By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 16 1998 (IPS)

A new wave of hungry migrants fleeing drought in Brazil’s impoverished northeast has met with a cold reception.

Authorities in cities to the south are sending migrants home, and police in some cities are even “persuading” them to try their luck elsewhere. With unemployment rates like Sao Paulo’s 18.9 percent – according to a labour institute – cities are already hard-pressed to provide jobs and social services.

The drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, which heats the waters of the Pacific ocean and has been creating havoc in weather conditions around the world, has aggravated hunger and malnutrition in the northeast, Brazil’s poorest region, home to 10 million of the country’s 161 million inhabitants.

“People are tired of waiting for the government aid which never arrives, and are just picking up and leaving,” said Josefa Gomes, who has lent a hand to 10 cousins this year, peasant farmers fleeing the drought in Serra Redonda, a poor municipality in the northeastern state of Paraiba.

Gomes, who has been working as a domestic in Rio de Janeiro for 15 years, says she has more than 30 cousins who have come to Rio, Brazil’s second largest city, to find work, mainly in the construction industry and as doormen. “Three more are supposed to arrive on Saturday,” she added.

Gomes said the periodic waves of migrants were caused by losses of corn, rice, beans and yucca crops due to low rainfall.

But this year’s was the worst kind of drought, known locally as a “green drought,” characterised by slight rainfall, enough to leave the ground cover green and encourage farmers to plant, but not enough for crops to flourish, which means farmers end up losing their seeds and all other investment.

But this time around the migrants are less welcome than ever, especially in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, traditionally the main destination chosen by the “nordestinos.”

The local government has stepped up its offer of bus tickets for migrants to return home. Up to May, 560 were sent home, compared to a total of 915 in 1997 – a monthly increase of 47 percent.

Mayor Celso Pitta justified the measure, accusing his counterparts in the northeast of stimulating migration by buying bus tickets to Sao Paulo for drought victims as an escape valve for the mounting pressure caused by the hunger and resultant looting of businesses and warehouses.

The looting, which has become common in the northeast since April, led the central government to initiate a major assistance effort, including shipments of food and projects for generating jobs for hungry peasant farmers. The government is also trying to boost local incomes, speeding up retirement of eligible workers and offering small farmers soft loans.

Encouraging poor people to head to Sao Paulo in early winter is “absurd,” said Pitta, who pointed out that many of the migrants would swell the ranks of the homeless, a number of whom freeze to death on the streets of the city every winter.

Although the city government has doubled the capacity of its homeless shelters, which can now provide for 3,600 people, the new wave of “nordestinos” could overrun the shelters, the mayor warned.

A law approved by the city council which ensures financial aid to the poorest of the poor is also drawing migrants to Sao Paulo, lamented the mayor, whose bid to veto the law met with failure.

Unlike the law passed in Sao Paulo, similar “minimum income laws” already approved by the central government and several municipalities in Brazil as measures to fight extreme poverty stipulate that eligible families must have lived in the area in question for at least five years.

But it is not only Sao Paulo that is giving the migrants the cold shoulder. Santos, Brazil’s largest port city, located 70 kms from Sao Paulo, has sent 1,300 people home to various states, mainly in the northeast, according to the city government.

And Sorocaba, 100 kms from Sao Paulo, offers “deportees” not only a return bus ticket, but food for the trip home as well. Police in the neighbouring municipality of Indaiatuba, meanwhile, have been ordered to help “persuade” the hungry migrants to choose another destination.

Legal experts say the “deportation” of migrants violates the constitution, which ensures the right of free movement. They also criticise the “irregular” drain on public resources implied by the deportations.

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