian rural landscape since Portuguese colonization. The model, based on the extensive monoculture of commodity crops (historically of sugarcane), has sacrificed food production to generate capital. Although Brazil is one of the world's leading agricultural producers, with the ninth largest economy in the world, according to the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, almost 40% of Brazilians do not have enough to eat. The agroexport model of economic development has resulted in Brazil having one of the highest rates of land distribution inequality in the world, and one of the most unequal rates of income distribution.
In the early 1980s, the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) began to organize poor, rural families in southern Brazil to non-violently occupy the idle lands of large landowners to pressure the government to expropriate the land for agrarian reform. Over the past nearly 30 years, the MST has successfully organized to pressure the government to expropriate land for 370,000 families. The MST advocates a model of rural development in direct contrast to the agroexport model. Its model emphasizes family farmers working small and medium-sized plots of land, producing food for Brazilians, and using agro-ecological production techniques.
As the MST's organization and power expanded, the rural caucus formed to oppose this powerful movement, and represent and protect the interests of those few Brazilians who benefit from the agroexport model. According to Nilton Tubino, parliamentary assistant to Adão Pretto, a federal deputy of the Workers Party (PT) from Rio Grande do Sul, "The web of relationships of the rural caucus is very large, in diverse regions of the country. Its members have always had influence in congress, but the caucus began to organize during the discussion and vote on the constitution of 1988, when the question of ownership of land and its expropriation for agrarian reform was introduced."
Brazil's Strategic Importance to Multinational Agribusiness
The alliance between the Brazilian rural elite and multinational agribusiness began during the military dictatorship, when the government, with pressure and financing from the United States, adopted the Green Revolution. The chemical corporations that had boomed during wartime needed to reinvent themselves to survive; industrialized, chemical-intensive agriculture was their answer. The Green Revolution exacerbated landlessness, rural unemployment, and food scarcity, expelling millions of Brazilians from the countryside. Within a decade, Brazil's population changed from being primarily rural to mostly urban. Today, 82% of Brazilians live in urban areas.
In the early 2000s, Brazil assumed strategic importance to the survival and expansion of agribusiness. Both Brazilian landowners and multinational agribusiness have greatly profited from the country's soy production and export boom. Today, Brazil is the second largest exporter of soybeans in the world, second only to the United States. While Brazilian landowners control the land and cultivation of soy, multinational agribusinesses control the international grain trade and inputs, including agrotoxins, fertilizers, and transgenic seeds. Given Brazil's vast size, natural resource wealth, and favorable climate for agricultural production, opening up Brazil to transgenic crops has been a huge boon for agribusiness.
Soon after he was elected in 2002, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva legalized the cultivation of GM soy in Brazil. Darci Frigo, lawyer and director of Terra de Direitos, explains that the government in effect legalized transgenic soy through an illegal process of fait acompli. In 2001, when all transgenics were illegal in Brazil, the U.S.-based Monsanto Corporation knew that farmers in Rio Grande do Sul were illegally importing and planting its patented Roundup Ready soybeans from farmers in Argentina. Monsanto then pressured Lula into legalizing its Roundup Ready soybeans by claiming a legal right to collect royalties for 'its' seeds that were already being cultivated in the country. Under the same pretext, Monsanto, Syngenta, Du Pont, and Bayer are currently pressuring the National Technical Commission for Biodiversity (CTNBio) to legalize transgenic corn.
In recent years, as the power and illegal activities of multinational agribusinesses have increased in Brazil, the social movements have begun targeting these corporations. In 2003, various social movements occupied Monsanto's experimental site in Paraná, destroying its plantation of transgenic corn. The MST remained at the site for more than one year.
The occupations of the multinationals by the Via Campesina also represent the growing force of the global, popular struggle against agribusiness. While all of the occupants of Syngenta are members of the MST, they are also members of the international La Via Campesina social movement. The MST is one movement of more than 150 social movements from five continents that compose La Via Campesina, which was founded in 1993. In order to highlight the global nature of the struggle against agribusiness, the organizers of the occupation of Syngenta have been careful to maintain that it is an occupation of the Via Campesina.
Rural Caucus Moves to Block Expropriation
Because of the potential impacts of Requião's decree, the rural caucus is racing to Syngenta's aid in an alliance that has strengthened Syngenta's political battle against the decree, and maintained its impunity for its violation. According to Reis, caucus members played a major role in reducing the distance of the protective zone for national parks from 10 kilometers to 500 meters. This change, signed into law by Lula in March, confounds the effort to hold Syngenta accountable for the environmental violation since the experimental site is located six kilometers from the Iguaçu National Park.
Within the Rural Caucus, Federal Deputy Abelardo Lupion, of the Liberal Front Party (PFL) from western Paraná, is Syngenta's most important ally in its political battle to overturn Requião's decree. Lupion is a longtime caucus member, and a staunch supporter of agribusiness. Almost every single one of the 34 companies that contributed electoral funds to Lupion's 2006 election is an agribusiness, including two that were found to practice slave labor. While Tubino maintains that no direct financial connection between Syngenta and Lupion has been discovered, he points out that Lupion receives money from other seed companies.
Lupion has a personal vendetta against the social movements. He was one of the primary authors of the official report published by the CPMI da Terra, a federal investigation into the root causes of rural violence in Brazil. The legislative investigation that led to the report was initiated in 2005, after U.S.-born Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered by two landowners in the Amazonian state of Pará. The original report, written mostly by members of the PT, concludes that rural violence is due to Brazil's highly unequal land distribution, and because the country has yet to realize an agrarian reform.
Immediately following release of the first report, Lupion, along with other members of the Rural Caucus, succeeded in annulling it. They published a second report that concludes that rural violence is caused by land occupations. The second report also proposes that land occupation be considered an "Act of Terror" and a "Crime of Hedonism," which would increase the legal penalty for an occupation. According to Tubino, the caucus members used the report to "criminalize and delegitimize social movements in society." The second report was the officially accepted report of the CPMI da Terra .
Not long after the official report of the CPMI da Terra was published, in May of 2006, journalist Solano Nascimento published an article in the Correio Braziliense that linked Lupion to Monsanto in a corrupt relationship. After successfully forcing Lula to legalize transgenic soy in Brazil, Monsanto sought to legalize glyphosate, a toxic herbicide sold commercially by the corporation as Roundup. In 2004, Lupion pushed through a series of federal amendments that legalized glyphosate in Brazil. After its legalization, Monsanto's sales of Roundup increased by more than 30%. Nascimento reports that in the same year, Monsanto sold Lupion the Santa Rita farm in western Paraná for one-third of its market value. After Nascimento's story was published, various politicians, social movements, and civil society organizations (including Terra de Direitos) opened a federal investigation into Lupion's alleged corruption. Days before the national elections last November, when the MST camped in front of the Santa Rita farm to bring public attention to the case, Lupion publicly vowed that he would "destroy the MST."
On June 27 Lupion proposed that the federal Commission of Agriculture, Livestock, Supply, and Rural Development (CAPADR) undertake an investigation into the Via Campesina's occupation of Syngenta, and in December the proposal was approved. The commission "is almost entirely made up of members of the Rural Caucus, and it has the agenda to represent the interests of agribusiness," says Tubino. The CAPADR investigation is attacking Requião's decree in several ways.
First, the CAPADR investigation is attempting to negate Syngenta's crime by attempting to criminalize the manner in which IBAMA found out about the crime—via the grievance filed by Terra de Direitos. "It is ridiculous to try and impede an organization of civil society from filing a grievance," says Reis. "The grievance filed by Terra de Direitos was totally legal. In Brazil social movements, indeed any organization or citizen, has the right to file a grievance with public bodies. IBAMA is a public body and these exist to serve the public interest. Syngenta acted illegally and IBAMA complied with the law."
The CAPADR investigation is also an attempt to criminalize Requião's relationship with the social movements, and his unwillingness to comply with the judicial order for the "return of property" to Syngenta. On this point, according to Tubino, CAPADR has overstepped its legal mandate because "it has limits of investigation, and cannot investigate the state. The state has autonomy."
The Rural Caucus has also been organizing at the state level to stop Requião's decree. In 2006, Rural Caucus members in the Legislative Assembly of Paraná proposed and won approval to form a Special Investigative Commission of Farm Invasions in the West of Paraná, which published its final report in December. Almost the entire document is focused on the occupation of Syngenta. The final report claims that the social movements, with Requião's acceptance, are "creating areas without law within the territory of Paraná ... as for example, the case of the invasion of Syngenta Seeds." The report makes no reference to Syngenta's crime.
In addition to political attacks by the Rural Caucus, Syngenta has filed several judicial actions against Requião's decree in the courts. On April 20 the Paraná Supreme Court annulled Requião's decree, ruling that the proposal to install an agroecological research and education center is not a valid reason for expropriation in the public interest. On April 27 Requião suffered yet another blow in the justice system when a judge decided once again that unless the governor complies with the court order of return of property, he will again face a personal fine of about US$25,000. At this moment, Requião faces enormous political and juridical pressure to expel the occupants from the Syngenta site.
According to José Maria Tardin, of the MST's Sector of Production and Coordinator of the Via Campesina's Latin American School for Agroecology in Paraná, "Syngenta acts as though Brazil is its backyard and the Brazilian people its vassal. When the Judicial Power refuses to see and consider this sad reality, and decides for the return of property in favor of Syngenta, it shows once again its dominant, bourgeoisie, elitist, exclusive, anti-democratic, and violent face. Or, rather, its historic face: conservative, anti-popular, at the service of the rich. A powerful rein which impedes us from creating a sovereign nation and people."
Much is at stake in the battle to maintain the expropriation decree. The decree questions the public benefits of Brazil's agroexport model that enriches primarily wealthy landowners and multinational agribusiness corporations, and strengthens the hand of the movements calling for an agricultural model geared toward producing food and jobs for the majority of Brazilians. This transformation would necessarily entail a reorganization of Brazilian society, and a redistribution of land and wealth.
What is at Stake?
Through its alliance with the Rural Caucus, Syngenta has managed to seriously weaken Requião's decree to expropriate its experimental site. The group is supporting Syngenta's fight against Requião's decree in the political sphere because of the implications of the decree to its power. If the expropriation is realized, it will deal an enormous blow to the power of both multinational agribusiness and the interests defended by the Rural Caucus . For this reason, they are determined to stop the expropriation.
