Of the 195 workers at Vivero Alamar, 46 are women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.

“We offer flexible hours, relatively high wages, and professional upgrading, among other benefits that make the cooperative an attractive option. This is how we attract high quality human resources, who are crucial today in order to produce more organic food,” said Salcines, the president of Vivero Alamar, where production has been chemical-free since 2000.

The cooperative’s recipe for success also includes transparent accounting, equitable profit sharing, interest-free loans for the workers, free lunches, and support for women workers with young children or others in their care: they are allowed to arrive up to an hour later than the official beginning of the work day, at seven in the morning, Salcines told Tierramérica*.

Human capital played a decisive role in raising production at this urban agriculture venture, founded in 1997 on an initial 800 square metres of land in the community of Alamar, around 15 kilometres east of downtown Havana. This is why Salcines believes that the key to achieving food security in Cuba lies in agricultural workers with a “vocation” for farming, as well as training.

In 2012, world food prices skyrocketed as a result of poor crop yields in various centres of agricultural production, such as the United States. The Caribbean countries, which are net food importers, suffered the greatest impact in the region, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Less than five percent of the population of Cuba suffers from malnutrition, but the country was forced to spend over 1.633 billion dollars on food imports last year, an unsustainable expenditure for an economy in crisis for more than 20 years, specialists say.

Reducing this massive expenditure by raising domestic food production remains a challenge for the government of President Raúl Castro. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, the National Office of Statistics and Information reported a 7.8 percent decrease in agricultural production other than sugar cane.

“There is a big demand that needs to be met, which is why we are able to sell everything we grow,” said Salcines, one of the founders of the cooperative, which now covers a total of 10.14 hectares and produces more than 230 different crop varieties (primarily garden vegetables, as well as some fruits, grains and tubers) in greenhouses and open fields.

In the midst of a generally inefficient agricultural sector, Vivero Alamar has achieved consistent growth for more than 15 years, thanks to the constant upgrading of its organic farming methods, which have even earned the praise of the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, who visited the cooperative earlier this month.

In 2012, they produced 400 tons of vegetables, 5.5 tons of medicinal and “spiritual” plants (used in religious rituals), 2.6 tons of dried herbs and spices, and 350 tons of worm manure.

They also produced 30,000 ornamental plant and fruit tree seedlings and three million vegetable seedlings, some for their own planting needs, others for sale to other farmers, reported Salcines.

Fresh vegetables, especially lettuce, are the products most sought after by the local residents in Alamar, who have begun to learn in recent years – like people in the rest of the country – about the benefits of including more greens in the traditional Cuban diet of rice, beans, “viandas” (starchy tubers and plantain) and pork.

“The first time we planted cauliflower, in 2000, it all got left in the fields, because nobody knew what it was,” plant health engineer Norma Romero told Tierramérica. In her view, one of the most important contributions made by the more than 33,000 urban and suburban farms in Cuba has been the expansion of access to and consumption of vegetables.

Thanks to a new initiative at Vivero Alamar, recipes for the preparation of different vegetables and mushrooms accompany the lists of products available at the cooperative’s sales outlet, as part of its business and educational strategy. The shelves also stock pickled vegetables, fruit preserves and garlic paste, produced through its own small industry sideline.

Although organic produce can be prohibitively costly in other countries, the organic fruits and vegetables sold by Vivero Alamar are actually priced lower than those produced with agrochemicals and sold in private farmers markets, where the prices are set in accordance with supply and demand.

“The affordable prices are the biggest attraction. A head of lettuce costs four Cuban pesos (five cents of a dollar) here, and everywhere else they charge 10 pesos,” regular customer Sonia Ricardo told Tierramérica. “The vegetables here are fresh, they have no pesticides, and the service is really fast,” she added.

Despite these low prices, the cooperative is able to earn good profits, production chief Gonzálo González assured Tierramérica. Eighty-five percent of its products are sold directly to the population, and the rest go to restaurants like La Bodeguita del Medio, a major tourist attraction in Havana.

Since it first started out with just five people, Vivero Alamar has progressively moved towards a closed-loop farming system that reduces waste and environmental damage.

“We try to buy as few inputs from outside as possible,” explained González, which is what led to “the idea of producing our own manure and various bio-pesticides and fertilisers.”

Vivero Alamar raises bulls to obtain manure, has set up “worm bins” to produce earthworm castings, another organic fertiliser, and breeds mycorrhizal fungi (which attach themselves to the roots of plants and promote their growth) as well as insects and microorganisms that can boost crop yields naturally. The cooperative has also established links with 17 scientific centres for the incorporation of new organic farming techniques and products.

Today, the 195 people who work here are striving to raise production by 40 percent to reach the farm’s full potential output, and have also expanded into raising rabbits and sheep, in order to include meat in its sales to the public and improve protein consumption among the neighbouring population, some 30,000 people.

The staff is made up of 175 cooperative members and 20 employees, and boasts a high overall level of education, with 92 university graduates and 42 technical college graduates. Women currently account for only 46 of the 195 workers.

“A farm can do much more than produce food,” commented Salcines, as he watched a group of foreign tourists who had booked a guided tour and organic lunch at Vivero Alamar.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

“Nowadays finance is an end in itself, to make money out of money, while it should be a tool to serve the economy and the people,” says Andrea Baranes, president of Fondazione Culturale Responsabilità Etica (the Cultural Foundation for Ethical Responsibility).

Andrea Baranes, president of Fondazione Culturale Responsabilità Etica. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

“Finance lost its social role,” Baranes explains. “We need measures to change this route.”

The Cultural Foundation for Ethical Responsibility (FCRE, in Italian) is part of the Ethics Network Bank, a network of organisations that promote financial services and cultural, environmental and human protection.

FCRE is of the main partners of Terra Futura (Future Earth), a annual three-day forum and exhibition held in Florence where associations, institutions and citizens meet to exchange ideas and experiences on good practises in social, economic and environmental sustainability.

IPS correspondent Silvia Giannelli interviewed Baranes on the opening day of the forum about the purpose of the forum and the alterative models it can offer to alleviate Europe’s economic crisis.

Q: As this is the tenth edition of Terra Futura, how do you evaluate this experience?

A: It was definitely a positive one. Over the years, the public, exhibitors and local institutions have become more aware of the importance of networking.

It does not make sense to reflect on the environment, jobs, rights and so on, as separate things, the way it does not make sense to talk about ethical finance without considering responsible tourism, fair trade and solidarity based purchasing groups.

