LABOUR-BRAZIL: Truckers and Landless Launch Protests

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 3 2000 (IPS) - Activists from the Landless Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra – MST) took over several government buildings Tuesday while truckers continued their strike, setting Brazil on edge just days after a relatively calm Labour Day.

Though protests against the low minimum wage and high unemployment on May 1 were mostly peaceful, a violent confrontation Tuesday between approximately 1,300 MST peasants and police officers left at least 30 people injured near Curitiba, capital of Paraná state. Some 400 people were arrested, according to authorities.

Police used rubber bullets and tear gas against peasants who had arrived in Curitiba’s outskirts aboard dozens of buses coming from the state’s interior.

The MST protesters tried to take over the city’s public buildings, as their counterparts did on other state capitals, but the military police were given the order to prevent their entry, said Paraná’s secretary of Public Safety, José Tavares.

But Roberto Baggio, MST co-ordinator in Paraná and one of those arrested, said they had intended to stage a peaceful demonstration. Movement representatives say there were seven cases of serious injuries and that children and pregnant women had suffered wounds.

The MST had called for Tuesday to be a National Day of Struggle in response to “the lack of a policy for agrarian reform.” The movement calls for more farming credits and permanent settlements for the approximately 100,000 families living in camps on occupied lands or rural roadways.

The National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA, the executive branch of the Ministry of Agrarian Development) saw its offices in Brasilia occupied by approximately 300 rural workers Tuesday.

In other parts of the country, the primary target was the Ministry of Finance, whose policies the MST says obstruct agrarian reform and agricultural development.

In Sao Paulo, some 500 landless demonstrators clashed with police in their attempt to take over the Ministry of Finance’s headquarters. Fifteen were arrested, including one MST leader, and the police took another 200 to a holding area owned by the state government.

But protesters were successful in 17 other state capitals throughout Brazil, where thousands of peasants were able to take over or close down government buildings. In Rio de Janeiro, the demonstrators targeted the central offices of the National Bank of Economic and Social Development, a government-run development organisation.

In Recife, in the northeast, and Cuiabá, in the west, tensions rose quickly as more than a thousand people were involved in the takeovers and police surrounded the buildings the protesters occupied.

The MST launched this offensive just one day after independent truckers stopped all activity to protest the high tolls they are forced to pay on privatised highways and to denounce other difficulties they face.

The Brazilian Truckers’ Union Movement, which called the strike, promised it would not repeat the highway blockades that occurred in July, but some strikers tried to set up the roadblocks in several parts of the country anyway, sparking conflicts with local police.

Eliseu Padilha, minister of Transportation, criticised the truckers for not keeping their promise, but by Tuesday said the status of the nationos highway system was back to normal.

If the strike continues, it could affect the supply of goods to the larger cities, especially fuel. Rio de Janeiro is most at risk because its residents completely depend on food shipped in from other regions of the country.

The trucking strike did not have much of a following, according to authorities. But the movement’s leaders say they achieved almost total shutdown of transportation in several states. Trucks carry nearly 70 percent of Brazil’s internal shipments.

In an interview last week with the ‘Jornal do Brasil’ newspaper, president Fernando Henrique Cardoso warned that increased violence in rural areas would endanger the nation’s democratic institutions.

Landowners organised under the Democratic Ruralist Union had announced they would respond to the invasion of their property with weapons if necessary.

But the government has also shown greater willingness to use force, especially since April 22, when police violently attacked indigenous groups who tried to express their rejection of the official celebrations of the 500 years since Brazil’s “discovery” by Portuguese Conquistadors.

The police used force to prevent the indigenous protesters from entering Porto Seguro, the site in Bahía state where the Portuguese landed in the year 1500.

Some days prior to the event, Cardoso had characterised the Landless Movement as “fascist.” MST activists tried to take part in the Porto Seguro protests to decry the “exclusive” celebrations and the slowness of agrarian reform. But a strong police mobilisation turned them away.

The MST had stepped up its takeovers of unused rural lands on April 18, with the consequent reaction of the landowners. According to the movement’s representatives, MST peasants carried out more than 140 different land occupations.

This week, however, the landless set their sights on government offices and announced they want to discuss their demands directly with the president, since dialogue with minister of Agrarian Development Raul Jungmann failed.