If Requião's decree is overturned, agribusiness' power will gain greater influence over Brazil's agricultural system and public politics, setting the stage for increased environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and concentration of land and wealth by these corporations. According to Tardin, "Agriculture occupies a strategic place in the accumulation of wealth, and biotechnology especially offers the multinationals the best techniques to gain absolute global control, and to manipulate that to their interests and necessities. It is through biotechnology that the multinationals make a concerted effort to achieve the maximum concentration of power over humanity's food system, and biotechnology therefore offers them an instrument of geopolitical-military control as never before."
The ability of the Rural Caucus to repress social movements will also be strengthened if Requião's decree is overturned. Through its discourse of 'land invasions,' the caucus is building an image of grassroots movements as 'violent,' 'lawless,' and even 'terrorist.' The increased dominance of agribusiness in the Brazilian countryside through illegal activities, influence-buying, and the criminalization of social movements could lead to heightened conflicts.
Says Reis, "If the agribusiness corporations continue to introduce GM crops illegally, without studies of their environmental impacts, I am certain that the social movements in Brazil are going to react. Agribusiness in Brazil promotes the concentration of land, concentration of wealth, and the violation of human rights, and we cannot remain paralyzed in the face of this. Brazil has strong social movements that are ready to confront this model of development."
Alternatively, if Requião's decree is upheld, the expropriation of Syngenta would force agribusiness to be more accountable and would weaken its hegemony in Brazil. The expropriation would also serve to expand public debate on the social function of land in Brazil to include issues of biosecurity, food sovereignty, food production, and agroecology.
Expanded public debate on what's good for the nation—not just the powerful elite—would set new precedents for Brazil's agricultural policies and the world. Additionally, the expropriation of Syngenta would offer civil society worldwide a tangible, popular method to resist and attack the behemoth of agribusiness power: non-violent occupations.
Rennie Lee is a freelance journalist covering Brazil and collaborating with the Americas Program at www.americaspolicy.org.
For More Information
La Via Campesina
(www.viacampesina.org)
Movement of the Landless Rural Workers
(www.mst.org.br)
Terra de Direitos
(www.terradedireitos.org.br)
Syngenta
(www.syngenta.com)
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Article originally available @ http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4239
Catholic Church Denounces Brazil's Agribusiness and Slavery
Written by Newsroom
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Brazil's Pastoral Land Commission, linked to the Brazilian Catholic Church, has just released its 2006 report on violence in the Brazilian countryside. The document blames the concentration of land in the hands of a few and the truculence of these owner for the oppression. There were 1212 conflicts related to possession as well as 72 homicide attempts and 39 people murdered. Below, the report in its entirety:
The data about conflict and violence in 2006 reaffirm that their basic causes remain untouchable: land ownership concentration, its defense as an almost absolute value, the truculence of those that appropriate land, and above all, impunity.
Rural workers continue to be oppressed and suffer violence. In 2006 there was a 176.92% increase in homicide attempts with respect to 2005. In 2006 there were 72, while the year before there were 26. The number of workers imprisoned also increased, from 261 workers in 2005 to 917 in 2006; an increase of 251.34%.
There was an increase of 2.63% in the number of murders. In 2006, 39 people were murdered. There were 38 in 2005. There were 10.54% fewer deaths in consequence of conflicts: 64 in 2005 and 57 in 2006. The number of persons who received death threats also fell: from 266 in 2005 to 207 in 2006, 22.18% fewer, and there were fewer victims of torture: 33 in 2005 versus 30 in 2006, a reduction of 2.09%.
Conflicts
One thousand two hundred and twelve conflicts related to possession, use, resistance and struggle for land were registered. These conflicts include struggles for land, occupations and encampments. A total of 140,650 families were involved.
It is important to note that almost 20% of these conflicts involved traditional communities and peoples, principally indigenous and descendents of communities of escaped slaves (quilombolas), in addition to other communities.
In these disputes over land, judicial evictions accounted for the removal of 19,449 families and an additional 1,809 were expelled by private means. These numbers represent a 24.08% reduction in the number of families evicted judicially in 2005 (25,618 families) and a reduction in non-judicial expulsions of 58.57% (4,366 families).
The judicial evictions did not involve just recent occupations, but areas that had been occupied for many years. In 2006 there was an eviction of an entire community of descendents of escaped slaves of the town of São Malaquias, municipality of Vargem Grande, Maranhão.
The families had lived in the area for more than a hundred years. The body of one, who had died the day of the eviction, had to be taken to another town for the wake, while his house was being destroyed. Among the cases of non-judicial expulsion, we note what happened in Murici, Alagoas, where 29 families were expelled by the well-known political family by the name of Calheiros.
Reading the numbers, relating them to the rural population of each state or region, gives another perspective. Where there is the greatest number of mobilized people in occupations and encampments, in the Center-South of the country, there the number of government created settlements is smaller.
On the other hand, the indices of violence suffered by the workers are considerably greater in the region where the movements are less active, as in the Amazon. With this, it is obvious that the rural violence cannot be attributed to the increased pressures of the rural mobilizations, but are directly linked to the historic truculence of the large landowners, today called "agribusiness."
Labor Conflicts
The violence that accompanies slave labor and other labor conflicts was significant in 2006. Three enslaved workers were assassinated, while there were no such cases in 2005. The number of enslaved workers liberated in 2006 was 20.67% smaller than the year before (3,633 as opposed to 4,585, all freed under the Labor Ministry's oversight), while the formal accusations of slave labor were 5.07% fewer.
Two hundred and sixty-two were received in 2006 versus 276 in 2005. The numbers of worker victims in these cases also fell, from 7,707 in 2005 to 6,930 in 2006, a reduction of 10.08%.
Impunity
For many years the Pastoral Land Commission has repeated that rural violence continues because of impunity. From 1985 to 2006, 1,104 conflicts were registered that resulted in one or more murders. One thousand four hundred and sixty four workers died. These deaths resulted in only 85 being brought to trial. Seventy-one of the murderers were convicted but only 19 of those who ordered the crimes were convicted.
It is necessary that Brazilian society demand more rigorous action on the part of its judiciary. An example of impunity is the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre, where 16 landless people were killed, on April 17, 1996. Though convicted, colonel Mário Colares Pantoja (sentenced to 228 years in prison) and captain José Maria Pereira (158 years), obtained the benefit of habeas corpus and today are out of jail while their cases are on appeal. To memorialize the workers' action, in 2002 a law was passed declaring that April 17 as the National Day of Struggle for Agrarian Reform.
Water Conflicts
Concerned about the situation in which thousands of Brazilian families live, the Pastoral Land Commission began in 2002 to register water conflicts. The registry is still timid and does not succeed in grasping the reality.
But behind each number there is an experience that needs visibility in society and public opinion, like the case of the little girl Géssia Rodrigues de Sousa, age 12. She died in February of this year when she fell 15 meters as she tried to "rob" water from the Senator Nilo Coelho Irrigation Canal, in Petrolina, Pernambuco. Géssia lived with her family in a settlement that ironically is called "Living Waters."
More than 189 families like Géssia live in that settlement and have no access to water suitable for human consumption for drinking, cooking and washing. The only source of this precious liquid is the irrigation canal that is three kilometers from the settlement and 15 meters high. It conducts water of the São Francisco River to the great irrigated projects that raise fruit for export (basically grape and mango).
Thirty-six per cent of the conflicts in 2006 were related to dams and hydroelectric production and 49% to pollution or destruction of bodies of water. Of the 45 water conflicts registered in 2006, 16 related to dams, 20 to use and preservation and nine to individual appropriation.
As to the problems, the most frequent were: destruction and or pollution, involving 22, barriers or access restriction in nine and threat of dispossession in five. As to their geographic distribution, they occurred in 20 states. Those of greatest occurrence were: Paraná with six, Minas Gerais with five and Mato Grosso do Sul and Tocantins with four each.
There are also signs that water conflicts will increase in the coming years with the implementation of infrastructure water projects included in the National Plan for Accelerated Growth (PAC). The projects are planned in areas where there are riverbank populations, indigenous peoples, historic communities of escaped slaves and other traditional communities.
One example is the hydroelectric power station of Belo Monte, in the middle of the Amazon. In the past the project was abandoned because of the predicted enormous environmental and social impacts, especially with respect to the numerous indigenous communities. Now it is included in the list of priorities of PAC. It will have the generating capacity of 5,881 megawatts, a bit more than one third of all new electric generation predicted for the years 2010 to 2015.
Another huge project that will affect various communities is the transfer of the waters of the São Francisco River. In PAC, this project will use more than half the proposed budget that pertains to water infrastructure (approximately $3.3 billion of a total of $6.3 billion, in USD).
The project, however, gives no priority to human consumption needs, contrary to what the federal government proclaims almost daily in the media. The truth is that it is destined for irrigation, shrimp production, and industrial use, like metal production. The high costs of the project will be charged to the entire population of the Northeast, whether or not a person receives benefits from the project.
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Article originally available at http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/8287/54/
BRAZIL:
Homeless Take Fate into Their Own Hands
Mario Osava
SAO PAULO, May 31 (IPS) - The occupation of the huge empty lot was carried out at night, by some 300 families. Just a few days later, there were nearly 5,000 families living in a sea of black tents in Valo Velho, a poor, sparsely populated neighbourhood in Itapecerica da Serra, on the outskirts of this Brazilian city.
For 62 days, starting on Mar. 16, the Joao Cándido Camp resisted the pressure to vacate the 1.2 million-square-metre property, which had stood empty for over a decade.
The eviction order, issued by a court on Mar. 18 at the request of the owner of the property, was not enforced until May 17.
But the families that had moved onto the land are not losing hope that they will eventually be able to reach an agreement with the authorities that would enable them to obtain decent low-cost housing.
Those two months were sufficient for the MTST or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (Movement of Homeless -- literally "Roofless" -- Workers) to convert the families into an organised community aware of their "right to decent housing" and mobilise them to press officials for a solution to their needs.
The people who occupied the land are mainly unemployed or underemployed slum-dwellers, who face the choice of paying rent or eating when they do have some income, through casual work, for example.
One of them, 46-year-old José Oliveira dos Santos, decided to join the camp the day after he was laid off from his job as a watchman at a nearby company.
"They didn't expect to see so many people in need of a place to live," he tells IPS. "A lot of people showed up in the early hours of the morning, despite the difficulties, like the lack of water, which we have to carry in jugs on our backs from far away."
Maria das Graças Cerqueira also moved into the camp a few days after the start of the occupation, the news of which spread swiftly through the surrounding neighbourhoods and to nearby towns and cities.
The 53-year-old widow, who is a domestic worker and is estranged from her three adult children, has now been allowed to live in a relative's store. "At my age, no one will give me work," she says.