But when you put all these things together, creating a network that deals with consumption, production, living and eating habits, you can build a truly alternative economic model that has been shown to work better than the traditional one, not only from social and environmental perspectives but from an economic one too.

Q: This year Terra Futura is dedicated to the economic crisis and the effort to overcome it. In what direction is the European Union headed?

A: Unfortunately Europe nowadays means almost exclusively austerity, sacrifices and the like. Even worse, we see a Europe of the common currency, of the common markets, of the free movement of capital, but there is no social Europe.

From one side, we have the European Central Bank, with its monetary policies, but on the other there is no parliament, because the European Parliament has no regulatory authority.

Q: What are solutions can Terra Futura offer to these issues?

A: What we say here is that we need to act in two directions. One is top-down, by means of regulations, in order to close what we call “casinò finance” and to block tax havens.

We also need to act from the bottom-up, to promote virtuous models in the way we use our money. I truly believe that by putting together theoretical analysis and practise we can find real solutions.

Q: What are the priorities of the Ethics Network Bank in this economic phase?

A: Before the Italian elections, the Ethics Network Bank launched proposals under the name of “Let’s change finance to change Italy”. In these proposals we asked to reduce financial derivatives and increase transparency, close tax havens, and introduce a tax on financial transactions.

We also proposed measures to enhance ethical finance, like the revision of the Basel Accords, an international regulatory framework for banks, in order to prevent ethical banks and cooperatives from being penalised and to facilitate the service sector’s access to credit.

Q: Do other European countries have organisations similar to Ethics Network Bank?

A: There are many examples of ethical finance in Europe and in the world. The differences depend on the social context of the country.

The Netherlands, for instance, being a low-lying country, is concerned with climate change, and therefore to them ethical finance means investing in renewable energies and energy conservation.

In France, where trade unions are very strong, ethical finance corresponds to job creation. In Italy, it all started thanks to the initiative of grassroots associations and civil society, so Banca Etica has always been the bank of non-profits and social cooperatives.

They come from different models, and they are different organisations with different functions, but they all have essential elements in common: the importance of real economy, the attention towards social and environmental impacts and the rejection of speculation.

Q: On Saturday you will present the campaign “Con i miei soldi” (“With my money”). What is this campaign about?

A: Last year we launched “Non con i miei soldi” (“Not with my money”), which wanted to show how we often are not only victims but also accomplices of this crisis. The money in our bank accounts risks ending up in tax havens, in weapons or other polluting activities.

This year we wanted to be proactive and explain to people how, through ethical finance, their money can boost biological agriculture, fair trade, energy conservation, etc. That way, our little savings can eventually influence the choices made in the business world.

Q: Are you optimistic about the chances of Ethics Network Bank’s reflections and proposals being heard?

A: I have one main reason to be optimistic, which at the same time makes me angry. There are no technical challenges preventing the enforcement of our proposals. We know perfectly what needs to be done and how to do it.

What is missing is the political will. But we can change this, through campaigns and grassroots actions, just what we are trying to do here at Terra Futura.

Infomal recyclers in Bogotá, Colombia. Credit: Matt Lemmon/CC BY-SA 2.0

Nora Padilla, one of the six winners of this year’s Goldman environmental prize, dedicates her days to organising informal recyclers in the Colombian capital, where the city’s eight million inhabitants are just now reluctantly starting to classify their garbage at source.

Waste pickers in Colombia have finally gained recognition from the state after a 10-year legal battle.

Bogotá’s informal recyclers are now formally recognised as providers of a public service, and since March 2013 the city government pays them 44 dollars per ton of recyclable solid waste that they collect and transport to scrap dealers.

This income is in addition to what they earn selling partially processed, clean recyclable material to the scrap dealers, who pay them per kilo.

Until the city government issued the decree that waste pickers were to be paid for the service that they offer as part of the trash management system, only large private garbage collection consortiums received payment for transporting solid waste, in an industry that collects 7,700 tons of rubbish a day.

“We are very happy because this achievement by Bogotá’s recyclers is to be applied nationwide,” Padilla told IPS by phone from San Francisco, California, where she travelled to receive the Goldman Prize, often referred to as the “Green Nobel”, on Apr. 15.

“This victory – because it is a victory that after so many years of struggle the work of recyclers has been recognised and valued, that social justice has been done, through these payments – is an achievement that the rest of the world is noticing,” she added.

Padilla heads the Bogotá Recyclers Association (ARB), a pioneer organisation that emerged in 1987 and now groups some 5,000 waste pickers – one-third of the city’s informal recyclers.

“Recyclers on every continent, in every country we know about, are saying: ‘yes, it’s possible, we also want that’,” said Padilla, referring to the recognition of Bogotá’s informal recyclers as a valued part of the waste management system.

“This is not only a triumph for Bogotá’s recyclers; it is an achievement for recyclers around the world,” she said. “We thank the city, because it has begun to recognise us and to say: recyclers have rights.”

Padilla calls herself a “grassroots recycler, which means I offer an essential public service.” She estimates that with their manual labour, garbage pickers like herself collect 100 times as much recyclable waste material as is collected by formal industry in Bogotá.

The private garbage companies truck the waste they pick up to a giant landfill to the south of the city, known as Doña Juana, where they are paid by weight, which means classification of the waste is not a priority for them.

The landfill, created in 1988, is at the limit of its capacity. In recent years, there have been frequent complaints about the dumping of liquid waste from Doña Juana into the Tunjuelo river, a tributary of the Bogotá river, which in turn runs into the Magdalena river that crosses the country from south to north.

In the United States, the amount of energy wasted by not recycling aluminium and tin-plated steel cans, paper, printed materials, glass and plastic is equivalent to the annual output of 15 medium-sized power plants, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

In Colombia, such estimates don’t exist.

“I started working as a recycler as a young girl. By the time I was seven or eight, I was already going to the dumps, or to El Cartucho,” a slum in the heart of Bogotá, Padilla said.

She proudly explained that the first decision reached by the association was to guarantee that the members’ children would not have to go out with their parents to sort through waste. Towards that end, the ARB members pay the salaries of several women members who take care of the children while the adults go out to work.

Bogotá’s waste pickers sell the material they collect to scrap dealers at 1,361 centres.

