[01/24/07] The Perspectives and Actions of the MST for 2007 (an interview with Sem Terra Magazine)

For the MST’s leadership, the challenge is to build unity among the country’s social movements.

Marches, mobilizations, land occupations. These are some of the actions the MST will continue to realize as the year begins. The objective is to pressure the federal government to take concrete measures to resolve the problem of Brazil’s land concentration. One of these measures is updating the productivity indices, an old commitment of the government to farmers’ organizations. This is the evaluation made by José Batista and Gilvânia Ferreira da Silva, part of the Movement’s national direction, for São Paulo and Maranhão, respectively.

“The revision of the indices is an obvious measure for Agrarian Reform policy,�? Batista evaluates. In an interview to the magazine Sem Terra (The Landless), the two leaders also speak about the relationship of the MST to the government, about the need to unify all movements to strengthen the social struggle, and also the Movement’s expectations with the realization of its fifth National Congress. Companheira Gilvânia, who works in Maranhao, talks a little about the struggle in the region with the largest agro-business companies.

Jornal Sem Terra – A large part of the areas expropriated for the creation of settlements have been public lands. This does not address the question of land concentration in Brazil. How does the MST face this fact?

José Batista – In the last period, our proposals about Agrarian Reform were concrete, as can be seen in the elaboration of the National Plan for Agrarian Reform. With the National March we also proposed effective measures to stimulate expropriations, focusing mainly on the implementation of the mechanisms the constitution foresees. We do not see a problem with appropriating public land for Agrarian Reform. However, the politics of agrarian democratization cannot be reduced to this. We also want agrarian reform in regions that have contradictions, unproductive lands, as in the case of the Southeast and South of the country. Therefore, we propose the update of productivity indices, a thing the government has still not had the courage to do. It has become urgent to revise these numbers that are more than 30 years old despite the increase in productive forces in Brazil.

JST –But until now the government has not fulfilled what it promised with relation to the indices.

JB - We will continue pressuring the government until it has a political commitment to Agrarian Reform. One sign of this is to revise the indices, strengthen and equip INCRA with tools that respond to the increased number of settled families. But this is not the only thing: access to public politics is also necessary. The revision of the indices is an obvious action for agrarian policy. A government that thinks that development policies generate income and increase employment and wants to resolve the profound social problems of Brazil should move forward with this. One of our main goals will be to pressure the public power through our actions, in order to clearly demonstrate our political point of view, our intention to resolve the problem of land concentration. We have no other alternative.

JST – But how should the movement proceed in order for Agrarian Reform to become a real priority of the federal government?

Gilvânia Ferreira da Silva - We understand that only through the occupation of land and public buildings, marches and mobilizations will we succeed in transforming this situation and changing the correlation of forces. There exists a very large institutional bureaucracy in INCRA and the Ministry of Agrarian Development. But the major impediment that we face is in the Judiciary Power that in many cases is protecting and encouraging the actions of large estate owners against landless families. This makes it so that INCRA does not have the force to fight for areas that many times had already been inspected before occupation. Currently, the judiciary is a great ally of the large estate owners, of the rural bankers and of agro-business.

JST – The financial and agrarian elite gained strength in Congress in the past elections. What will the Movement’s position be in light of this?

JB – For the MST, it brought to light a challenge that has long been present. International investors, large estate owners and multinational corporations are financing an ideology that has materialized in agribusiness, and it is fruit of the implementation of neoliberalism during the eight years of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government. These sectors were supported and financed by the State, through institutions such as the National Bank of Social and Economic Development (BNDES - Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social). The situation became even more concrete in these past elections. Companies such as Aracruz, Gerdau and Monsanto financed politicians in the electoral campaigns. This reveals the need to confront this logic of capital in agriculture. We need to drive this point home together with the organization of Via Campesina. This shouldn’t be done in isolation, but rather together with all of society. We should intensify the struggle against this model that has not only materialized in agribusiness, but also manifest itself in others sectors of the country. One example is the monoculture of sugar cane. The multinational corporations are buying mills for three times the price that they are worth because this is a sector that is expanding; the same is happening with eucalyptus. We have determined that the strengthening of these sectors in Parliament is a mark of their strategy.

JST – Companheira, you are active in Maranhão. What is the expansion of agribusiness like there?