She comments to IPS that she liked living in the camp, where she was in charge of the cooking for Group 10, the largest of the 34 groups into which the community was organised. Her group was made up of 180 families.
Das Graças Cerqueira says she made a lot of friends in the camp, with whom she would sit around talking "late into the night, in the warm, peaceful breeze."
>From now on, she says, "I will help out wherever the homeless set up camps."
The MTST has grown with each occupation it has staged since it emerged in 1997 as the urban equivalent of the MST -- the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers' Movement), the largest social movement in Latin America.
Hundreds of thousands of rural families in Brazil are living in well-organised MST camps or more permanent settlements around the country, pressing for faster, more effective land reform.
The success of the first occupation, in a semi-urban area of Campinas, 100 km from Sao Paulo, led to the construction of permanent, affordable housing there for 5,200 families. In the following years, the MTST expanded its activities throughout the poor areas on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and large cities in Brazil's impoverished northeast.
In Sao Bernardo do Campo, a city that forms part of the Greater Sao Paulo and that was impoverished by the exodus of car-making factories from the area, a July 2003 occupation of unused land by 300 families also attracted more than 4,000 families within just three weeks, who were later violently evicted by the police.
In the Sao Bernardo do Campo camp, the MTST was joined by Helena Silvestre, who is now one of the movement's state coordinators.
Silvestre was working as a telephone operator and was fired for fighting off sexual harassment by her boss. Estranged from her poor family of immigrants from Brazil's hinterland, and unable to afford rent, she decided to join the camp. She was only 17 years old.
"To help organise those who most need to secure their rights" was the reason she was drawn to the MTST. "I fell in love with the movement's capacity to restore people's control over their own lives and their ability to dream," she tells IPS.
She organises people living in favelas (shantytowns) in the so-called ABC Paulista, a string of industrial cities southeast of the capital of the state of Sao Paulo, to demand sanitation, affordable child care, cheaper energy and community gardens.
The charismatic Silvestre represents this MTST region in the movement's state coordinating body.
The habit of "expecting everything from the government," prolonged unemployment, and profound poverty that destroys people's "self-esteem and hopes for the future" are serious challenges faced by the movement for decent housing and public services, says the activist.
The beautiful young woman, whose features and brown skin reflect a typically Brazilian mix of black, indigenous and white, has not entirely escaped the problem of sexual harassment. "The movement is not an island; it reflects society's ‘machismo'," which she says is expressed "in a more aggressive" way among the poor.
Nevertheless, she adds that she can no longer imagine a future outside of this "intense life."
Despite the "machismo", women held half of the leadership posts in the Joao Cándido Camp, and "20 percent of the group coordinators lost their husbands, who refused to accept their new leadership roles," she says.
But the home "is a traditionally female-dominated space," and having a home for one's dependents is "a very strong feminine demand and need," she argued.
Giovana Nascimento, who has three children between the ages of three and 12, is one of those who did not accept her husband's ultimatum of "it's me or the movement." She has taken part in two camps in Osasco, west of Sao Paulo, and has won the right to build her own permanent home. But she says that in the MTST she learned "to think about others" and offer them her solidarity, as she continued to do in Itapecerica.
The MTST is only active on the outskirts of the cities, seeking out empty spaces and empty buildings where affordable housing can be built.
In that, it is similar to the MST, which stages occupations of unproductive land. Another similarity is the camps it sets up, of bamboo and wood covered with black plastic sheeting.
It also follows MST methods in its form of organisation and training of activists and communities, based on socialist ideals and using identical slogans, like "this struggle is for real".
However, the MTST has earned its autonomy from the MST and developed "its own methodology," carrying out its activities in different conditions, with a more fluid base of families and camps that last for a much shorter time than those set up in the countryside, says Gustavo Moura, one of the movement's coordinators in Sao Paulo.
At its peak, the Joao Cándido Camp held nearly 5,000 families, but more than 1,000 left after several weeks of deprivations and uncertainty, he remarks to IPS, to illustrate the group's more volatile grassroots base.
While the landless rural workers in the MST live in camps for years on unproductive private or public land, the occupations staged by the urban "roofless" last a maximum of a few months, and that requires a "fast-paced" style of organisation and training, he says.
In the Joao Cándido Camp, each of the 34 groups had its own collective kitchen and coordinators, to maintain discipline, improve infrastructure and secure food, which was provided by the families themselves or came from sporadic outside donations.
"Political training" is a priority in the near-daily meetings held by the coordinators, as are educational and cultural activities. "We defend the construction of socialism through the power of the people," without ties to political parties, explains Sergio Carozzi, a member of the regional coordinating committee in the western part of the Greater Sao Paulo area, which comprises Itapecerica.
"The movement does not believe in the electoral route" but in the "radical transformation of society," in which securing decent housing for poor shantytown-dwellers is "only a first step," he tells IPS. Jobs, quality education, health care and other rights are the following demands taken up by the movement.
The Joao Cándido Camp took its name from a black hero who led a revolt in 1910 to put an end to the routine practice of whipping sailors as punishment.
All of the MTST camps carry names chosen in assemblies which reflect the movement's ideals. Other names include Rosa Luxemburg, the legendary Polish Marxist revolutionary, and Chico Mendes, the Brazilian rubber-tapper who was murdered by ranchers in 1988 for his activism in defence of the Amazon jungle and local people.
MTST activists are all volunteers. They receive no payment, and the movement receives nothing from those in the camps or the people who have been mobilised. The movement's press services are provided by four volunteer journalists, and the educational activities, such as schooling for children and adult literacy classes, are carried out by teachers who volunteer their time and energy.
The communal, solidarity-based life in the camps acts as a kind of "therapy" for some, as in the case of a woman who was suffering severe depression but improved when she joined the camp in Taboao da Serra, another municipality in the Greater Sao Paulo area, says Marco Fernandes, a social psychologist who is a member of the coordinating committee in the western part of the region.
The woman fell back into depression when the camp broke up, but her symptoms disappeared again after she began to help organise the Joao Cándido Camp in Itapecerica.
That is the "addiction of the black sheeting," Fernández jokes to IPS.
The struggle for housing is a good school for learning about social injustice, as it reveals the glaring contradiction between the immense unused properties of the rich which coexist alongside millions of people who do not even have room to build a humble but dignified dwelling, in this "upside-down world," says Moura.
The area that was occupied by the camp in Itapecerica, which in the past was said to function as a clandestine airstrip, was purchased for one million reals (520,000 dollars) a few years ago by a company that now quotes its value at 40 times that price, he explains.
The more than 3,000 families in the camp peacefully pulled out on May 17, when the eviction order went into effect.
But the movement got the city government to grant it a smaller piece of property, for 350 homeless families, while the rest are waiting in the homes of relatives or friends for state or central government bodies to live up to their promise of identifying other available areas and finance the construction of affordable housing. (END/2007)
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Article originally available at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37980
Brazil: Biofuel Gold Rush Continues
Written by April Howard
Tuesday, 05 June 2007
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's call for Brazil to become a “green Saudi Arabia” over the next few years has investors giddy and environmental and workers organizations panicked.
Lula is a guest at the G8 summit this week in Germany. He recently returned from a three-day trip to India, which resulted in announcements that the two countries plan “to quadruple trade to $10 billion by 2010 and boost India's use of biofuels.”
While dismissing claims that biofuel production is wreaking environmental havoc in Brazil, Lula proposed that wealthy countries should fund both biofuel production and environmental conservation in developing countries. "Rich countries have to pay for the poor countries to avoid deforestation so they can adopt clean models for development that don't cause pollution or greenhouse gas emissions," Lula said. He also said that rich countries should "start to help African countries to start to produce biodiesel and ethanol so that we can create jobs in Africa and wealth.” At the same time, a variety of government entities are predicting that climate change will have a significant impact on Brazil’s agroindustries in the coming years.
Environmental groups such as ActionAid Brazil warn that the ethanol industry could repeat the mistakes of the soy industry, which turned 7 million acres of Amazon jungle into monoculture soy in 5 years. Many also question the sustainability of biofuels. Minnesota researchers published in the July 25th edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the production of biofuels creates a net energy loss, and that forested land absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than the use of biofuels saves.
The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) shares the above environmental concerns, and warns that the expansion of sugar cane plantations is both concentrating land ownership and creating slave labor working conditions. "The social cost of this policy is the over-exploitation of labour with an army of seasonal workers who cut one ton of sugar cane for 2.50 reals (1.28 dollars) in precarious conditions which have already caused the deaths of hundreds of workers," Pernambuco state MST leader Alexandre Conceicao told IPS.
The US and European international investment funds who are buying up large tracts of land for ethanol production show little concern for environmental or labor repercussions. IPS reports that “more than 15 billion dollars are being funnelled into the construction of 77 new ethanol plants that should be functioning by 2012, and the expansion of some of the 300 existing plants in Brazil. The investors include companies from the United States, Japan and China.”
In recent weeks, the biofuel gold rush has been eventful. The Sao Paulo Sugar Cane Agroindustry Union (UNICA) held the first "ethanol summit" on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Also of note was investor George Soros’ announcement that he has invested $900 million in 3 ethanol factories in Brazil. Soros called himself a “speculator,” and called for lower tariffs on biodiesel. His company Adeco already owns 150,000 hectares of sugar cane fields in Brazil. Large US corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill are looking for their slice of the pie, and many are pursuing investment opportunities in Brazil.
Brazil already produces 17 billions liters of ethanol a year, and sugarcane crops have expanded 13% in the last 3 years, to cover six million hectares of Brazilian land. The industry says that they will have to double production in the next 7 years to meet demand.
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Article originally available @ http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/766/1/
On June 13th of 2006, Via Campesina - Brazil presented the report, 'O Latifundio dos Eucaliptos' to the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul (RS). Christine Campos, of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of RS, stressed the importance of this event, identifying the report as a tool to educate civil society as to the negative impacts of large scale production of Eucalyptus. Campos went on to say, "The action of the women of Via Campesina
[SEE http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=node/299] did not occur without consequence, and there was significant motivation for their action. With respect to moving from debate towards action, we firmly believe that we must be part of the resistance of the Brazilian people against the aggresive nature of a development paved by Eucalyptus".
Download the complete report in PDF (Portuguese only):
http://www.mst.org.br/cartilhaeucalipto.pdf
Also, see the Via Campesina Annual Report: Violations of Peasants' Human Rights - A Report on Cases and Patterns of Violeneces 2006
http://viacampesina.org/main_en/images/stories//annual-report-HR-2006.pdf
Protesters invade work site in attempt to stop Brazil river project
The Associated Press
Published: June 27, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Hundreds of protesters have invaded the site where army engineers are beginning work on a huge river-diversion project meant to irrigate Brazil's arid northeast, officials said Wednesday.