A census of recyclers in Bogotá, commissioned by the city government in 2012, counted 13,984 organised waste pickers, 68.7 percent of whom were men. Over half were between the ages of 26 and 50, 10 percent were over 60, 5.2 percent were under 18, and 14.8 percent were between 18 and 25.

But the census did not count unorganised recyclers, including homeless people.

On Mar. 21, a historic event occurred in Colombia, which was cited by the Goldman prize: 790 recyclers received, for the first time, payments for transporting 5,700 tons of recyclable waste to the scrap dealers over the space of two months. A few days later, another 700 people received payments.

The new system was designed in response to a 2011 Constitutional Court ruling that ordered actions to be taken to foment the social integration of Bogotá’s marginalised scrap pickers.

Left to right: Juan Camilo Restrepo, Josefina Stubbs and Alex Segovia Credit: Juan Manuel Barrero/IPS

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) initiatives working to overcome poverty and improve food security in the Colombian countryside can make a positive contribution to government efforts to tackle some of the most neglected problems facing this South American country.

“Rural development was forgotten in Colombia for a long time,” Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Juan Camilo Restrepo said at a seminar on Monday Apr. 22, organised by IFAD and his ministry to share experiences linking the situation in rural areas with peace efforts in this country that has seen nearly 50 years of armed conflict.

“That’s why we’re now making great efforts to give rural development pride of place. But there is a long way to go,” Restrepo admitted at the opening of the seminar on “Desarrollo rural y construcción de territorios dinámicos y pacíficos” (Rural development and construction of dynamic and peaceful territories).

Recent indicators show progress has been made against poverty, but it is still concentrated in the rural areas where one-third of Colombia’s 47 million people live.

According to figures released Apr. 18 by the National Administrative Department of Statistics, while the overall poverty rate declined from 40.3 percent in 2009 to 32.7 percent in 2012, the urban rate last year was 28.4 percent compared to 46.8 percent in rural areas.

“The country needs to work extremely hard to give rural areas the importance they deserve, with or without a peace accord,” said the minister, referring to the talks taking place in Havana between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, in which land reform is a key issue.

“The support we receive from IFAD, and events like this, contribute to increasing our resolve,” Restrepo said.

Josefina Stubbs, Latin America and Caribbean director of IFAD, said “Colombia today is at a crucial moment, redefining its frameworks, policies and laws for rural development.” That is why “this event is very important, as much for IFAD as for other development sectors here present,” she told IPS.

The Victims’ Law, in force since January 2012, provides for the restitution of lands taken by armed groups from campesinos or peasants and other people displaced by the conflict.

The government says it has already distributed over one million hectares and is waiting to recover another one million hectares of idle land to form a land bank. The authorities estimate that some 200,000 campesino families lack land to farm.

Another bill, the Law on Land and Rural Development, which Restrepo is promoting, is under consultation with indigenous and campesino communities before it is presented to Congress.

In this context, “strengthening dialogue with the Colombian government at this point is extremely important, because this country is trying to close the gaps of inequity and the large differences between urban and rural sectors, and very seriously re-thinking the processes of rural development in a way that would contribute effectively to poverty reduction,” said Stubbs.

IFAD’s experience in this field is vast. Through its Rural Opportunities Programme, shared with the government, “it has generated support covering 20,000 families and 400 businesses,” Roberto Haudry, IFAD country programme manager for Colombia and Peru, told IPS.

The Rural Opportunities Programme “is an off-shoot of another programme with which IFAD has contributed to public policies in Colombia through the strengthening of over 1,000 campesino enterprises involving some 120,000 families,” he added.

“The country is changing. It’s time to talk less theory and to put people to work with other people, with the state as a partner. We can have absolute confidence if small entrepreneurs are empowered to make changes in this country. Campesinos, young people and vulnerable sectors with a productive attitude will emerge from poverty under their own steam, with their own motivation and abilities, without intermediaries of any kind,” Haudry said.

This is what Teófila Betancourt has done. She is an Afro-descendant from Guapi, a small town on the Pacific ocean in the southwestern department of Cauca.

“We have worked for many years to improve people’s welfare, based on the recovery of traditional practices, food security, territorial solidarity and human rights, and we have made considerable progress,” she said.

There are 25 cooperatives in Guapi, with an average of 15 women each. They plant food crops for their own consumption, as well as aromatic and medicinal species, and they make jams, crafts and traditional musical instruments. They sell their produce in local markets and have gradually taken up the public space that had been occupied by vendors from other regions.

These producers have also opened a restaurant that promotes typical foods of the coastal region, and they offer accommodation to visitors.

Along the Pacific coast, there are 84 groups doing similar work. “We have been doing this for 22 years” and recently, “we have received support from IFAD through Fundación Acua (an Afro-descendants’ cultural organisation),” Betancourt said.

“They support us because they know what we contribute to the rural area of Guapi. And that’s why I’ve come here (to the seminar) today. Although I feel a bit like a fish out of water, I have learned that this is where we can find out exactly what the government is thinking and what it is doing,” she said.

Alex Segovia, technical secretary in the office of the president of El Salvador, described the experience of his country, where a 12-year civil war came to an end in 1992, and which is governed today by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the former guerrilla group that laid down its arms and took the path of electoral democracy.

“This debate is very important because rural development is combined with the urgent need for peace,” Miguel Fajardo, the head of the Centro de Estudios en Economía Solidaria (CEES – Centre for the Study of the Solidarity Economy), told IPS. He described the achievements of cooperativism in three provinces in the department of Santander, in the northeast of Colombia.

“There are signs of change linked to justice and land restitution in rural areas, and without a doubt minister Restrepo is presenting carefully thought-out reflections on issues that had practically vanished from the agenda over the past 20 years or more,” said Fajardo, a sociologist.

However, he expressed “uncertainty” about the advance of the mining industry in locations like Páramo de Santurbán, an area of rich biodiversity with a wealth of water resources, and in the region of Vélez, “which have been granted in concession to multinational corporations, with the result that the regions have become impoverished.”

Restrepo told IPS that “Colombia began a peace process in spite of ongoing armed conflict, which is not usual, but even within the conflict one must begin to think about what the post-conflict reality is going to be in every sense, and particularly in terms of rural development.

“Let us remember that real peace comes after an accord has been signed, when a country’s institutions achieve the administration of that peace and its adaptation to the times,” he said.

Children at the MST’s Frei Henri des Roziers Camp in Pará, Brazil. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Toiling beneath a blazing sun in the humid heat of the Amazon, Waldemar dos Santos, 60, tends the community garden he shares with other landless peasant farmers in the Brazilian state of Pará, as they wait for agrarian reform to provide them with the opportunity for a better life.

“My dream is a small plot of land. Our goal is to bring an end to hunger in this country, which is falling off the precipice of need,” he told Tierramérica*. As a child, Santos fled the drought-stricken northeast Brazilian state of Bahia and migrated to the northern state of Pará, in Brazil’s Amazon region.

His family is one of the 280 families living in the Frei Henri des Roziers Camp, established by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in Aug. 8, 2010. The camp is named after a Dominican friar and lawyer from the Catholic Pastoral Land Commission who continues to fight in defence of human rights in the region at the age of 82.

The landless peasants are occupying a 400-hectare estate known as Fazendinha, located off federal highway BR-155 roughly 100 kilometres from the city of Marabá. They say that the purported owners of the estate, formerly a cattle ranch, created it by invading and illegally deforesting public land, and that at the time of the occupation, it had been left idle and unproductive.

This is the justification for almost all of the land occupations by social movements demanding agrarian reform in Brazil.

In the southeast of Pará, where the struggle over land is most violent, over 500 settlements of small farmers have been legalised by the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). But there are still more than 100 camps of families living in tents and straw huts waiting for the federal government to grant them legal ownership of the land.

It takes an average of five years to get the government to confiscate a property and allocate the land to agrarian reform.

To reach the Frei Henri camp, you need to drive along a long stretch of the dusty BR-155, full of potholes and trucks loaded with minerals that block the road day and night.

The region was once rich in cashew trees, which were razed to make way for cattle pastures. Right in the heart of the Amazon, the towering green canopies and exuberant vegetation of the rainforest were replaced with the flat monotony of grassland years ago.

The occupation of Fazendinha has led to bitter conflicts with local ranch owners, who have joined forces and hired private armed guards to intimidate the landless farmers and destroy their crops.

“We plant crops to grow healthy food. The ranch owners don’t produce anything and claim that their lands are productive. We face constant threats. Justice in Pará is very slow. We wait and despair,” said Dos Santos.

“Here, land is power,” declared Maria Raimunda César, 39, a member of the MST coordinating committee in Pará. “The conflict is never-ending. In Pará, people are gunned down like animals. A side of beef for export is worth more than a human life. There is tremendous injustice, and growing oppression and violence.”

According to César, agrarian reform is ignored in national policies. Both the current government of Dilma Rousseff and that of her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) “removed the issue from the agenda.”

Changes in land use tend to follow a similar perverse pattern, said César. First the rainforest is opened up to make way for mining and logging for charcoal production. This is followed by the invasion of public lands by private landholders, who destroy the forest and plant grasses for cattle grazing.

On average, there is one head of cattle per hectare, she noted.

Also along highway BR-155, but close to Marabá, there is another camp of landless peasant farmers, the Helenira Resende Camp, which was set up on Mar. 1, 2010 and is now home to 150 families. In addition to intimidation by armed men, these farmers also face airborne threats: toxic agricultural products sprayed over their homes and fields.

Raúl Montenegro, an Argentine activist who participated in an international mission in solidarity with the landless peasants of Pará, told Tierramérica that “the combined use of bullets and poisons is tantamount to chemical warfare against these communities.”

“The large landholders claim that they are spraying these chemicals on their own lands, but this is a way of evading responsibility,” said Montenegro, the president of the Foundation for the Defence of the Environment, based in Córdoba, Argentina, and a recipient in 2004 of the Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”.

“We were not only able to confirm that groups of armed men laid siege to an entire community and subjected them to a nightly hail of gunfire and loud bombs at the Frei Henri des Roziers Camp. We also witnessed how companies like Santa Barbara conduct aerial spraying of pesticides,” he denounced.

“This poison reaches children, adolescents and adults, with total impunity, with no government control, and no epidemiological or environmental testing,” he added.

“Our motto is to occupy and resist, but they are an extremely powerful group. The men at the ranch are heavily armed and they shoot,” said Aldemir Monteiro de Souza, 28, a resident of the Helenira Resende Camp, which occupies 50 hectares within the Cedro ranch, an estate covering a total area of almost 15,000 hectares.

The “powerful group” he is referring to are the owners of the cattle company Agropecuária Santa Barbara. One of the company’s biggest shareholders is banker Daniel Dantas, who was arrested in 2008 for financial crimes and money laundering.

According to the MST and the Pastoral Land Commission, in the last 10 years alone, the Santa Barbara Group has bought up 800,000 hectares of land in six municipalities in Pará.

“The group appropriates public lands, uses slave labour, and commits environmental crimes,” said Charles Trocate, an MST coordinator in Pará.

The landless peasants are waiting for INCRA technicians to inspect the Cedro ranch to determine if it is productive and legal. If irregularities are detected, the process for its expropriation will begin, and the land will subsequently be allocated in parcels to the farmers.

A hearing with the INCRA agrarian oversight committee has been scheduled for May 22 at the Justice Forum in Marabá. This will be the first step, after years of occupation and the establishment of the landless farmers’ camp.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Coín activist selling fruit and vegetables at the Málaga Común market. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

Wholemeal rye bread, lettuce and chard are some of the products on offer from the El Caminito urban vegetable garden at the small organic produce market in this southern Spanish city, with prices set in “comunes”, one of more than 30 social currencies circulating in the country.

“The aim is to find an alternative to the curse of unbridled capitalism and to sow the foundations of a more just and compassionate society,” activist David Chapman of the Málaga Común platform, the network responsible for the market, told IPS.

In the network, more than 700 registered users exchange goods and services using “comunes” as currency and recording transactions on the internet.

In Spain, over 30 local currencies coexist with the euro, and they are “tools empowering communities by means of the exchange of products and services and the creation of parallel markets,” economist and writer Julio Gisbert told IPS.

The común, the lazo and the coín in Málaga, the puma in Seville, the zoquito in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), the pita in Almería and the justa in Granada – all in the south of Spain – are some of the social currencies created with the shared mission of dynamising local economies and moving toward a more sustainable economic and production model all over the country.

The Puma Social Currency Network was launched a year ago in the Old City of Seville as a people-to-people mutual credit system. It seeks to “relaunch and localise the economy of this part of the city, and create community,” local resident Natalia Calzadilla, one of its members and a producer of vegetable jams, told IPS.