GFS – We have been able to get several occupations in the areas of the Ferro Gusa Carajás company, a company of eucalyptus cultivation, formerly the Celmar project. They want to construct a paper and cellulose factory with the promise to create 5,000 jobs directly and 15,000 indirectly. But this is a great lie, used to get supporters to rally around the project. Ferro Gusa Carajás has in its hands more than 120,000 hectares of land, in addition to that of the other companies that are part of the Vale do Rio Doce Company. These companies divide into several others, smaller and with different names, and they purchase the farms that are surrounding the settlements and they earn public financing, such is the case of a steel mill that is in the city of Açailândia which received, from the Banco do Nordeste, an incentive of eight million Reais. This steel mill deforested an area that had Brazilian Pepper (aroeira), Tabebuiaipê (ipê) and hardwood (madeira de lei) to plant eucalyptus and worse yet, received money from the government to do so.

JST – How does the CVRD (Vale do Rio Doce Company) work in this region?

GFS - The CVRD has 14 steel mills which create many problems: pollution of the air, the rivers, health problems in the community - a host of issues that public power doesn’t get involved with. In the Califórnia settlement, the community filed a report with the city’s Office of the Attorney General (Procuradoria Pública) denouncing that there was a large area of eucalyptus plantation with a charcoal production site (carvoaria) inside one of the farms, very near the settlement. At night the families weren’t able to sleep because of the smoke that came from there. The community got together, filed another complaint, but no steps were taken. Several settlements have become islands surrounded by eucalyptus plantations. Another concern is the issue of a hydroelectric power plant that will be built in the city of Estreito and that will flood a large part of the land. This is also a project of the CVRD and the construction company Carmargo Corrêa. The construction will flood several cities in the states of Maranhão e Tocantins which will become water reservoirs. These projects appear as being signs of progress, but they cause great problems for the environment and for the local population. Not to mention the charcoal production the use of child and slave labor, and women whose fertility is put at risk. These are issues that need to be debated by the Ministry of the Environment, Human Rights organizations, Public Prosecutor’s Office, and Ministry of Agrarian Development.

JST – What will be the tone of the social movements' relationship with Lula's government?
In the last elections social movements were organized to confront the Right and their politics. But we did not make any contract or agreement with Lula's government. The role of the organizations is to continue fighting and to mobilize society, unified around common goals. Protesting against the labor reform, resisting the attempts to hinder our achievements and diminish our rights is an issue that unifies the entire working class. Our fight is independent of the government. It is not against the government but against this established model. The advance of the financial and rural elite did not occur only in the Parliament but also in the Senate and in the states. There is an attempt from the Right to dominate with their neoliberal model, putting the public politicians at the service of their precincts. The big challenge of the social organizations is leaving corporativism and fighting for bigger issues. This is the task we are working on with the participation of the Coordination of Social Movements, in the construction of the Popular Assembly, and in work with urban youth. It is necessary to give society clear signals of our situation in proposing a profound structural transformation.

JST – This year marks the fifth MST Conference. What does the organization expect from this big event?

JB - This conference is the synthesis of the all of the MST's construction process in the last period. It will include all the activists who helped to build the Movement in recent years, people who had the opportunity to become politically educated and qualified, which was a priority for this period. The Conference is a sort of overview of the work we accomplished, such as education, development and inclusion of politics in the encampments. It will also be a moment to evaluate our position, our alliances, the experience of Lula's government and, above all, plan the strengthening of the Movement's organization, and prepare the activists for the project we believe in. We have many good expectations with relation to the Conference because it will also be the moment to go out into society and make our plans public. The conference is a synthesis of that, because in the preceding period we were already discussing and working. The conference is also a space for protest and a demonstration of our organizational capacity.

GFS - The plans for the fifth National Conference began last year. We are already discussing the agrarian program, our political tactics and strategies about how we will organize our proceedings for the next period. All this is intended to complete the goal of organizing more people, to raise awareness, to empower the people in the class struggle. It is necessary to bring more allied social figures into the construction of the popular project and the Agrarian Reform. In the activity that will have more than 15,000 delegates we will have a summary of the last years of this journey. We will see where we succeeded, where we misjudged, and plan the future of this battle and the fruits of our labors that we have harvested and will continue to harvest through our discussions.
Who they are:

José Batista was born in Itapeva, in the state of São Paulo. His family participated in the construction of the MST in the region. He began his activism in 1996. He passed through various sectors as the head of mass and production. Today he is part of the national coordination.

Gilvânia Ferreira da Silva was born in a rural community in Paraíba. She participated in the first occupation in the state, in 1989. She has worked in Maranhão since 1992. She has worked in the development and education sectors. Today she is a member of the National Administration.