The protesters — a coalition of environmentalists, land reform activists and Truka Indians — are seeking to halt work on the project they claim will cause widespread damage to the 3,160 kilometer (1,600 mile) Sao Francisco River, Brazil's fourth-largest.
The protesters, monitored by police, have camped out since Tuesday on part of the site where military engineers are surveying the spot where the river will be diverted into a new channel.
"The process, as it has been conducted up until now, has not been democratic ... and that discredits the project," the protesters said in a statement.
The project, estimated to cost US$2 billion (€1.6 billion), will speed the river's flow to the sea, causing parts of the river to dry up, the protesters say. They also claim it would principally benefit large agribusiness interests and builders.
Mayor Eudes Caldas of Cabrobo, a small town in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, near where the diversion will take place, estimated the number of protesters had grown from 200 on Tuesday to about 800 on Wednesday. The demonstrators said there were 1,500 people among their ranks
"The situation is under control," Caldas said in a telephone interview. He added that federal government officials had arrived to negotiate with the protesters and that police are awaiting a court order to remove them.
Caldas said the protesters, who were camped out under tarpaulins in lean-tos, had only partially succeeded in stopping work on the project.
Protesters also claim the government failed to honor its promise to Roman Catholic Bishop Luiz Flavio Cappio, who held an 11-day hunger strike in Cabrobo 2005 in an attempt to stop diversion of the river.
Cappio called off his hunger strike only after the federal government agreed to halt the project until it could be submitted to ample public discussion.
The government says that changing the river's course will benefit some 12 million poor people.
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Article originally available @ http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/27/america/LA-GEN-Brazil-River-Diversion.php
Brazil irrigation project hit by occupation
27 Jun 2007 20:51:26 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Raymond Colitt
BRASILIA, June 27 (Reuters) - Close to 1,500 Indians and landless peasants have occupied one construction site in Brazil's largest irrigation project and halted work there, activists said on Wednesday.
It is the latest in a series of land occupations this year that are testing the patience of investors in agriculture and infrastructure.
The proposed irrigation project is to pump water from the San Francisco River through 435 miles (700km) of canals to residents and farms in the dry Northeast, where President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva grew up. The venture will cost up to 6.5 billion reais ($3.4 billion) and construction, which began in March, will span years.
"Construction at the water intake site is halted," said Jose Barros of the rural workers' union in Oroco in northeastern Pernambuco state. But other construction sites were not affected by the protests, Barros told Reuters on Wednesday.
The Army said it began construction on the base camp and not the canals at the intake site two weeks ago
"During the occupation there was no aggression by protesters," the Army press office said.
The protesters, who began arriving on Tuesday, are demanding alternative irrigation initiatives be implemented.
"We won't leave until this project is canceled," said Josivaldo de Oliveira, one of the camp coordinators.
Protesters said the project costs too much and benefits too few. Environmentalists fear reducing the river's water level could affect navigability, fish migration and biodiversity.
Civil rights groups, landless peasants and tribal Indians from five states are camped out at the site where the river was to be tapped and are planting crops and trees, the Catholic Church's Indian group Cimi said.
Bishops Luiz Cappio and Jose Geraldo from neighboring Bahia state are to visit the camp on Thursday and participate in a religious service in solidarity with the protesters. Cappio drew international attention with a hunger strike in protest of the project in October 2005.
Already, damming and deforestation have caused considerable silt accumulation along the river's banks, according to government experts.
AlertNet
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Article originally available @ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27244475.htm
Court frees Stang murder suspect
BBC News, June 29 2006
**MORE NEWS BELOW**
Brazil's Supreme Court has freed a man awaiting trial on charges of orchestrating the murder of a Catholic nun and activist, Dorothy Stang.
In a three-to-two vote, the Court decided keeping Regivaldo Pereira Galvao in custody violated his rights.
The decision has been decried by the family and supporters of Ms Stang, who say he might abscond or try to intimidate witnesses.
Ms Stang spent 30 years campaigning for peasant rights and against logging.
The 73-year-old from Dayton, Ohio, was found on a muddy track in the rainforest, shot six times, in February 2005.
Testimony -
The death followed a long-running dispute with ranchers over a patch of forest which they wanted to clear for pasture land, and Ms Stang wanted declared a sustainable development reserve.
Three men have already been convicted over her murder - two gunmen and one intermediary.
During those trials testimony was given that Mr Galvao, along with another rancher Vitalmiro Moura, ordered and paid for Ms Stang to be killed. Both men have been charged but have yet to face trial.
Mr Galvao has been in custody pending trial since April 2005, but on Thursday Brazil's Supreme Court ruled his pre-trial imprisonment illegal and ordered his immediate release.
The judges threw out a previous ruling that his detention was necessary to preserve public order.
'Insult' -
"I am dumbfounded," Ms Stang's brother David Stang told the Associated Press news agency from his home in Colorado.
"This is a man whose involvement in the killing has been documented in a trial. There's no doubt about his duplicity.
"My sister loved Brazil, she loved the Amazon, she loved the constitution. This decision is an insult to her and to the family."
Other supporters say they are concerned Mr Galvao could disappear, as suspects in similar cases have done in the past, or could threaten witnesses.
More than 750 land activists are thought to have been killed in the Amazonian state of Para in the last three decades, but only nine killers have been convicted.
Convictions for those who orchestrate such killings are even rarer.
This is often blamed on corrupt links between the region's landowners and loggers on one hand, and police and politicians on the other.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/5131658.stm
Published: 2006/06/29 23:41:55 GMT
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Supreme Court Concedes Liberty for the Orchestrator of Sister Dorothy Stang’s Assassination
Yesterday, June 29th, 2006, the first group of the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), acting contrary to all of the decisions of earlier courts who were closer to the case, gave habeas corpus to Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, a businessman who was imprisoned as a suspect for ordering the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang. Following this decision, Regivaldo will await his trial in liberty. In reporting his vote, Minister Cezar Peluso, considered that “preventative imprisonment is absolutely illegal.? His vote was concurred with by ministers Sepúlveda Partence and Marco Aurélio Melo. Those against the concession were ministers Ricardo Lewandowski and Carlos Ayres Brito.
The National Coordination of the Pastoral Land Commission, meeting in Goiânia, following this astonishing decision, has the following statement to make:
It is not at all new for the justice system to accord such privileges, especially for those who are more capable financially, or who have distinct positions in society. The very same STF gave the privilege of liberty to Colonel Mário Pantoja and Major José Maria Oliveira, who were respectively condemned to 228 and 158 years of prison for the massacre at Eldorado de Carajás.
As one of the judges affirmed at the trial of one of the gunmen involved in the assassination, liberty for this businessman, who led the consortium of people involved in the murder of Sister Dorothy, aside from being an affront, is a threat to workers, leaders, and human rights defenders in the region. This liberty certainly will be enjoyed by intimidating witnesses against the suspect. Also, it will not be difficult at all for other leaders to become targets of violence on the part of this group. On the other hand, this liberty also signifies impunity, because this businessman, known in the Trans-Amazon region as Taradão, has financial conditions which are more than sufficient to flee the region and the country, so that he will not be subjected to judgment and consequently condemnation, as was exemplified with Jerônimo Amorim, Adilson Laranheira, and Vantuir de Paula, other powerful farmers who ordered the assassination of union leaders Expedito Ribeiro e João Canuto, from Rio Maria, also in Pará.
The state of Pará has a history marked by impunity in relation to crimes which occur in rural areas. The CPT in Pará presented a report to the president of the State Tribunal for Justice which related that of the 774 murders which occurred in the state in the past 35 years, about 70% of cases did not have any sort of investigation over who was responsible for the crimes. No one involved with ordering crimes has been sentenced and served their punishment behind bars. This decision of the STF reinforces the state of impunity and contributes towards the continuation of violence against those who defend life and the Amazon forest.
The CPT once again affirms what we have said many times. There are two systems of weight and two systems of measure within the Brazilian justice system. The same STF, which granted habeas corpus to Regivaldo in December 2005 decided to oust the Guarani-Kaiowa indigenous peoples from the village of Ñande Ru Marangatu, in the municipality of João Antônio, Mato Grosso, with the suspension of the acts of official confirmation made by the president of the Republic. This occurred in the area traditionally occupied by the people of the Kaiowá Nãndeva, dislocating than 500 indigenous people to be living on the side of a road.
For the Brazilian justice system, as a whole, and for the liberty of workers, accused of misdemeanors, there are always risks. Why is it that 42 workers from the MLST, in prison for participating in an act at the Federal Congress, cannot respond in liberty to the process, and further, that they are asking for the preventive imprisonment of the other 73 people? As much as some benefits are granted within the law to businessmen and people of status, these same privileges are ignored for workers.
Who represents a larger risk for Brazilian society: the workers who struggle for rights and land reform, or those who use economic and political power to concentrate more wealth, make slaves out of men and the land, and who threaten and murder leaders?
We demand the immediate judgment of Regivaldo and Vitalmiro, accuse of being the people who mandated the murder of Sister Dorothy. Impunity cannot prevail!
Goiânia, June 30, 2006
National Coordination
Information: Department of communication: (011) 55 –62-4008-6466 / 6406 / 6412
For Interviews: Dom Xavier Gilles, President, CPT: 011-55 – 98-3351-1174 or 98-8137-7077
Dom Tomás Balduino, Counselor, CPT: 011-55-62-9977-4740
José Batista Gonçalves Afonso, national coordinator, 011-55-94-3226-6491
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Suspected of ordering the death of North-American missionary Dorothy Stang, Regivaldo Galvão was released today
Manaus, June 29, 2006 -- Regivaldo Galvão, also known as Taradão, a rancher accused of ordering the assassination of the missionary Dorothy Stang, in Anapu (PA), in February 2005, was released today, after spending a little over a year in prison. By a majority of votes (three to two), the First Group of the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), deferred to habeas corpus as the reason to release the suspect, as he awaits his trial in liberty. Ironically, the trial was being postponed by the very resources the accused, himself, was using. The hired gunmen who committed the crime, Rayfran das Neves and Clodoaldo Batista, and the intermediary, Amair Feijoli, were already tried and convicted for 27, 17, and 18 years in prison, respectively. The other organizer of the assassination, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, known as Bida, is awaiting judgment in prison.