Puma users keep a hard copy of their transactions in goods and services on cards. They also upload their offers and requests on the Community Exchange System (CES), a platform created in 2002 in Cape Town, South Africa, which can be used in 56 countries for transactions in social currencies or time exchange.

Madrid has the boniato; in the northern city of Bilbao, the local currrency is the bilbodiru; and in the northeastern town of Girona, the euro-RES.

The euro-RES was created in Belgium over 15 years ago, with the same value as the euro. It is used by a network of some 5,000 small and medium businesses, as well as by individuals, as explained on its web page.

Users of these alternative currencies come from all walks of life: “They are masseuses, doctors, electricians, lawyers, professors… and the quality of what is on offer is amazing,” said Chapman.

The Puma Network, which brings together students, the unemployed, professionals and tradespeople, promotes creativity, the development of new skills, moral support and self-esteem for its members, said Calzadilla.

She paid another member 25 pumas (equivalent to 25 euros) for a massage. Now that person is credited with that amount to buy another service or goods in the community. The project organises a monthly market, called Mercapuma, where producers display their wares, and on Mondays a food store sells organic and homemade foods.

Carmela San Segundo offers English, French and Esperanto classes to members of Málaga Común, and told IPS she paid for painting two rooms in her house and repairing her computer in comunes.

Spain’s economic and financial crisis is encouraging experiments in social exchange, which may use alternative currencies, barter or time banking, “because people are seeking different ways of life,” said Gisbert, the author of “Vivir sin empleo” (Living Without a Job) and the blog of the same name.

According to Gisbert, there are more than 300 time banks in Spain, so called because they do not bank money but hours. When a person performs a service, he or she is credited with the appropriate number of hours in return.

Although complementary currencies are criticised for not solving the problem of poverty, Gisbert argues that their goal “is not to feed people in need, but to seek mutual help to achieve self-sufficiency and a new and more sustainable social model.”

The coín, a currency created in the town of Coín in the province of Málaga, is part of the global transition movement and is intended to serve as an instrument of reaction to and change from “the energy, economic and environmental crisis,” according to its web site.

Most of these social currencies, launched by organisations or networks, have no official basis, Gisbert said. However, that does not mean this small-scale phenomenon is illegal.

Alternative currencies are not a new invention, but a global phenomenon that has emerged especially in industrialised countries. There are complementary currencies in the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and other countries. For instance, in the multicultural London borough of Brixton, transactions can be made in Brixton Pounds.

The Brixton Pound, which is issued in different bills annually, is one of the most innovative social currencies, Gisbert said.

Meanwhile, groups associated with alternative currencies are becoming interested in providing microcredit. José Luis Gámez, the son of the founder of the axarco, which circulates in Axarquía in Málaga province, would like to be able to finance social economy projects in the region with this currency that was created in 1988.

But the silver and copper axarco coins are no longer used because of the cost of minting them. Today, they are collectors’ items.

As well as promoting the exchange of goods and services, alternative currencies can be used to put a value on the work of volunteers or those who create learning, according to the philosophy of an international project, tgl (teaching, giving, learning).

As it makes headway in Spain, tgl is using the social currency L, which is created when people teach or learn skills or knowledge, participate in voluntary projects or carry out social enterprises that generate employment and local wealth.

“L is not a currency to facilitate barter or exchange, but to generate wealth because it injects liquidity into the system. It is created by teaching and learning, volunteer work and social enterprise,” Raúl Contreras, co-founder of the social change platform Nittúa and promoter of the Okonomía popular economics school, where students and tutors are paid in this alternative currency, told IPS.

The United Nations steps in to save Gaza from collapsing under the weight of its rubbish. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.

“For the past five years we’ve collected garbage by traditional means: donkey and cart,” says Abdel Rahem Abulkumboz, director of health and environment at the Municipality of Gaza. The municipality of Gaza alone produces 700 tons of waste daily, Kumboz says. More than half of this waste is collected daily by 250 donkey carts.

“It’s a means of doing the job, but not an optimal one,” says Kumboz.

Among the growing problems facing waste management throughout the Gaza Strip, even this simple solution nearly came to an end this month.

“The funding allotted to garbage collectors finished at the end of February,” says Kumboz, noting that it is not slated to resume until June at the earliest.

Hamada al-Bayari from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the emergency response came recently after the intervention of Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), an Italian aid group. Bayari says that COOPI provided the funding for the waste collection to continue until the already-slated June funding begins.

One potential disaster avoided, the Gaza Strip’s waste management problem nonetheless remains near crisis point.

The most critical issues include overflowing landfills, non-functioning collection vehicles, waste site toxins leaking into the groundwater, and no means of hazardous waste disposal.

“The severe siege over the past six years has affected all aspects of waste management,” says Kumboz, referring to the Israeli-led siege, which bans entry of construction materials into the Gaza Strip.

The municipality has 75 collection vehicles “over half of which are completely unusable,” he says. “The rest have been in use for more than 15 years and are in need of repair. Because of the Israeli import bans, we can’t get the parts we need for maintenance. We get some of them through the tunnels from Egypt, which is expensive and not guaranteed.”

The most urgent issue, Kumboz says, is the overflowing landfills. Expansion of Gaza’s landfills has thus far been impossible due to lack of construction materials and the routine Israeli army attacks in border regions where the three main dumps are located.

A February 2011 World Bank report had noted even back then that the Gaza Strip’s three main landfills are “reaching their maximum capacity.”

The report further noted that the landfill situation “has been further aggravated by the Israeli military actions” which resulted in “substantial amounts of demolition debris of damaged buildings, some of which is contaminated with hazardous substances.”

Other hazardous substances in Gaza’s waste sites include asbestos, used on many roofs in Gaza and found amidst bombing debris, chemicals and toxins from Israeli bombs, and hazardous healthcare waste from hospitals including infectious or pathogenic waste, blood and body fluids, and radioactive or chemical waste, according to a September 2009 United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report.

During the winter 2008/2009 Israeli attacks on Gaza, “incinerators did not function due to electricity shortages. All landfills thus indiscriminately received hazardous materials such as healthcare waste,” the UNWP report notes.

Add to that more than 35,750 cattle, sheep and goats and more than a million birds and poultry killed in the attacks, which Gaza’s landfills did not have the means to dispose of hygienically.

Eight days of continued Israeli attacks in November 2012 further complicated the demolition debris and hazardous waste problems.

Of the Strip’s three main landfills, only the Strip’s central Deir al-Balah site was built according to acceptable sanitary standards, according to a March 2012 World Bank report.

All three landfills lie close to the Green Line border separating Gaza and Israel, and routine Israeli army incursions and attacks along the border limit regular access for landfill maintenance.

As the World Bank report notes, any future expansion of another of the three main landfills, Johr ad-Deek, “entails risks.”

On Jan. 5 this year, the Israeli army fired on a waste truck on the Beit Hanoun landfill. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports that the truck was 150 metres from the border when fired upon. It reports that a worker, Awad al-Zaanin, was injured by bullet shrapnel to his head.

“Much of Beit Hanoun is a border area. There are many Israeli army invasions and bombings here. All of this causes problems for solid waste management,” says Sufyan Hamad, head of Gaza’s northern municipality.

On an aerial map of the northeast border, Hamad points out the dump’s location. “We were forbidden from reaching the dump, the Israelis banned us from going within 300 metres of the border.”

On Mar. 12 this year, Israeli rights group Gisha reported that the Israeli army spokesperson confirmed that the 300 metres along Gaza’s border remains off-limits to Palestinians. This is in spite of the Israeli army-Palestinian November 2012 ceasefire which stipulated that access be allowed up to 100 metres from the border.

Of the Strip’s three main landfills, the World Bank notes that only the Sofa site in south-eastern Gaza has the potential for expansion.

Yet, the report cites the need for “construction of two sanitary landfills” to serve the entire Strip, as well as the need to “close and rehabilitate all remaining dumpsites” and to “replace the old collection fleet with a new one.”

For Kumboz, who has been waiting for years for already purchased collection vehicles, getting enough vehicles just to replace Gaza Municipality’s broken vehicles scarcely seems possible.

“We have waited for five years for trucks already in Ramallah to be allowed to enter Gaza,” says Beit Hanoun’s Hamad. “The problem is with the Israelis, they say the trucks aren’t allowed to enter.”

The March 2012 World Bank report confirms the delay of 22 new trucks destined for Gaza which “have been waiting for the last three years in Ramallah for the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities in order to enter Gaza.”

Students in the Nilo Peçanha school lunchroom. Credit: Still image from video filmed by Vincent Rimbaux/IPS

Separating Maria Gomes Morais’ farm and a school in Rio de Janeiro are fields, hills and dirt roads that are impassable when it rains. But a school meal programme has forged a path linking the fresh produce harvested by small farmers like her with the need to provide nourishment to 45 million schoolchildren around Brazil.

Sabugo is only 60 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro. But the small rural town, where cars, bicycles and carts pulled by tired horses share the roads, feels as if it were a world away.

The arid landscape shifts subtly to different shades of green, survivors of the tropical
Mata Atlântica forest, as you wind your way through wild banana plants and bamboo groves to reach the Sítio Recanto da Alegria (Corner of Happiness) – Gomez Morais’s farm.

The 61-year-old Morais, who is known as “Neta”, has worked since the age of 10 on the three hectares farmed since her family occupied part of an old estate. She was later granted legal title to the property, as part of a government land reform process.

“I’ve never been afraid,” she tells IPS. “I go everywhere, I climb up and down the hills. I’m not scared of snakes or things like that. It’s as if they fled from me.”

“The big farmers have their machines. Ours are our hands,” she adds with a laugh, saying she would not trade her life in the countryside “for anything in the world.”

Her only support comes from a neighbour who helps her clear her land, where she grows okra, scarlet eggplant, and fruit like lemons, oranges, limes and maracuyá. Nature provides her with different varieties of native-grown bananas.

In the past, she sold to middlemen, and had to wait a long time to be paid.

“What did we eat? I’m not ashamed to say it: angú (cornmeal or plantain mush). Today’s meal programmes didn’t exist. You would wait for the middleman to come and make his monthly purchase. And in the meantime, your shelves would get empty and the kids would go hungry,” says Neta, whose three children are now grown up.

School lunches to the rescue

But through a Rio de Janeiro state cooperative, Unacoop, Neta became a supplier of Brazil’s National School Meals Programme (PNAE), which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Programme has taken as a model to replicate in other countries.

The PNAE was linked to family agriculture in 2009 through a law that establishes that 30 percent of the food served in school meals must be bought from family farmers in the same local area as the school.

Family farmers account for 10 percent of Brazil’s GDP.

The PNAE has two aims: to guarantee meals for school-age children and teenagers while improving the lives of 4.3 million small farmers like Neta.

“The good thing is that the prices they paid us have improved,” she says. Her home, which used to be adobe, now has several brick walls covered with plaster. And she has brought a refrigerator, stove and washing machine – which she is able to use because she also has electricity now.

The PNAE gives priority to rural settlements created by the land reform process, indigenous communities and quilombos, black communities that were founded by escaped or freed slaves.

A truck, or a tractor when it rains, picks up her fruit and vegetables and takes them to the local market. From there they are transported to the state of Rio de Janeiro agricultural supply centre, CEASA. They eventually end up at one of the more than 161,000 public schools included in the national meals programme, 83 percent of the total.

Neta supplies the programme with bananas, oranges, avocados, pineapples, cashews and cherries. “Everything has to be top quality for the school lunch programme,” she says.

Breaking the cycle of poverty

The PNAE has a long history. Born in 1955 as a welfare plan that targeted poor children, it was decentralised in the 1990s and its administration incorporated representatives of families, local communities, teachers, and the executive and legislative branches, the programme’s national coordinator, Albaneide Peixinho, tells IPS.

The programme was expanded by the governments of left-wing presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and his successor Dilma Rousseff.

Since 2003, the PNAE’s budget has grown 300 percent, and it was enlarged to include middle-school students and adults taking literacy courses, Peixinho adds.

The CEASA is a beehive of trucks unloading merchandise in the wee hours of the morning. The products sold by Neta and the rest of the members of the cooperative go to a special section for small farmers.

In the CEASA, a rural extension service for family farmers provides advice on planning and diversification of crops.

“The small farmer does not yet have the training to plan production and delivery times,” the head of the area, Newton Novo, tells IPS. “For a school lunch, I can’t send a green banana like I could to a big market which supplies neighbourhood markets. It has to be ripe and ready for consumption.”

But the technical aid is insufficient. “They should go out to the fields, in order to analyse the soils and see what is best to plant on each farm,” the coordinator of Unacoop, Margarete Teixeira, remarks to IPS.

Nor is it easy to become a PNAE supplier, because the programme requires land titles to be in order – a challenge in a country like Brazil, where rural land ownership problems date back to colonial times.

Eating our veggies

But an expert on food law, Leonardo Ribas, underscores the results of the programme, saying it has strengthened local economies and family agriculture, which are key “in a society where, because of agribusiness, food has become merchandise.

“It has also improved the diets of children, because they have begun to eat locally-produced foods that are grown organically,” he tells IPS.

The cafeteria in the public school in the municipality of Nilo Peçanha, which serves children from poor neighbourhoods like the Mangueira favela, serves breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks to 500 students.

The menus are planned on the basis of “nutritional standards for healthy foods, taking into account the age of the students, how many hours they spend in school, the harvest season for each product, the cost, and the eating habits of the students,” says the director of the Municipal Health Secretariat’s Nutrition Institute, Fátima França.

The school principal, Márcia Alves, says that while children tend to dislike vegetables, science classes help encourage consumption by teaching youngsters about their nutritional value.

The kids seem to have learned the lesson – at least, while the principal is standing nearby.

“I used to eat a lot of fast food, but now I eat a balanced diet, said 12-year-old Mariana Cristina.

“I used to eat more sweets than proper food, but in school, that’s changed,” says Elisangela, of the same age.

While the children are eating their vegetables in school, Neta is changing her clothes and heading into town to press for the purchase of a fruit ripening chamber and better organisation of the deliveries of local farmers, in order to improve the logistics of the local market, which would boost their incomes.

“I’m happy,” says Neta. “We’re helping to fight the hunger not only of the children, but of everyone.”

* With reporting by Fabíola Ortiz in Río de Janeiro.

On the water in the San Crisanto mangroves. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The residents of San Crisanto, a small communal village nestled in an idyllic setting in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán, have learned that valuing and protecting natural resources can generate employment and income.

The San Crisanto initiative, which combines ecotourism and other economic activities, is a model for other communities located along Mexico’s Caribbean coast, which is rich in biodiversity but exposed to unpredictable weather hazards.

Visitors to San Crisanto can take boat tours, swim in the crystal-clear waters of “cenotes” or sinkholes, stay in environmentally friendly “eco-cabins”, and purchase locally produced crafts and sweets made from coconuts. In 2012, the community received 12,000 visitors, although it has the capacity for 50,000 annually, according to the residents.

In addition, “we work a great deal on education. The majority of the people are very much aware of the importance of taking care of the natural resources. We must take care of them because of climate change, to protect them from hurricanes,” said Reyes Cetz, 44, one of the 35 registered landholders in the “ejido” or communal village of San Crisanto.

There is as yet no incontrovertible scientific proof that the extremely powerful and destructive hurricanes of recent years are caused by climate change. But it is highly probable that atmospheric warming has had an impact on the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.

In 1995, Hurricanes Opal and Roxanne devastated the mangrove forests of San Crisanto, located 1,400 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. First the residents organised to repair the damages. Then they proceeded to strengthen the ecosystem against future threats by clearing channels through the mangrove, to allow water to flow through freely.

“The mangrove forests recovered quickly, because the water currents carried nutrients to them. The more mangrove forests there are, the more birds, fish and crocodiles there are,” said José Loria, 56, the operations manager of the ejido, which created the San Crisanto Foundation in 2001.

The ejido system dates back to the Aztecs, and was re-established in Mexico in the 1930s. It is based on the communal tenure and farming of public lands. The San Crisanto ejido was established by a group of farmers who requested land from the state government for growing coconuts in 1957, although its creation was not authorised until 1973.

The community jointly holds 850 hectares of mangrove forests and 100 hectares of coconut groves. In addition to ecotourism, they use these communal resources for agriculture, craft production and salt extraction.

Today they earn a living from “selling scenery,” Loria told Tierramérica. “We have created a company to make use of the resources. We aren’t fighting poverty here, we are improving the quality of life.”

The average income of each “ejidatorio” or communal landholder is 6,000 dollars a year, earned from ecotourism, salt extraction, and payments for environmental services like reforestation and protection of the mangrove forests. These various activities provide employment for 300 people.

“During these months – between February and May – we concentrate on extracting salt and preparing for the tourist season,” Cetz told Tierramérica. This year they have already produced 250 tons of salt, which the ejido sells for 39 dollars a ton.

Since 2001, the community has restored 11,300 metres of canals in the mangrove forests and 45 cenotes fed by underground water sources. While these efforts have reduced the risk of flooding, they have also led to growth in the populations of endemic species.

The area around San Crisanto, home to 570 habitants, is exposed to hurricanes and storm surges caused by an increase in sea level, which means there is an urgent need here to adapt to weather variations.

But the state of Yucatán, highly vulnerable to these problems and extensively studied by scientists, has still not developed a plan to confront climate change.

Mexico loses 10,000 hectares of mangrove forests of year. There are currently more than 770,000 hectares of these coastal ecosystems remaining in the country, according to the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO).

If the current rate of destruction continues, by 2025 Yucatán will have lost almost 30 percent of the mangrove forests it had in 2010, according to projections by the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change.

Mangrove forests, made up of numerous tree species adapted to swampy, saline soils, provide a habitat for a wide range of fauna, serve as a natural water filter, and protect coastal areas from storm surges, hurricanes and erosion. As they grow, the trees absorb large volumes of carbon dioxide.

Their destruction in Yucatán is largely the result of urbanisation and the expansion of tourism, particularly the hotel industry. Other threats include pollutants from fertilisers, pesticides and wastewater that are washed into the mangroves by rivers and streams.

In this region “there are two fundamental elements” that need to be protected: the coastal barriers provided by coral reefs and mangrove forests, said Lorenzo Rosenzweig, executive director of the non-governmental Mexican Fund for Nature Conservation.

“The best way to protect the coasts is to protect the mangroves,” he told Tierramérica.

The Mexican NGO participated in the creation of the Mesoamerican Reef Fund, established in 2004 to protect the coral reefs off the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, and between 2009 and 2012 it designed adaptation programmes for four ecosystem areas in southeast Mexico, including the Caribbean coast.

The success of San Crisanto’s efforts has attracted national and international attention. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme awarded the community its biennial Equator Prize, and the following year, it received a national prize for forest conservation.

