MST Bulletin #7
January 11, 2002
By João Pedro Stédile, member of the National Leadership Committee of the MST

Every New Year we hear the same story. The Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration gathers the press and presents its miraculous numbers about the growing numbers of families settled in the land. The government hires advertising agencies and buys more TV ads in which everything looks beautiful.

Unfortunately, reality is quite different. The encampments on the roadsides grow every day. The poverty and desperation among thousands of poor rural families increases with the lack of alternatives. There are no jobs in the cities. There is no income in the country and the Agrarian Reform stopped.

Fortunately, those lies are beginning to be unmasked in research projects and statistics. Let's see:

Settled Families ÊA recent study by the Brazilian Association of Agrarian Reform (ABRA) based on data from the INCRA (the government institution that manages agrarian issues) revealed that in the 7 years of the Cardoso admnistration, instead of the 482,206 families claimed, the number of families that where really settled was no bigger than 234,062. In 2001, the government claimed it would settle 100,000 families, a number later reduced to 60,000, but in the end land was made available to only 28,000 families.

The Agricultural Frontier ÊThe same study revealed that the government uses the states of the agricultural frontier, such as Pará, Maranhão and Mato Grosso to "fix" data. Of the 234,000 families settled, 60% are from those three states (72,491 in Pará, 56,552 in Maranhão, and 53,508 in Mato Grosso).

The Production Credit The government ended the Procera (Special Credit Program for Agrarian Reform), which became the Pronaf (Program for the Strengthening of Family Agriculture). At the same time, it ended the program of technical assistance to the new settlers, LUMIAR. As a consequence of it, in the year 2001, more than 50% of the scarce financial resources available were left in the banks because there were no agricultural engineers and technicians to develop projects.

The Mail Advertising Campaign The government promised land in 90 days for the families that registered in the post offices. The landless organized themselves and went to the post offices. In a few months 575,000 families were registered. The results: until this date nobody was granted land through mail registration. Budget ÊIn 1997, under public opinion pressure, the government assigned 2.6 billion reais to the INCRA. In 2001, it was reduced to 1.3 billion, and the minister spent only 975 million reais.

Propaganda When the budget of the INCRA/Ministry of AgrarianDevelopment was analyzed, the only item that was never short of money was advertising. The Minister (Raul Jungmann) has just hired the ArtPlan advertising agency for an 8 million reais campaign for the INCRA. Coincidently, the agency belongs to the son of a PFL congressman. The government agrarian reform only exists on TV. The landless workers are left with long bitter days of waiting in the encampments and the farms, working without future. Meanwhile, the Minister worries about his electoral campaign.

2002 ÊFortunately we are entering the last year of the Cardoso administration, which applied an economic and agricultural model that benefited only the large properties, and made the small agriculture and settlements unviable. It also upheld the control of the agricultural trade, the agribusiness and the distribution of seeds by transnational corporations.

Now, rather than criticizing it, we need to unite efforts to defeat this government and build a new project for Brazil, one that will reorganize the agriculture and focus on the internal market; that will guarantee a future for the farmers, distribute income, and that will truly democratize the land ownership, expropriating the large unproductive properties. A project that will also free ourselves from foreign dependency and the monopoly of the banks.

For a 2002 full of struggle, hope and victories!