“The decision of the STF caused indignation throughout society. Justice needs to be taken immediately through trying the orchestrators of the crime, without any more stalling, so as to avoid consolidating impunity, and putting at risk the integrity of all citizens? said André Muggiati, of Greenpeace. Impunity in Pará is nothing new. Another large-scale farmer accused of ordering the murder of union leader Orlando Canuto, in Marabá, has been waiting in liberty for 18 years for his trial within the state’s justice system.
For the president of the Commission of Human Rights of the Order of Brazilian Lawyers of Pará (OAB-PA), Mary Cohen, the decision sparks violence. “To let free the person accused of doing such a heinous crime against a defender of human rights such as was Sister Dorothy also leaves all of the other defenders of human rights in Amazonia more vulnerable to the predators of the forest and of life,? she stated.
Sister Dorothy
A north-american missionary who became a naturalized Brazilian, Dorothy Stang, a 73 year-old, was murdered with six shots in Anapu, in the state of Pará, on February 12, 2005. Sister Dorothy lived in the Trans-Amazon region for more than 30 years, and dedicated almost half of her life to defending the rights of rural workers against the interests of the ranchers and the illegal land claimers in the region, in an absolutely peaceful manner. Since 1972, she worked with the rural communities in Anapu for land rights and for sustainable development, without the destruction of the forest.
More Information:
Patrícia Bonilha - Assistant to the Press, Greenpeace (55) 92 4009-8024 / 1550
Brazil stages raid against debt slavery at Amazon sugar cane-ethanol plantation
The Associated Press
Published: July 3, 2007
BRASILIA, Brazil: Brazilian authorities said they raided an Amazon plantation where more than 1,000 laborers were found working 14 hour days in horrendous conditions cutting sugar cane for ethanol production.
Authorities said the raid was Brazil's biggest to date against debt slavery, a practice that lures poor laborers to remote spots, where they rack up debts to plantation owners who charge exorbitant prices for everything from food to transportation.
But the Amazon plantation's owner — the biggest ethanol producer in the northeastern state of Para — vigorously denied the charges Tuesday and said the workers make good money by Brazilian standards.
The raid was in the remote town of Ulianopolis, the government-run Agencia Brasil news agency said late Monday. The company running the plantation said the government action started Friday and lasted three days.
Police found 1,108 poor workers working from 3 a.m. until 5 p.m. with only a short break for lunch, Humberto Celio, coordinator of the Labor Ministry's special unit that frees debt slaves, told Agencia Brasil.
Many of them were sick because of spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities, Celio said.
The company, Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, has been in operation since 1969 and each year produces 50 million liters (13.2 million gallons) of ethanol, often billed as an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline.
A Para Pastoril executive said allegations of abuse at the 10,000-hectare (24,700-acre) plantation are "totally false."
"We have never had these type of problems and we must submit to constant government inspections," the executive, Fernao Zancaner, said in a telephone interview. The Labor Ministry said no one would be available to comment until Tuesday afternoon.
The company has 1,800 employees, Zanacer said. Sugar cane cutters receive between 700 to 800 reals (US$368 to US$421) per month, far above the nation's minimum wage of 380 reals (US$200). In the Amazon region, many workers make less than the minimum.
Brazil is a huge user of ethanol because eight out of every 10 new cars sold are "flex-fuel" models that run on gasoline, ethanol or any combination of the two. Ethanol currently sells for about half the price of gasoline in Brazil.
Brazil is also a major ethanol exporter and is receiving billions of dollars (euros) of investment amid rising international demand for the alternative fuel.
But the country is under heavy pressure to improve working conditions for the sugar cane cutters who harvest much of the cane. They use machetes to chop down tons of cane daily for wealthy Brazilians and corporations that own the plantations.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in May pledged to bring industry leaders and workers together to "to discuss the humanization of the sugar cane sector in this country."
The promise came after Silva was widely criticized at home for calling Brazil's ethanol producers "national and world heroes." Critics say producers pocket huge profits while the workers suffer.
Brazil's Labor Ministry has been monitoring farmers and ranchers with a group it calls the Mobile Verification Task Force, which conducted the raid on the Para state plantation.
Founded in 1995, the group says it has freed more than 21,000 workers from debt slave conditions at more than 1,600 farms across Brazil. The Roman Catholic Church's Land Pastoral group that helps rural workers in Brazil estimates there are currently some 25,000 workers living in slave-like conditions in the nation, most of them in the Amazon.
The Amazon raid was larger than a 2005 raid when 1,000 workers were found laboring under similar conditions at a sugar cane-ethanol plantation in the central state of Mato Grosso.
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AP Business Writer Alan Clendenning contributed from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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Article originally available @
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/03/america/LA-GEN-Brazil-Debt-Slavery.php
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SEE ALSO: Brazil - Slaves Freed From Biofuel Plantation
Written by April Howard
Wednesday, 04 July 2007
Authorities in Brazil say they freed over 1,000 workers who were being held captive as “debt slaves” at an ethanol producing sugarcane plantation.
The Brazilian Ministry of Justice said that police from the Mobile Verification Task Force freed 1,108 workers who were cutting sugarcane for 14 hours a day: from 3 a.m. until 5 p.m., with only a short break for lunch. Those who were in debt were “living in a horrifying condition in cramped shelters with poor sanitation.” Humberto Celio, co-ordinator of the Mobile Verification Task Force, told Agencia Brasil that many workers were sick due to spoiled food and contaminated water.
Debt slavery is common in Brazil, especially in the ethanol trades, where laborers come from far away to work on plantations and are forced to pay high prices for the costs of living. Those who fall in debt are forced to work overtime or without pay to compensate.
The 10,000 hectare plantation, located in Ulianopolis, a town in the state of Para in the Amazon region, is owned by Para Pastoril e Agricola SA. The company, which is the largest ethanol-producer in the country, has been in operation since 1969 and produces nearly 50 million liters of ethanol every year. The company denied that workers were in conditions of slavery.
The Brazilian Ministry of Labor Ministry says that more than 21,000 laborers have been freed from slavery in Brazil in over a decade. Though this was the government agency’s biggest raid against debt slavery to date, estimates say that more than 25,000 to 40,000 laborers still live in slavery on ethanol producing plantations in Brazil.
The biofuels “gold rush,” often touted as a “green” alternative to gasoline, has international corporations scrambling to see who can come out on top of the industry in Latin America.
Article originally available @ http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/803/1/
Biofuel demand to push up food prices
John Vidal
Thursday July 5, 2007
The Guardian
Food prices will rise in the next 10 years as nearly twice as much sugar cane, maize and oilseed rape is grown to fuel cars, and people in rapidly developing countries adopt meat-based diets, says the UN in its annual assessment of farming trends.
The move to "agrofuels", which are expected to marginally lower climate change emissions and reduce US and European oil dependency, is being led by the US, Brazil, Europe and China. Last year more than a third of the total US maize crop went to ethanol for fuel, a 48% increase on 2005. Brazil and China grew the crops on nearly 20m hectares (50m acres) of land. This area could double in 10 years, says the UN report on trends up to 2016.
But the switch to growing fuel crops will take land out of food production and increase the price of commodities such as sugar, maize and palm oils, says the report, which was jointly prepared by the World Food Organisation and the OECD.
While higher food prices are profitable for the mainly large-scale farmers who grow them, they threaten the economies of food-importing countries as well as the urban poor, says the report. The higher food prices will also mean extra costs for livestock farmers who must buy feed.
But the report does not consider the effect on food supplies of floods, droughts and other extreme weather linked to climate change. The price of wheat and some other food is edging record levels after devastating weather in Australia, the running down of grain reserves in the US and drought in Africa. Food price inflation stands at more than 6% a year in some developing countries, says the report.
Continuing growth will increase the amount of meat reared. Nearly 30% more beef, 50% more pig meat and 25% more poultry are expected to be consumed in developing countries by 2016, with 70% more skimmed milk powder and sugar.
Yesterday a report from 11 non-governmental groups said the rush to energy crops was encouraging intensive, industrial agriculture at the expense of sustainable food production. "The whole agrofuel process is going far too fast, pushed by corporations and governments before any controls are in place. Massive investment in infrastructure is already taking place that will set us on a path from which it will be difficult to escape," said Oscar Reyes of the Transnational Institute.
A parallel report by the Barcelona-based Grain said the agrofuel rush was causing more social damage than realised. "The Indian government is talking of planting 14m hectares of land with jatropha [a fast-growing tree]. The Inter-American Development Bank says that Brazil has 120m hectares that could be cultivated with agrofuel crops; an industry lobby is speaking of 379m hectares being available in 15 African countries. We are talking about expropriation on an unprecedented scale. It is likely to mean the privatisation of communal land, farmer evictions, rising food prices, competition for water resources, and the cutting down of forests and conservation areas," said Teresa Anderson, of Grain.
More than 100 groups want a moratorium on EU subsidies for agrofuels.
guardian.co.uk/environment ...#8805;
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Article originally available @ http://environment.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2118876,00.html
Brazil Indian leader killed in land dispute-Church
09 Jul 2007 18:51:26 GMT
Source: Reuters
BRASILIA, July 9 (Reuters) - An Indian tribal leader fighting for land rights in southwestern Brazil was shot dead by a gunman who his wife said was acting on behalf of local ranchers, a Roman Catholic church watchdog said on Monday.
Ortiz Lopes, a Kaiowa Indian, was shot point-blank on Sunday night near the Paraguayan border by an unidentified man, Cimi, the Church's Indian advocacy group, said in a statement. The assassin said he was acting on behalf of local ranchers, Lopes' wife, who witnessed the shooting, told Cimi.
Twenty Indians have been assassinated in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul this year, the same number as during all of last year, a Cimi spokeswoman said. Violent conflicts involving Indians, landowners and police have increased over the past year as more of the 40,000 Kaiowa and Guarani Indians in the state abandon overcrowded reservations and seek to reclaim their ancestral lands. Lopes had led a group of Kaiowa to occupy a farm they considered the tribe's ancestral land, Cimi said. Cimi demanded a federal police investigation, protection for the Kaiowa group, and title to the property.
Between 450,000 and 750,000 Indians live in Brazil, which has a total population of 185 million.
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Article originally available @ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09299105.htm
The biofuel myths
By Eric Holt-Giménez
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
The term "biofuels" suggests renewable abundance: clean, green, sustainable assurance about technology and progress. This pure image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the International Panel on Climate Change to present fuels made from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from peak oil to a yet-to-be-defined renewable fuel economy.
But in reality, biofuel draws its power from cornucopian myths and directs our attention away from economic interests that would benefit from the transition, while avoiding discussion of the growing North-South food and energy imbalance.