The community has also been the subject of a study, “Campesinos-pescadores de Yucatán: uso de la biodiversidad y apropiación de recursos naturales costeros” (Peasant farmers-fishers of Yucatán: Use of biodiversity and appropriation of coastal natural resources), published in 2010 by Luis Arias and Salvador Montiel of the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies at the National Polytechnic Institute.

The study identified 144 species used for livelihood purposes in San Crisanto and noted that ecotourism has become the leading economic activity, due to both the revenues it brings in and the “social recognition” that it earns the community.

The ejido’s strategic plan for 2009-2029 foresees an increase in this trend. “We see ourselves as a community that lives from tourism,” said Loria. “We need to diversify and improve our offerings, to reach a bigger market,” he added.

However, he warned, “if the mangrove disappears, it will be good-bye, San Crisanto.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Cícero Guedes, murdered Jan. 26 in the north of Rio de Janeiro.

In the book “Memórias de uma Guerra Suja” (Memoirs of a Dirty War), Cláudio Guerra, formerly an agent of the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (DOPS), the 1964-1985 military regime’s political police, tells how the bodies of 10 leftwing activists were burned, in order to leave no trace, in the oven of the Usina Cambahyba sugarcane plant in Campos dos Goytacazes, a municipality in the north of the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Forty years later, the name of this agroindustrial complex of seven plantations with a total area of 3,500 hectares is again linked to the silencing of a bothersome voice, but this time under a full democracy.

Fifty-four-year-old Cícero Guedes was an outstanding leader in the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). He led the land occupation of the Usina Cambahyba plant which gave rise to the Luiz Maranhão encampment.

“He was a real symbol, and (his murder) sends a powerful message to the MST, which is organising the land claims of rural workers in the area,” one of the MST national directors, Marcelo Durão, told IPS.

“We are in conflict with the forces of oppression in the region,” he said, and he described Guedes as “a staunch activist, consistent and very focused on the struggle for land, as well as an authority on agroecological production.”

Marcos Pedlowski, a professor at the State University of North Fluminense who has studied land reform issues there since 1998, said the murder “is clearly an attempt to break up the organisation, rather than a petty dispute.” Guedes was “an icon of efforts in the struggle for land”, he said.

The MST leader was cut down by at least 10 bullets in an ambush in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 26, near the sugarcane industrial complex. He was cycling home from a meeting to negotiate the legalisation of the situation of the 100 landless families in the encampment.

The dispute over land ownership with agribusiness owners in the region “has been exacerbated by the delay in legal procedures involving properties regarded as unproductive, and therefore subject to expropriation for agrarian reform purposes,” said Maria do Rosário Nunes, the human rights secretary for the Brazilian Presidency. The Cambahyba case is an example, she said in a communiqué.

Legal authorisation for the expropriation, which effectively allows it to go ahead, was granted in August 2012, 14 years after the ruling by the Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA).

“The backdrop (to the murder) is the slowness of federal justice,” Marcelo Freixo, a state legislator for the Socialism and Freedom Party and chair of the Human Rights Commission of the Rio de Janeiro state legislature, told IPS in an interview.

“The large plantations in the sugarcane processing region are bankrupt and are in debt to the state, in an area where there is a great concentration of poor and landless people. This is where INCRA really has to ensure land reform,” he said.

The large estates belonged to the late Heli Ribeiro Gomes, a former deputy governor of Rio de Janeiro, and were passed on to his heirs.

In the book, Guerra says he took advantage of his friendship with Ribeiro Gomes to “disappear” the bodies of the leftwing activists, using the factory oven.

The story is “absurd”, according to Ribeiro Gomes’s relatives, but other equally macabre tales have been borne out in reality, even in the present day, like the killing of Guedes and other rural activists whose deaths did not receive as much publicity.

“They say 10 activists were cremated. But we can well believe there were many more,” said Durão. The area is notorious for its history of violence against rural workers on the part of the “sugar kings” and their hired killers.

Durão drew attention to the “brutality” of the killing, and its “premeditated nature”, with four shots to the head and six to the left side of the chest.

Freixo said it was “a murder by several killers, an ambush… and nothing was taken. Clearly it was an execution.”

The northern part of the Fluminense flats has not changed much – at least in terms of fundamental issues like land ownership, human exploitation and violence – since the dictatorship era, nor since previous centuries, when the first forms of slavery in Brazil were introduced on sugarcane plantations.

In 2009, a Labour Ministry report said Campos dos Goytacazes was the area with the highest number of workers labouring in slave-like conditions, a shocking situation in the 21st century, Freixo said. However, it is not surprising, since this region was the last in the country to abolish slavery.

Pedlowski, author of the book “Desconstruindo o Latifúndio – a Saga da Reforma Agrária no Norte Fluminense” (Dismantling the Large Estates – the Saga of Land Reform in North Fluminense), stressed the concentration of land ownership, linked to sugarcane monoculture and violence.

The Gini coefficient, which measures inequality on a rising scale from 0 to 1, is 0.8 for land ownership in Campos dos Goytacazes, the highest inequality coefficient in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

“The same families always rule the roost in Campos,” a region that is “the traditional cradle of the extreme right, like Tradition, Family and Property (TFP, a traditional Catholic civic organisation, now-dissolved),” and a place where political corruption scandals have erupted in modern times, the book says.

Guedes fought tirelessly against the use of toxic pesticides in agriculture, in addition to fighting injustice. He was a sugarcane cutter in the northern state of Alagoas before joining MST in 1996 and obtaining a plot of land in the Zumbi dos Palmares settlement.

A father of five, Guedes ran an agroecological farm and was regularly to be found at organic produce markets, as well as participating in local coordination with the government food purchasing programme, which buys produce from family farms to provide school meals.

“He did not learn at the university. The rest of us learned from him,” Pedlowski said.

“The MST was his life. He made great sacrifices to form marketing groups for producers…and he was not satisfied with having his own land. He led from the front at other land occupations. He was the animator,” he said.

“The elimination of such a dynamic leader shows the degree of impunity and the state of paralysis of land reform, especially since (Brazilian President) Dilma (Rousseff) took office,” he said.

According to the MST, the current administration not only has not solved the problem of 150,000 families camped by the roadside waiting for land, but has increased the concentration of land ownership, some of it in the hands of foreign companies.

An INCRA report says that in 2012 the agency invested 1.05 billion dollars and benefited 23,000 families in 117 settlements.

Last year, it says, the agency obtained declarations of public interest on 31 properties for the purposes of land reform.