DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Activists Question Gov’t Land Reform Claims

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 9 2001 (IPS) - The organisations fighting for broader land reform in Brazil questioned the government’s claim that 482,206 families were settled on plots of their own during the six years President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has been in office.

The figures cited by a recent government report are “deceptive”, and the press simply reproduced them without even noticing the contradictions with other data provided by the government itself, said Nilton Viana, a Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST – Landless Movement) communications adviser.

Minister of Agrarian Development Raul Jungmann’s annual report stated that last year, 108,986 landless families were settled on plots of land.

But Viana said that figure was “pure fantasy.” He pointed out that by last November, only 71,605 families had received land, according to data from the government’s National Institute of Agrarian Colonisation and Reform (INCRA) – which, he said, meant that the number of families supposedly settled in December was clearly impossible.

Government data implied that 37,381 families received plots of land in December, when the monthly average for the rest of the year was 6,510, observed Manoel dos Santos, president of the National Confederation of Farm Workers (Contag).

It is odd that the Ministry of Agrarian Development could have obtained such results by using only around half of the funds it was earmarked last year, added the head of Contag, which links 3,600 unions of rural workers that represent an estimated 25 million people in this country of 168 million.

Minister Jungmann also stated that the government’s land reform programme had brought about an improvement in the distribution of land in Brazil, according to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) statistics.

Brazil dropped from 12th to 5th in FAO’s ranking of 25 countries of the Americas that it studied with regards to the concentration of land.

Canada and Mexico were found to have the best distribution of land, while Peru and Venezuela had the greatest concentration of land in a few hands.

Jungmann’s report, released last Thursday, also indicated a lower level of violence in the Brazilian countryside last year, with 10 murders over land conflicts, compared to 27 in 1999 and 47 in 1998.

The Pastoral Commission on Land, a Catholic Church group that monitors rural violence in Brazil, took issue with that figure, however. “Still preliminary data indicate that conflicts over land claimed 14 victims last year,” said the group’s coordinator Antonio Canuto.

But even if the data cited by the report were correct, it would underline the shortcomings of the government’s rural policies, argued Dos Santos, the head of Contag.

Dos Santos said the continued high level of concentration of land in Brazil meant the country did not merit the ranking of 12th out of 25 countries.

He also added that 10 deaths would still indicate a continued high level of violence, especially given the fact that the murders went unpunished.

For example, no one has yet been brought to justice for the murder of trade unionist Margarida Alves, committed 17 years ago, Dos Santos pointed out.

“The minister exaggerates more and more” in his year-end reports, which regularly claim that “what could not be accomplished in the entire year” was carried out in December, complained Raimundo Joao Amorim, one of the directors of the National Confederation of INCRA Officials.

The results reported by Jungmann contrast with the tendencies indicated by other statistics, such as the reduction of the funds used for land reform, and the official census, which illustrates a continued rural exodus, said Amorim.

The government’s figures are “extremely dubious,” he said. He added, however, that he would only be able to refute them once the report by the Ministry of Agrarian Development, as well as the settlements in each state, were studied closely.

The MST also promised to thoroughly refute the ministry’s report with one of its own.

The MST, known for its invasions of land left idle and occupations of government offices, has organised more than 500 camps of landless people throughout the country, with more than 100,000 families living in precarious settlements of plastic tents, said Viana.

Contag also reports 35,000 families living in its camps, waiting to be settled.

The MST and Contag charge that the government’s agriculture policy has failed to come through with the support it pledged for family farms, by limiting and delaying credits for small farmers, while harshly cracking down on their protests, as occurred several times last year.