They obscure the political-economic relationships between land, people, resources and food, and fail to help us understand the profound consequences of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems. "Agro-fuels" better describes the industrial interests behind the transformation, and is the term most widely used in the global South
Industrialized countries started the biofuels boom by demanding ambitious renewable-fuel targets. These fuels are to provide 5.75 percent of Europe's transport power by 2010 and 10 percent by 2020. The United States wants 35 billion gallons a year.
These targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to plant 70 percent of its farmland with fuel crops. The entire corn and soy harvest of the United States would need to be processed as ethanol and biodiesel. Converting most arable land to fuel crops would destroy the food systems of the North, so the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries are looking to the South to meet demand.
The rapid capitalization and concentration of power within the biofuels industry is extreme. Over the past three years, venture capital investment in biofuels has increased by 800 percent. Private investment is swamping public research institutions.
Behind the scenes, under the noses of most national antitrust laws, giant oil, grain, auto and genetic engineering corporations are forming partnerships, and they are consolidating the research, production, processing and distribution chains of food and fuel systems under one industrial roof.
Biofuel champions assure us that because fuel crops are renewable, they are environment-friendly, can reduce global warming and will foster rural development. But the tremendous market power of biofuel corporations, coupled with the poor political will of governments to regulate their activities, make this unlikely. We need a public enquiry into the myths:
Biofuels are clean and green.
Because photosynthesis performed by fuel crops removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and can reduce fossil fuel consumption, we are told they are green. But when the full lifecycle of biofuels is considered, from land clearing to consumption, the moderate emission savings are outweighed by far greater emissions from deforestation, burning, peat drainage, cultivation and soil-carbon losses.
Every ton of palm oil generates 33 tons of carbon dioxide emissions - 10 times more than petroleum. Tropical forests cleared for sugar cane ethanol emit 50 percent more greenhouse gases than the production and use of the same amount of gasoline.
Biofuels will not result in deforestation.
Proponents of biofuels argue that fuel crops planted on ecologically degraded lands will improve rather than destroy the environment. Perhaps the government of Brazil had this in mind when it reclassified some 200 million hectares of dry-tropical forests, grassland and marshes as degraded and apt for cultivation.
In reality, these are the biodiverse ecosystems of the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado and the Pantanal, occupied by indigenous people, subsistence farmers and extensive cattle ranches. The introduction of agrofuel plantations will push these communities to the agricultural frontier of the Amazon where the devastating patterns of deforestation are well known.
Soybeans supply 40 percent of Brazil's biofuels. NASA has correlated their market price with the destruction of the Amazon rainforest - currently at nearly 325,000 hectares a year.
Biofuels will bring rural development.
In the tropics, 100 hectares dedicated to family farming generates 35 jobs. Oil-palm and sugarcane provide 10 jobs, eucalyptus two, and soybeans a scant half-job per 100 hectares, all poorly paid.
Until recently, biofuels supplied primarily local and subregional markets. Even in the United States, most ethanol plants were small and farmer-owned. With the boom, big industry is moving in, centralizing operations and creating gargantuan economies of scale.
Biofuels producers will be dependent on a cabal of companies for their seed, inputs, services, processing and sale. They are not likely to receive many benefits. Small holders will be forced out of the market and off the land. Hundreds of thousands have already been displaced by the soybean plantations in the "Republic of Soy," a 50-million hectare area in southern Brazil, northern Argentina, Paraguay and eastern Bolivia.
Biofuels will not cause hunger.
Hunger results not from scarcity, but poverty. The world's poorest already spend 50 to 80 percent of household income on food. They suffer when high fuel prices push up food prices. Now, because food and fuel crops compete for land and resources, both increase the price of land and water.
The International Food Policy Research Institute has estimated that the price of basic staples will increase 20 to 33 percent by 2010 and 26 to 135 percent by 2020. Caloric consumption declines as price rises by a ratio of 1:2.
Limits must be placed on the biofuels industry. The North cannot shift the burden of overconsumption to the South because the tropics have more sunlight, rain and arable land. If biofuels are to be forest- and food-friendly, the grain, cane and palm oil industries need to be regulated, and not piecemeal.
Strong, enforceable standards based on limiting land planted for biofuels are urgently needed, as are antitrust laws powerful enough to prevent the corporate concentration of market power in the industry. Sustainable benefits to the countryside will only accrue if biofuels are a complement to plans for sustainable rural development, not the centerpiece.
A global moratorium on the expansion of biofuels is needed to develop regulatory structures and foster conservation and development alternatives to the transition. We need the time to make a better transition to food and fuel sovereignty.
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Article originally available @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/10/opinion/edholt.php
Biofuels, Biodiversity, and Our Energy Future
The Dark Side of Biofuels: Horror in the "Brazilian California"
Raúl Zibechi | July 23, 2007
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Brazil is staking its claim as a great emerging power thanks to the leadership it maintains in biofuel production. The price of this ambition is paid by the environment and by the cane cutters, who are the invisible characters in this story.
"When the airplane passed, pouring out that bath of poison, my father was soaked. He fell ill because of the toxins that are sprayed over the cane. This is the end for many young people here, " says a female cane cutter from the region of Ribeirao Preto, in São Paulo state.
"The people work and they give them a slip of paper to shop with in the supermarket. The people don't see money, just the bill of what they owe," confirms a worker from the same region, where seven of every 10 cane cutters did not finish primary school.1
Other cutters explain that they are cheated by the scales that the bosses control—they calculate that they have to carry 110 kilograms for the scale to reach 100. Almost all of them were lured from Brazil's poorer Northeast by promises that they would earn very high salaries. Many moderate analysts see working conditions as reminiscent of slavery. But the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said before the G-8 Summit that biofuels have "enormous potential to generate jobs and income" and that "they offer a real option for sustainable development."2
Behind the "politically correct" jargon lurks a reality poised to destroy the Amazon, a reality that destroys millions of young bodies and promises lucrative business to investors. The very name biofuels seems to be destined to foment the confusion. João Pedro Stédile, head of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST), points out that the defenders of ethanol "use the prefix bio3 to make it seem like it's a good thing," and that because of this its opponents prefer to call it like it is and use the term "agrofuels" because the term refers to agriculturally produced energy.3
Backtracking Four Centuries
According to the ex-governor of São Paulo state, Claudio Lembo, agrofuels will spread monoculture farming across the whole country. Although he is a conservative politician and member of the Liberal Front Party (now the Democratic Party), he thinks that Brazil "backtracked 500 years to the same place" as it was as a Portuguese colony. In his opinion, agricultural land will be lost when used for sugarcane and the history of those four centuries will be repeated, when "thousands were expelled from their communities by the leviathan of monoculture, which creates concentrated wealth."4
Looking closer at the cane cutters' working conditions, a terrifying world appears—a world that should give people who are enthused by the idea of substituting fossil fuels with agrofuels something to think about. According to various reports, around a million people work in the industry, of which 500,000 are in the agricultural sector. Close to 80% of cane harvesting is manual. The workers only get paid if they reach the output set by the bosses, which in the Ribeirao Preto region is some 12 tons a day, double the 1980 target. If they don't reach it, they aren't paid at all.5
To reach this output target they must work some 10 or 12 hours a day, but sometimes 14, many of these under the burning sun. Many parents bring their small children to help them reach the production goal. Although the numbers of working children have declined, in 1993 one in every four cane cutters in the state of Pernambuco was between seven and 17 years old, and many did not receive any salary. In the last two harvests, 14 people died as a result of excess work. The cutters are recruited in other regions and have to live in the same hacienda, in mattress-less cabins, with neither water nor a kitchen; they have to cook in tins over little bonfires and buy their groceries in the same hacienda at prices exceeding market values.
The cane is cut after being burned, which facilitates harvesting but gravely endangers the environment and produces serious respiratory complaints.
In the Piracicaba municipality, in São Paulo, hospitalizations of children with respiratory problems increase 21% during periods of cane burning. For every 10 tons, the cutter must make 72,000 machete blows and flex their legs 36,000 times. They lose around 10 liters of water per day and walk 10 km a day while they complete their job. The monthly salary ranges from US$150-200 a month. According to the sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, the cutters' average lifespan is less than that of colonial slaves.6
The minister of Work, Carlos Lupi, admitted before the International Labor Conference in Geneva that part of the production of cane in Brazil is done with degrading work in awful conditions: "They work without protection and even lose fingers."7 Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva, who has studied the work on sugarcane plantations for 30 years now, affirms that 45% of the cutters come from the Northeast. The migrants are preferred by employers because while far from their families they tolerate the abuses unquestioningly, and after the seven-month-long harvest they return to their villages, making it difficult for them to organize unions.8
They Call This Progress
Little by little harvesting machines are being introduced that do the work of a hundred people. As a result, the plantation owners have raised the cutters' productivity targets. They order them to cut the cane closer to the ground, as the machines do. The result is that they now choose younger and younger workers who receive one dollar per ton.
The economic journal Jornal do Valor explains how people fall into servitude: "There is a manpower middleman who covers the poorer states, especially in the North and the Northeast. He chooses the youngest ones. When they get on the bus to go to the city where they are contracted, the cutters get in to their first debt, for the transportation. The middleman earns 60 reales (US$30) for every worker that he takes. It is not unusual for him also to be responsible for the sale of the first goods that the workers need. He becomes the 'owner' of this manpower through the accumulation of debt."9
The expansion of cane cultivation destroys the social fabric. In the region of the small city of Delta, in Minas Gerais state, 300,000 hectares have been planted in the last four years. The city has 5,000 inhabitants that swell to 10,000 during the harvest. According to a report by the newspaper Correio Braziliense the small city has begun to register homicide rates that were unimaginable before the multiplication of the cane farms. Many female children and young people are kidnapped to boost prostitution in the region, where 20,000 cutters arrive a year. The cutters overflow at the edges of small cities where alcoholism and the consumption of crack proliferate.
The expansion and modernization of the cane industry inundates towns and municipalities. José Eustaquio da Silva, mayor of Delta, has recognized that "the municipality is close to collapse. The health facilities, hospitals, and schools are packed, and the worst thing is that along with the workers come all sorts of people and bandits." In Delta there isn't a single hotel but there are 27 brothels. Journalists have discovered that various public figures of the county are involved in the trafficking of minors and in cases of pedophilia with the children of cane-cutters. The middlemen (who are nicknamed "gatos" or cats) carry arms and impose their rules.
