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Occupy Brazil: The Landless Dig In
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...
Biofuels: The Five Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition
Eric Holt-Gimenez
Biofuels. The term invokes a life-giving image of renewability and abundance—a clean, green, sustainable assurance in technology and the power of progress. This image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations, and even the Intergovernmental 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...
Dear Friends of the MST,
Two years of study and discussions led up to the 5th National Congress. For five days during the Congress, we studied the situation in agriculture, the political situation, and the challenges of the Brazilian people to build a sovereign, just nation. There was also time to strengthen ourselves through the mistica, to remember the comrades who could not be with us because of the savagery of the latifundio and of agribusiness, and to fraternize and celebrate...
The MST Presents a New Proposal for Agrarian Reform
Osvaldo León
On Monday June 11th, the 5th National Congress of the Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil (MST for its Portuguese acronym) kicked off in Brasilia with more than 18 thousand delegates in attendance from 24 states across the country under the watchword "Agrarian Reform: for Social Justice and Popular Sovereignty." Neuri Rosseto of the national coordinating body says that the central aim of this congress is to come...
LETTER TO THE PEOPLE FROM THE 5TH BRAZIL-MST NATIONAL CONGRESS
We, 17,500 Landless rural workers from 24 states in Brazil, 181 international delegates representing 21 peasant organizations from and friends from several movements and organizations, met in Brazilia from June 10th to 15th, 2007, for the 5th MST National Congress too discuss and analise the problems in our society to find alternative solutions.
We commit to go on helping in the organization of people, to be able to...
Farm workers' movement criticizes Brazil government's ties to agribusiness
The Associated Press
Published: June 13, 2007
BRASILIA, Brazil: Land reform activists on Wednesday criticized President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government for its close ties to agribusiness and for not including small farmers in Brazil's biofuel program.
One of the main leaders of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement, or MST, Joao Pedro Stedile, said agribusiness was agrarian reform's...
More than 15,000 activists of Brazil's largest landless peasant movement protested in the capital on Thursday against US military interventions and called for more social justice.
The Landless Rural Workers' Movement, or MST, left 20 coffins at the US Embassy to protest deaths from major conflicts with US involvement, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
"These are all the deaths caused by the United States and other imperialist nations," Joao Paulo Rodrigues...
June 14, 2007
Agriculture-Brazil: David, Goliath and land reform
By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO - The largest movement fighting for the distribution of unproductive rural property to landless peasant farmers in Brazil complains that the "euphoria" over the production of biofuels from sugar cane and other crops is aggravating the concentration of land ownership and driving up land prices.
The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or Landless Workers...
Fidel Castro Sends Message to 5th Congress of Landless Movement
Posted: 2007/06/16
From: Mathaba
Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz sent a letter to the rural workers that make up Brazil's Landless Movement, on the occasion of the 5th Congress of their organization, which the Cuban Revolution leader described as very active and combative.
Havana, June 15 (acn) In his letter Fidel Castro said that he sent the Landless Movement fraternal greetings with sincere...
Brazilian Landless Support ALBA Integration Effort
BRASILIA .— The Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) closed their Fifth National Congress this Friday, with marked support for the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the integration group formed so far by Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
The ALBA promotes social and economic development through mutually beneficial trade and solidarity among its member nations.
In the final declaration of its...
Landless rural workers confront Brazil’s Lula
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Brazil’s workers vow to continue struggle for land and against agribusiness interests
By Isabella Kenfield*
19 June 2007
Last week the Brazilian Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) held its fifth National Congress in Brasília, the country’s capital. The power the MST has garnered throughout its 23 years was palpable, as more...
Good Evening Friends,
In the name of the national directorship and of the families of the MST, I salute the representatives of the entities that are here tonight, at the same time that we recognize the importance of the presence of each one of you and your organizations for the struggle of the workers in Brazil.
I compliment all of the invited entities and organizations, the international delegation of more than 28 countries, especially the organizations of the Via Campesina...
Dear friends of the MST,
We are publishing this special edition of MST Informa in order to communicate with our comrades who are active in different peoples’ organizations. We want to speak to you all about the situation of Agrarian Reform in Brazil and also about the realization of the 5th National Congress of the Landless Workers Movement (MST).
Brazil is living in a complex moment in her history. We had an economic model of dependent industrialization that organized our...
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...The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST)...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...
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...
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...
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.
...
YES! Magazine Summer 2007 Issue:
Latin America Rising
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Democracy Rising
by Nadia Martinez
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Grassroots movements change the face of power.
As the people of Latin America build democracies from the bottom up, the symbols of power are changing. What used to be emblems of poverty and oppression—indigenous clothing and speech, the labels “campesino” and “landless worker”—are increasingly the symbols of new power. As people-powered movements drive...
Dear Friends of the MST,
The fact that so many popular movements, unions, and student groups from all over the country have come together to build a Day of Struggle on May 23 shows that there is a revival of working class mobilizations. Since the People’s Plebiscite Against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americans in 2002, there has not been such unity of political movements around the same objective.
The National Plenary of the Popular Assembly in November 2006 was the...
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...
Brazil Man Guilty in Killing of US Nun
Tuesday May 15, 2007 9:01 PM
Guardian Unlimited
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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.
...
Letter from the Landless Mothers
We speak to the sons and daughters of the land from all nations. To those who were not invited to the banquet. To those who have been waiting in the queue of history for centuries. We will not be spectators at a film waiting for the light to go out. It’s time to believe in the possibility of defeating sorrow.
We are rising up with the mothers who are losing their sons and daughters in wars, in urban massacres, from the barrel of a rifle...
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...
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....
Forum in Mali: Building consensus
By João Pedro Stedile
The global Forum on Food Sovereignty that took place in Mali, Africa, represented an important landmark in the building of connections between international networks and social movements sharing this common goal. It also enabled us to establish a much wider common concept of food sovereignty.
The problems of hunger and poverty in the countryside and the lack of markets for farmers’ own agricultural products have...
[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...
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...
Brazil's homeless and landless unite
By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo
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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...
[04/17/2007] MST Update #131: Why We Mobilized Across All of Brazil
The agrarian reform must be a public and governmental program that should apply the principles of the constitution to fight the concentration of land property. Through the expropriation and indemnification of the owners it organizes settlements, distribute land to the worker’s families and, by doing so, democratize the access to the land, which is a natural good and must be at the service of the whole population, and...
Dear Friends of the MST,
As you know, our movement is mobilizing throughout Brazil for another campaign demanding Agrarian Reform in our country.
As you also know, April 17th is the International Day of Peasant Struggle as called for by La Via Campesina International and for that reason in many countries of the world, similar campaigns and protests are being organized by peasant organizations.
Here in Brazil in June of 2002, then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso...