MST Update #40

Letter from the Land In Defense of Agrarian Reform and Family Agriculture

MST Informe
May 30, 2003
MST

Letter from the Land In Defense of Agrarian Reform and Family Agriculture

The social organizations that work in the rural areas defend the necessity of agrarian reform, of family agriculture, and the change from the current agricultural model as a path to guarantee work, income, production of foods for the internal market, food sovereignty, and the construction of a sustainable development model for our country. For this reason, we struggle for:

  1. The appropriation of the latifundios and the confiscation of all lands with slave labor and the cultivation of drugs.
  2. Respect for human rights in the rural areas, combating all forms of violence and the end of impunity. And demanding the demarcation of lands belonging to indigenous communities and the remainders of quilombos.

  3. The stimulus for family farming with accessible credits, agricultural insurance, technical assistance, fair prices and the guarantee for the marketing of their production;
  4. The implementation of agro-industries in the interior towns, in diverse forms of cooperatives and associations;
  5. The production of seeds by the farm men and women themselves and the prohibition of the production and consumption of genetically modified foods;
  6. The development and promotion of agricultural techniques that do not harm the environment, preserving and democratizing access to water;
  7. The improvement of the social welfare system, public and universal, allowing access and permanence of the rural workers in the General Plan for Social Welfare;
  8. The implementation of the directives from the National Council of Education for schools in the rural areas, eradicating illiteracy and guaranteeing the right of all to quality education at all levels;
  9. The inclusion of women and youth, based on the principle of affirmative action, seeking to correct the discrimination that stems from unjust practices and social systems and guaranteeing equality of opportunities and rights;
  10. The elaboration of specific policies for each region especially for the development of the semi-arid area of the country. In this struggle, the groups and social movements clearly take a position against the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) because the proposal that is being imposed represents the domination of U.S. corporations over the continent of Latin America. The groups and social movements demand that a plebiscite be carried out as a form of dialog and full participation of the population and they struggle for the strengthening of solidarity and cooperation amongst the people of the continent.   CONTAG - MST - FETRAF-SUL - CPT - ANMTR - MPA - MAB and groups of the National Forum for Agrarian Reform and Justice in the Rural Areas.

    NEWS BRIEFS

    Friends of the MST in Europe demand the end of conflicts in Colombia During the Fifth Meeting of the European Friends of the MST, held on May 23 and 24 in Portugal, the participants released a statement demanding a political solution to the conflicts by which the Colombian people are suffering and which threaten to destabilize Latin America. Participants from 11 European countries and the United States expressed a concern for the growing number of violations of human rights, took a stand against Plan Colombia, and requested that the Colombian government guarantee the safety of those who are struggling in the social movements.

    The killers of João Canuto on trial: an impartial victory On May 23, the two hired killers of João Canuto de Oliveira, namely Adilson Laranjeira and Vantuir de Paula, were condemned to 19 years and 10 months in prison but will remain at liberty until their appeal is heard. João Canuto was the first president of the Sindicate of Rural Workers of Rio Maria, in the municipality of Sul do Pará. He was assassinated on December 18, 1985 with 18 shots fired by the two gunmen.

    Workers occupy latifúndio in Souza Cruz, Rio Grande do Sul state On May 28, more than 5,000 rural and urban workers from the whole state occupied the Boa Vista Fazenda in the area of Souza Cruz on Highway 471, near Rio Pardo. The action was part of the Day of Struggles for Land, Work, and Social Rights, organized by CUT/RS, Federations, Unions, and Via Campesina. According to the organizers, it is unacceptable that a foreign corporation owns millions of unproductive acres while there are more than 17,000 landless workers just in the region of the Valley of Rio Pardo.

    New Challenges for Brazilian Grassroots Movements

    Social Network for Justice & Human Rights Maria Luisa Mendonça May 2003

    The recent election of president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil was the result of two decades of grassroots struggle to end inequality in the country. The Brazilian people elected Lula because they hope the Workers Party will build a different economic system, based on social justice. Like many Third World countries, Brazil has suffered the effects of structural adjustment policies -- imposed by the conditions of IMF bailouts -- such as the rise of unemployment and economic vulnerability. This situation has created very serious challenges for the Workers Party administration, which has been unable to make significant changes in economic policies due to the pressure being placed on them by external forces like the IMF.

    In a meeting with representatives of the World Social Forum in January 2003, Lula talked about his strong sense of responsibility, not only to Brazilians, but to all Latin Americans who believed a left-wing government could be elected in Brazil. Lula said he knows that a disappointment with his government could discredit the left in Latin America and around the world for many years to come.

    The Brazilian social movements share this sense of responsibility. It is increasingly clear that the focus of our struggle should be against the institutions that maintain the neo-liberal economic model, such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the policies imposed by the United States government.

    For many Brazilian activists, one of the most important tests for Lula's government is the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). There is a very large coalition against the FTAA in Brazil, which organized huge demonstrations at the 2003 World Social Forum, and had already mobilized over 10 million people in a plebiscite on the FTAA.

    Recently, this campaign demanded that the Brazilian government open a public debate about the FTAA, before continuing with negotiations. Currently, the National Campaign against the FTAA is promoting a petition demanding that the Brazilian Government call an official plebiscite on the FTAA negotiation in the fall of 2003. This would prevent the government from moving forward with negotiations before consulting its people. At the same time, the Brazilian Campaign Against the FTAA is intensifying the organization of caucuses and committees around the country to debate, to organize demonstrations, and to collect signatures for the petition on behalf of the official plebiscite.

    Another important issue for Brazilian activists is the agreement that the previous president signed with the United States government, which permits the use of the Alcantara Air Base, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. There is a great deal of opposition to the agreement in the Brazilian Congress, which will likely reject it. This opposition grew especially after the beginning of a huge grassroots campaign to educate the public about the danger of letting the United Stated control the base. Today it is more urgent than ever that we denounce the linkages between the military and economic strategies of the U.S. government. The consolidation of military and economic control over Latin America has long been a strategic priority of the United States. In the financial arena, Latin American dependence is perpetuated by an illegitimate external debt and by new mechanisms of economic domination, like the FTAA and other multilateral trade agreements, which reinforce the macroeconomic policies determined by the international financial institutions and enforced by the United States. This economic axis of U.S. imperialism is backed up by an enormous military capability.

    The U.S. strategy in Latin America includes the building of new military bases and the reinforcing of existing ones, the training of Latin American militaries, arms sales, the installation of new monitoring and espionage systems, and the exercise of undue influence over law enforcement bodies in Latin American countries. The goals of these policies are to maintain the neo-liberal economic model, to defend the interests of large corporations and to guarantee their control over natural resources, principally petroleum, water and biodiversity.

    Militarization is one of the principal instruments of the recolonization of Latin America. This growing process on the continent is generating and increasing the violations of human rights and the repression of social movements, the displacement and forced migration of millions of people, the destruction of the environment, and the loss of sovereignty and self-determination of peoples.

    In fact, the principal mechanism used by the U.S. to guarantee its economic and geopolitical hegemony worldwide is military force, which represents a tremendous threat to all of humanity. In Latin America, some examples of this structure are:

    • The installation of military bases in Manta (Ecuador), Três Esquinas and Letícia (Colombia), Iquitos (Peru), Rainha Beatrix (Aruba) and Hato (Curacao). These new bases complement the U.S. encirclement of the region, which already included bases in Puerto Rico (Vieques), Cuba (Guantanamo) and Honduras (Soto de Cano). The U.S. is also planning to build bases in El Salvador and in Argentina, and to gain control of the Alcântara base in Brazil.
    • The training of Latin American militaries, as in the case of Operation Cabañas in Argentina, with the participation of 1,500 officers from the U.S., Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. According to government documents from Argentina, the objective of this training is to create a "unified military command" to combat "terrorism..., in a battlefield littered with civilians, non-governmental organizations and potential aggressors." This command would act in the triple border region between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. The authorization for the entry of U.S. troops into Latin American countries includes guarantees of diplomatic immunity.
    • The U.S. is continuing to train Latin Americans at the School of the Americas, and will set up the Law Enforcement Academy for the Americas in Costa Rica, which has the goal of influencing legislation in the countries of the region, to benefit U.S. political, economic and military interests.
    • The installation of mechanisms like System of Surveillance of the Amazon (SIVAN), a $1.4 billion project with surveillance capabilities over 5.5 million square kilometers. Plans for SIVAN include the purchase of military aircraft, like the A-29 Toucan. The Pentagon wants to build a huge radar facility in Argentina, as part of an international surveillance system.
    • The strengthening of the U.S. defense industry. For example, the Manta base, with the ability to control airspace over a 400 km radius, will be the responsibility of DynCorp, accused of having close ties to the CIA. The Manta base will be equipped with E-3 AWACs and F-16 and F-15 Eagle fighters to patrol the Amazon region, the Panama Canal Zone, and Central America. Other defense contractors, like Raytheon and Northrop, have projected a 50% increase in earnings this year.
    • The $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, plus plans laid out by Secretary of State Colin Powell, to spend $731 million to finance the participation of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in joint military operations. The principal foci of violence, which is causing the expulsion of indigenous peoples from their lands, coincides with the regions with the greatest biodiversity. Plan Colombia is facilitating the implementation of hydroelectric, petroleum exploitation and mining mega-projects, sponsored by the World Bank and by multinational corporations. More than a million hectares of Colombian forest have already been contaminated with chemical agents, and the number of internal refugees is almost 2 million people, 75% of whom are women and children.
    • The U.S. strategy of domination includes regional agreements, like the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP), a transnational project to build a 'dry canal' linking Southern Mexico and Central America, passing through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. The PPP will include a complex of maquiladoras and light assembly plants, controlled by multinational corporations, as well as extensive plantations, possibly with transgenic crops. The PPP will facilitate control of hydrological and biological resources, and reserves of petroleum, natural gas, uranium, aluminum and copper.
    • The Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), which binds Colombia, Peru and Ecuador to the U.S. through a series of political and commercial obligations, including support for the "fight against terrorism," and compliance with the intellectual property clauses of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In this context, several human rights organizations created the Continental Campaign Against Militarization, a new coalition which is part of the Continental Campaign Against the FTAA. Its main proposals are:
      • To denounce U.S. military domination in Latin America and its impacts, like human rights violations, environmental destruction, and the loss of sovereignty and self-determination of peoples.
      • To expose the relationship between U.S. military and economic strategies in Latin America, and their link with mechanisms like the debt and the FTAA.
      • To organize mobilizations, conduct research, and carry out legal actions against the U.S. military apparatus, and in defense of human rights.
      • Support the social movements in each country that struggle for land, for their culture, for jobs, and for their dignity.
      • Build a new economic model based on social justice and solidarity. Work toward an alternative, sustainable, and equitable integration of Latin America.

    This campaign is an example of the great challenges that all activists face in the Americas. For Brazilians, the main responsibility is to denounce U.S. imperialism and to fight against the influence of right-wing sectors in the new administration. This is a very complex and difficult context, but it is also a moment of increasing mobilization. The third World Social Forum, which attracted over 100,000 people from 130 countries to Porto Alegre, showed that we are not alone. Recently, we saw the historic demonstrations against the war in Iraq, in more than 60 countries. This is a moment of great fear and great hope, which demands a great deal of unity and a lot of work.

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    Last updated Jun. 18, 2003 16:03:14