Stédile always uses the same example to illustrate the social problems generated by mono-crop farming. "The municipality of Ribeirao Preto in the center of São Paulo is considered the 'Brazilian California' due to its high level of technological development in the cane industry. Thirty years ago, this city produced all its food, had a peasantry in the interior and, in fact, it was a rich region with equitable income distribution. Now it is an immense sugar plantation, with some 30 sugar mills controlling all the land. In the city, 100,000 people live in slums (out of the 540,000 inhabitants of the municipality). The prison population is at 3,813 people—counting only the adults—while the population living from and working in agriculture is just 2,412 people, including the children. This is the cane monoculture model of society. There are more people in jail than there are dedicated to agriculture!"10
In the 2007 sugar harvest another technological "advance" will come about: for the first time, genetically modified cane will be harvested. It is lighter and holds less water, meaning it will bring large profits to the investors. But the workers will have to cut three times as much to reach 10 tons.
In this region, the owners lay off a large number of workers at frequent intervals, in order to keep the best. These are the so-called "productivity champions" who can cut up to 20 tons a day, with a monthly average of 12 to 17 tons a day.11 With the workers suffering from seizures, cramps, spinal pain, and tendonitis on top of frequent cuts, the owners found a "technical solution." The sugar mills distribute a free electrolyte and vitamin supplement, intended for athletes or workers with intense physical activity. At many mills the cutters drink this product before starting work. "Physical pain disappears, the cramps die down, and productivity increases," says Pereira Novaes. The problem is that they need to increase the dose every month.
"With supplements and medicines you can keep up the high productivity demanded by the cane. The strongest survive, like in a process of 'natural selection.' But the question is: how and for how long do they survive? Solutions and medicines can be seen as an expression of the paradox of a certain type of modernization and expansion of cane cultivation; it consumes the labor force that makes it flourish," insists Pereira Novaes. There are no official figures but it is certain that there are many young workers who retire due to disability, and dozens of deaths due to exhaustion in the "Brazilian California."
The Big Winners
In Brazil, cane production began in 1550, but has expanded greatly since 1970, fueled by the rise in oil prices. The forest of the Atlantic coast was halved, the area most affected by this expansion, but now the cane fields advance toward the center and West, where it is predicted that the rich ecosystem of the Cerrados will disappear by 2030 at the hands of monoculture. In the next seven years Brazil will double its production of ethanol and may produce almost 50% more sugar cane, which means building another 100 mills by 2010.
It doesn't stop there. The Brazilian National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) aims for Brazil to control 50% of the global ethanol market. This implies increasing the current 17 billion to 110 billion liters a year, for which it will be necessary to plant some 80 million hectares. That is, destroy the Amazon. The government has adopted this sector as its principal development strategy. BNDES, which has more resources than any other regional bank including the Inter-American Development Bank, estimates that it will invest six billion dollars in sugar mills and cane plantations.
But Brazil wants to expand agrofuels across the whole region. The immediate plans consist of taking production to countries in Central America and the Caribbean that already signed free trade agreements with the United States (such as CAFTA), to avoid Washington's import tariffs. "The objective is to export the nearly completed product to those countries," says the magazine Peripecias, "finish the process in those nations, and from there enter the U.S. market." The Brazilian bank finances the investments in those countries, but is also negotiating a share of up to 30% of stocks in the Central American projects.
In Stédile's opinion, three big sectors come together in the ethanol project: "The oil companies (who want to reduce dependence on oil), the agro-businesses (like Bunge, Cargill, and Monsanto) who want to keep their monopoly in the global agricultural products markets," and now the transnational capital that makes "an alliance with the proprietors of land in the South, and especially in Brazil, to use large areas of land for the production of agrofuels."12
The future is not encouraging. Instead of pressure to modify the patterns of consumption and the energy matrix especially in transportation, the big investors like George Soros and corporations like Cargill are positioning themselves in the Brazilian production of ethanol to increase their profits. Neither global warming nor the cane cutters' working conditions cross their minds.
End Notes
Testimonies collected by the Comisión Pastoral da Terra and reproduced by Núcleo Amigos da Terra Brasil, p. 15.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ob. cit.
Carlos Vicente, ob. cit.
Estado de São Paulo, 13 March 2007, on www.estadao.com.br.
All figures from a study by Núcleo de Amigos da Terra Brasil.
Francisco de Oliveira, in Folha de São Paulo, 27 May 2007.
O Estado de São Paulo, 11 June 2007.
Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva, interview in Instituto Humanitas Unisinos magazine on www.unisinos.br.
Jornal do Valor, Sao Paulo, 17 May 2007.
Carlos Vicente, ob. cit.
José Roberto Pereira Novaes, ob. cit
Carlos Vicente, ob. cit.
Translated for the Americas Program by Nalina Eggert and Sonja Wolf.
Raúl Zibechi is a member of the editorial board of Montevideo's weekly Brecha, teacher and researcher on social movements in Latin America's Multiversidad Franciscana, and adviser to various social movements. He is a monthly contributor to the Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org). Translated by Nalina Eggert and Sonja Wolf.
Sources
Carlos Vicente, "El cultivo de agrocombustibles solo interesa al capital transnacional", interviewed by Joao Pedro Stédile, Biodiversidad magazine.
José Roberto Pereira Novaes, "Campeoes de produtividade: dores e febres nos canaviais paulistas", 11 June 2007 on www.pastoraldomigrante.com.br.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, "Desafíos para la cumbre del G-8", La Jornada.
Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva, interviewed in Instituto Humanitas Unisinos magazine on www.unisinos.br.
Núcleo Amigos da Terra Brasil, "Agronegocio e biocombustiveis: uma mistura explosive", 2006, www.natbrasil.org.br.
Paola Visca, "El combustible de los biocombustibles", in Peripecias, 23 de mayo de 2007.
Pastoral do Migrante: www.pastoraldomigrante.br.
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Article originally available @ http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4414
Brazil's deadly land wars put indigenous leaders in firing line
By Natalia Viana
Published: 23 July 2007
It was 6.30am when the Brazilian indigenous leader Ortiz Lopes was called to his front door in Coronel Sapucaia, in the frontier state of Mato Grosso do Sul. According to his wife, the head of the embattled Guarani-Kaiowa people heard an unfamiliar voice calling his name from the other side of the door. He only had time to ask who it was before he was shot dead and the gunman delivered his message: "The farmers sent me to make it even with you."
Mr Lopes was well known in the region for his efforts to reclaim lands that had belonged to the Guarani. His death earlier this month was the latest in what has become a bloody year in Brazil's frontier states of Mato Grosso and Para. While the murder last year of US-born nun Dorothy Stang stirred memories of the murder of union leader Chico Mendes and brought global attention to Brazil's deadly land disputes, the death toll of 20 so far this year in Mato Grosso alone, has gone largely unnoticed.
The Guarani were expelled from their land by cattle ranchers in the 1970s. Today, 35,000 of them survive on a small parcel of land in a neighbouring municipality. The men mostly work poorly paid jobs in sugarcane plants. The appalling conditions have led to some of the highest rates of suicide and alcoholism in the country, says the Indigenous Missionary Council (Cimi), an organisation linked to the Catholic Church.
Mr Lopes had already escaped one attempted murder and he had received repeated death threats. In January, he and a group of families occupied the Madama ranch, which was set up on land they claim was illegally taken. The protesters were violently evicted and charged with squatting. During the operation, Xurete Lopes, 70, their spiritual leader, was killed. Nobody has been charged with her death. In May, the Guarani had returned to the same plot and with a federal agent acting as witness staked official claim to the contested land. Now, Mr Lopes lies buried in a simple plot next to his spiritual leader.
His death is not an isolated event. According to Cimi, more killings have occurred in Mato Grosso so far this year than in the whole of 2006.
The Pastoral Land Commission, an organisation that monitors land conflicts, recorded 39 killings in Brazil in 2006 over land disputes, and another 72 attempted murders. Whether it is a member of the landless movement, a union leader, or an indigenous leader, the political murders in Brazil follow the same pattern. Generally, the victims are demanding a portion of the land that they claim has been unlawfully purchased or grabbed by a farmer. Often, they occupy the contested land before being violently evicted. Death threats then follow as the courts crawl towards a settlement .
In all, land conflicts have been linked to 1,464 murders in the past 10 years but only 71 gunmen and 19 contractors have been found guilty.
Analysts point the finger at the federal government for ignoring the problem and thereby encouraging a culture of impunity for the murderers.
According to Darci Frigo, the director of Terra de Direitos (Land of Rights), the background to the killings is the criminalisation of social movements in Brazil. "What happens is that these leaders are demoralised in the public arena, they are accused of crimes they did not commit."
This claim is endorsed by the UN special representative on human rights defenders, Hina Jilani, who in a recent report noted that "human rights advocates have been subject to unfair and malicious prosecution, repeated arrests and vilification as retaliatory action by state as well as by powerful and influential non-state entities". The report draws attention to "the responsibility of the state to ensure that human rights advocates not be left isolated in their struggle or support for social justice against powerful or influential social entities and economic interests."
Unfortunately, as the killing of Mr Lopes highlights, exactly the opposite is happening.
Natalia Viana is a Brazilian journalist and author of Planted in the Earth - political assassinations in Brazil
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Article originally available @ http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2793052.ece
Slave descendants invade Aracruz Brazil plantation
24 Jul 2007 20:18:43 GMT
Source: Reuters
BRASILIA, July 24 (Reuters) - Part of a eucalyptus plantation belonging to Brazilian pulp and paper company Aracruz was invaded by descendants of slaves claiming ownership, a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
As many as 500 people stormed onto the Aracruz plantation in Espirito Santo state on Monday, felling trees and blocking roads to claim 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land planted with eucalyptus trees two years from harvest. They said the land belongs to their ancestors.
Under Brazilian law, communities of descendants of former slaves are entitled to the land they traditionally inhabited.
"It's a vast area. We can calculate the impact only when we have a more precise idea of how many trees were felled," an Aracruz spokeswoman said.
Aracruz is the world' largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp.
Tribal Indians invaded some 11,000 hectares of the Espirito Santo property on Tuesday, according to a statement from Brazil's indigenous missionary group Cimi.
Aracruz was alerted by the Indians but had no further information about the situation, the spokeswoman said.
The government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to grant more land titles to slave descendants, or quilombolas, but progress has been slow in processing land claims and settling related lawsuits.
Brazil brought an estimated 4 million slaves from Africa to work its fields and mines, more than any other country. Slavery ended in 1888.
Land rights to the property invaded this week are still being investigated, a spokeswoman for the government's agrarian reform institute Incra said.
"They're protesting because the process is stalled," the spokeswoman said, adding that a strike at the agency had slowed progress on the case.
