BRAZIL: Landless Protesters Pour into Cities

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 11 1996 (IPS) - Thousands of landless rural workers converged on 22 of Brazil’s state capitals, seeking to win the urban population’s support for their struggle for land reform and the resignation of the agriculture minister.

After marching for days throughout Brazil, the peasant farmers, who were also protesting unemployment and demanding that President Fernando Henrique Cardoso personally take responsibility for land reform, held peaceful manifestations in 22 of the country’s 27 state capitals on Wednesday.

Unemployed individuals, students and unionists also participated in the protests.

In Brazil, as in the rest of Latin America, the overwhelming majority of land remains concentrated in the hands of a few, a problem inherited from the 19th century. And some 115 million hectares are left fallow, according to leaders of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST).

Some 4.8 million landless families – 12 million people – live in the countryside. And thousands of others have joined the rural exodus, which is largely responsible for the more than 3,500 shanty-towns on the outskirts of Brazil’s cities. In the past decade, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in conflicts over land. And tens of thousands of families are camped out on occupied land and along highways, waiting to be settled.

Cardoso has promised to settle 280,000 families during his four- year term.

But according to Jose Rainha Junior, the leader of the Sao Paulo branch of the MST, and other leaders of the organisation, Agriculture Minister Jose Andrade Vieira “is lying” when he claims the government settled 43,000 families last year.

“In Sao Paulo, no one was settled.” And the 30,000 families who are camped out on occupied land or along highways – organised by the MST – are still waiting for land, Rainha said during a radio debate with Andrade.

The MST is demanding the resignation of Andrade, “a banker without any commitment to agrarian reform, who knows little about the issue,” in the words of Rainha Junior.

The minister, owner of Bamerindus, one of the country’s largest banks, responded that the list of names of the families settled in 1995 is available to the public in the Agriculture Ministry’s National Institute of Agrarian Colonisation and Reform.

But the MST charges that the list of names is misleading. The group argues that a majority of the families were already settled by 1995, when their situation as owners of the land was regularised.

The Sao Paulo branch of the MST organised a five day march of some 800 landless farmers, and protests on Wednesday in Brazil’s largest city.

Pontal de Parapanema, an area 600 kilometres from Sao Paulo, is that state’s most conflictive region, with nearly 2,000 families camped out on occupied land, under Rainha Junior’s leadership.

In the southern city of Porto Alegre, nearly 600 jobless joined the 1,500 peasant farmers who marched 400 kilometres in seven days to demand land for 2,800 families who are camped out along roads and on occupied land.

In Rio de Janeiro, students and groups of homeless people joined a smaller protest totalling slightly more than 100 people.

In Brasilia, a small group gathered in front of the Ministry of Agriculture to demand Andrade’s resignation.

In Curitiba, the capital of the southern state of Parana, one of the country’s main agricultural regions, nearly 600 rural workers and urban unemployed people held a manifestation in a downtown plaza.

Former presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the leader of the Workers Party, expressed his support during that protest.

“A good agricultural policy with agrarian reform would resolve the problem of millions of Brazilians,” said Lula. He lamented the government’s insensitivity, as well as the fact that Parana, “a rich state, is a symbol of the rural exodus.”

The rural protesters decided to camp out for a week in Curitiba, demanding land for the state’s 300,000 landless families.

Some 400 peasant farmers marched 320 kilometres to Belo Horizonte, the capital of the central state of Minas Gerais. In their Wednesday manifestation, they protested against police repression.

On Tuesday, the police had unsuccessfully attempted to get the marchers to abandon their tools – hoes, machetes, axes, etc. – that rural workers traditionally carry in their protests.

Five marchers were injured, and 15 arrested and later released.

Belo Horizonte Mayor Patrus Ananias of the Workers Party participated in the protest.

The leader of the local branch of the MST, Armando Miranda, announced that the rural protesters will camp out in downtown Belo Horizonte until authorities address their demands.

There are a total of 600,000 landless families in Minas Gerais. The state has promised to settle only 1,700 this year, which according to Miranda is an unacceptably low figure.