Aracruz eucalyptus plantations, especially the company's 279,000 hectare plantation in the state of Espirito Santo, have repeatedly been invaded by Indians and others claiming previous rights to the land. (Reporting by Andrea Welsh)
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Article originally available @ http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N24222184.htm
Chiapas: Zapatista Encuentro meets on contested turf
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Thu, 07/26/2007 - 22:50.
Representatives of peasant organizations from across the globe have gathered in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas for the "Encuentro with the Peoples of the World," hosted by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). Participating groups include Brazil's Movement of the Landless, Thailand's Assembly of the Poor and the international NGO Via Campesina. Meetings are being held in the Zapatista "autonomous municipalities" of Oventic, Morelia and La Garrucha, where Comandanta Delia articulated the conditions that led the Zapatistas to take up arms in 1994: "Our grandparents lived in slavery, without salaries. We asked for land, but we were always denied by the evil government. Persecutions, imprisonments, houses burned. There has never been good justice." (La Jornada, July 25)
Meanwhile, conflicts over political control of lands and communities in Chiapas continue to simmer. Days before the Encuentro opened, an ambulance belonging to the Zapatista Autonomous Health System (SAAZ) was attacked with stones by a group of apparently drunken men who called the driver and crew "Zapatista bandits" when the vehicle broke down while transporting a gravely ill patient from the clinic at Oventic to the hospital at the regional city of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Some of the health workers were pinned down under the car during the attack. A statement from the SAAZ said the assailants were presumably members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). (La Jornada, July 15)
Following a long campaign by the EZLN's Sixth Commission, a civil support network, the Zapatistas met with a tentative victory July 12 when the Agrarian Tribunal in the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez issued a ruling dismissing claims to Zapatista-held lands at El Nantze by the PRI-linked Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC). La Jornada's Hermann Bellinghausen writes that the decision "tacitly recognizes the legitimacy of the autonomous communities and their lands." (La Jornada, July 13)
Bellinghausen also reported that since the arrest of OPDDIC leader Pedro Chulín Jiménez earlier this year, many of the organization's adherents have defected to the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). This may loan credence to Zapatista claims that the PRD is coming to mirror the PRI as a corrupt political machine, but also seems to signify a weakening of the most militant anti-Zapatista organization in Chiapas. (La Jornada, July 15)
A San Cristobal-based NGO, the Center for Political, Social and Economic Study and Analysis (CAPISE) issued a document in July entitled "Face of War," accusing the Mexican federal army of expanding its positions in the Chiapas rainforest over the past year—in a pattern of collaboration with local anti-Zapatista forces. The study charges that "military elements have held meetings and visits with settlements and families opposed to the Zapatistas" in the jungle, "guaranteeing the penetration" of the OPDDIC into the lands of rebel-loyal communities. (La Jornada, July 18)
On July 6, the Fray Bartoleme de Las Casas Human Rights Center announced that its investigators, working with residents of the now-abandoned jungle settlement of Viejo Velasco Suárez, had uncovered the remains of two of the four indigenous campesinos who were presumed killed in the armed attack on the community last November. (La Jornada, July 7) The Fray Bartoleme Center and other rights groups, as well as the Zapatistas, had named the OPDDIC as behind the attack.
Following allegations in the Mexican press, the EZLN also issued a statement earlier this month denying links to the EPR guerillas, who re-emerged with dramatic attacks on pipelines in central Mexico.
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Article originally available @ http://www.ww4report.com/node/4270
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SEE ALSO: Brainstorming in the Lacandon - Zapatista Intergalatica Lands on Earth
By JOHN ROSS
Ejido Morelia, Chiapas
In the annals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), the 1996 "Intergalactica "was a high water mark of international solidarity. Formally dubbed a "Forum In Defense of Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism", the conclave drew 6,000 activists from five continents to the wilds of Chiapas's Lacandon jungle to brainstorm on the growing menace of the corporate globalization of the Planet Earth (the World Trade Organization had just been formulated the previous year). The event is often considered to have been the seedbed for historic demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle 1999 from which the anti-globalization movement blossomed.
The gathering in a jungle clearing on a Zapatista ejido with the haunting name of La Realidad ("The Reality") 11 years ago was nicknamed the "Intergalactica" because in his convocation the rebels' spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos invited all sentient life forms from other planets in the galaxy to participate in the event. "We don't know if they actually came to the first Intergalactica" Zapatista Lieutenant Colonel Moises mused recently, "at least they never identified themselves."
After more than a decade of anti-globalization struggles and World Social Forums, the Intergalactica has literally returned to earth. The scaled-down version of the event pitched as an "Encounter of the Peoples of the World with the Peoples of the Zapatista Communities" to defend indigenous territories throughout the Americas staged July 20-28 at three rebel "caracoles" or public political/cultural centers in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, zeroed in on the land and those who work and live upon it.
Whereas Intergalactica I attracted such literary luminaries as Eduardo Galeano and European intellectuals Yvon Lebot, Danielle Mitterand, and Alain Touraine (Nobelist Jose Saraamgo and Susan Sontag would soon follow), the 2007 edition brought together representatives of poor farmers from 13 mostly-southern countries to swap experiences with Zapatista base communities in the highlands, the canyons, and the jungle of Chiapas, and develop mechanisms for mutual self-defense against the ravages of neo-liberalism.
The privatization of communal lands, the destruction of native crops, and the forced migration of millions of poor farmers constitutes a declaration of "the fourth world war again humanity", Marcos charged in welcoming 3000 activists and Zapatista bases to the caracol "Resistance and Rebellion Before The World" at Oventik in Los Altos of Chiapas.
Much as at last New Year when the EZLN celebrated its 13th year on public display, the interchanges at Oventik, on the Ejido Morelia (the Caracol "Whirlwind of Our Word") and La Realidad ("The Mother of the Sea of Our Dreams") featured presentations by civil Zapatismo (as opposed to the rebels' political-military structure) as local health and education promoters laid out the nuts and bolts of building autonomous communities. Other lay Zapatista leaders delineated the rebels' justice system and how land is distributed and cultivated in the autonomous zones.
In response, farmers invited under the aegius of Via Campesina, an international grouping of millions of poor farmers with affiliates in over 70 nations, spoke to the struggle for land and justice in their own countries. Among the participants: Yudhmir Singh of India's Bartya Kissan Union who described Ghandian civil disobedience by poor farmers to resist neo-liberal agrarian policies foisted on those who work the land, and representatives of the Thai Assembly of the Poor who farm the jungle along the Cambodian border.
First world farmers were represented by George Naylor, outgoing director of the U.S. Family Farm Association, who told the Zapatistas of the resistance of small corn farmers in Iowa to the dissemination of genetically modified seed. Dong Uk Min of the Korean farmers union, invoked the memory of the campesino Lee Kwang Hai who committed suicide at the 2003 World Trade Organization assembly in Cancun.
From further south, Soraya Soriana, a leader of Brazil's militant Movimento Sem Terras (MST) and speakers from Venezuela's Wayuu nation cautioned encounter-goers against the "neo-imperialist" policies of such left-wing leaders as Lula and Hugo Chavez. The Zapatistas share a similar distrust of Latin America's social democratic left.
The colloquy between farmers in defense of indigenous lands unfolded against an appropriate backdrop of spiring "milpas" (cornfields) and the deep green of surrounding hills at the height of Mexico's bountiful rainy season - uniformed militia men and women in their green and black uniforms seemed almost to organically blend into the abundant vegetation.
The encampments in the caracoles thrummed with conviviality. Nightly cultural presentations brought the campers together under the stars. Nuns chatted with ski-masked rebels and rangy Nordic punksters danced in the mud with pint-sized Mayan companeras while horses grazed placidly in nearby pastures. In contrast to the 1996 Intergalactica when Mexican immigration authorities sought to prevent foreign activists from attending the encounter under threat of deportation, access to the Zapatista zone was unrestricted.
In a world where five live shooting wars dominate front pages with daily doses of death and destruction, and in a country where an infuriated underclass's demands for justice are met by brutal government repression, the Zapatista caracoles for once seem to be pockets of peace.
It wasn't always that way.
During the first days of the rebellion in January 1994, the Mexican military invaded the Ejido Morelia. They forced the men to lie flat on the basketball court, kicking and torturing them for hours under the jungle sun. Three of the community's leaders were taken away and never seen alive again. Their bones were found by hunters months later. No one has ever been prosecuted for the murders.
In classic Zapatista fashion, these gristly events were depicted on a mural painted on the schoolhouse wall here while 13 years later, inside the school, Zapatista women told of how they organize their autonomy.
It has been eight years since the last armed confrontation between the Mexican government and the EZLN but the peace that seems to thrive in the Zapatista autonomous zone, is an uneasy one. Skirmishes over land taken in the 1994 rebellion between Zapatistas and other Mayan Indian campesinos (the rebels characterize them as "paramilitaries") are endemic and thousands of troops continue to occupy sprawling bases at strategic points in the EZLN geography.
A just-issued study by the San Cristobal-based Center for Political Analysis and Socio-Economic Investigation (CAPISE), "The Face of War", indicates that the nature of the occupation has changed in recent years with elite brigades now stationed in the conflict zone reporting directly to Mexico City rather than regional commands. As Mexico joins the U.S.-directed War on Terror, the border region with Guatemala where many key Zapatista autonomous municipalities are located, attract enhanced attention from security forces.
Despite the "Santa Paz" (Sainted Peace) the "Mal Gobierno" (Bad Government) claims to reign in Chiapas, the EZLN remains an armed organization. Certainly, of its two weapons - "El Fuego" (The Fire) and "La Palabra" (The Word) - the latter now predominates. But the fire is not forgotten. "We will never give up our arms or remove our pasamontanas (ski masks) until our demands for justice are satisfied" Comandante David pledged to a packed auditorium to close the Oventik segment of Intergalactica II as the rain fell in sheets outside from the bountiful southern sky.
Note: Intergalactica II was only one of several upcoming international events to be programmed by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and The Other Campaign in 2007. Indigenous peoples from throughout the Americas will gather next October at Vicam Sonora in the heart of Yaqui Indian Territory, and an all-woman's international gathering is being planned for next December in Chiapas.
John Ross is in Mexico City, plotting a new novella. If you have further information contact johnross@igc.org
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Article originally available @ http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07302007.html
Brazil landless raid Reverend Moon cattle ranch
30 Jul 2007 19:22:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Andrea Welsh
BRASILIA, July 30 (Reuters) - At least 100 landless people have taken over a ranch in southwestern Brazil owned by South Korea religious leader Reverend Sun Myung