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BRAZIL: People’s Assembly Builds Participatory Democracy

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31 2005 (IPS) - People’s assemblies should be held all around Brazil, in every social context, in order to strengthen democracy and organise coordinated action, the 8,000 participants representing a broad diversity of social movements concluded in a meeting in the Brazilian capital.

People’s assemblies are a means by which the diverse struggles, demands and world-views that inspire people at the grassroots – especially those who have been excluded by society – can be articulated, organised and united, Luiz Bassegio, one of the coordinators of “Popular Assembly, Mutirao for a New Brazil”, explained to IPS. (“Mutirao” means working together as a group).

The Oct. 25-28 meeting in Brasilia, organised by more than 40 church groups and other organisations representing peasant farmers, indigenous people, unemployed workers and other marginalised sectors, published an open letter to the Brazilian people and a document, “Our Next Steps”, with an agenda and calendar of “common struggles”.

The letter, headed by a quotation from Karl Marx -“The liberation of the oppressed must be the work of the oppressed themselves” – states that all Brazilians should mobilise and participate in the people’s assemblies in order to combat inequality, oppression and “the subordination of the common good to special interests.”

Inequality and the number of poor people are growing in the world, because “progress” has failed to benefit the majority of the population, says the document. It points out that Brazil is a prime example of this phenomenon, with the richest one per cent of the population controlling 13 per cent of the national income – the same amount of wealth as is possessed by the poorest half of the population.

High interest rates, the cost of servicing the national debt, child labour, concentration of land ownership in too few hands, inadequate public spending for the benefit of the poor, human rights violations that go unpunished, the “criminalisation” of social action movements and domination of the media by just a few families are the principal problems mentioned in the document.

The demands that are common to all of the participating groups include real political reform, a moratorium on debt repayments, an increase in the national minimum wage, higher pensions, a shorter working day, and lower interest on public debt, which pays “the highest interest rate in the world.”

In addition, the 8,000 participants at the Assembly rejected both global and continental trade agreements, the presence of Brazilian troops in the United Nations’ mission in Haiti, and the plans of the oil company Petrobras and other Brazilian firms to exploit resources in neighbouring countries.

By contrast, the meeting gave its support to the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), an idea launched by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as a counterpoint to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA by its Spanish acronym), promoted by the United States.

The social activism agenda proposes national mobilisations on several commemorative dates, such as International Women’s Day, World Water Day, International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, and Brazil’s national independence day. In 2006, local and state-level meetings are to conclude with a National Assembly at the end of the year.

What we are attempting to do is to exercise “direct, participative democracy,” since elections have failed to solve the country’s problems, said Bassegio, secretary of the Latin American movement Grito de los Excluídos (Cry of the Excluded).

Frustration provoked among much of the left by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his left-wing Workers’ Party has accentuated the need to mobilise and organise society in order to influence the future of our country, he added.

People’s assemblies are a way of organising mass movements and popular groups by geographical area, especially unemployed workers, people affected by dam projects, the homeless in the cities, indigenous and peasant women, most of whom are excluded from traditional institutions and who do not come under the umbrella of the large central trades unions, he maintained.

The debates at this first National Assembly “radically questioned the current economic model” and the absence of democratic control over the State and politicians. They sought to define “the Brazil that we want in the long term, ten or fifteen years from now,” according to Bassegio, who is also coordinator of Pastoral Service for Migrants in Sao Paulo.

Importantly, the meeting “opened up possibilities for broader united action” involving the varied organisations that attended, and “enriched the vision of Brazilian reality” held by social movements, Ivo Poletto, advisor to the Catholic institution Caritas, summed up for IPS.

A discussion of environmental problems from the point of view of Brazilian ecosystems, such as the Amazon region, the semi-arid northeast, the Pantanal wetlands and the temperate zone in the south, “opened interesting ways forward” and helped outline joint challenges, he emphasised.

Different groups living in the Amazon jungle region described to the Assembly how they coexist with the rainforest without destroying it. Inhabitants of the Cerrado, a savannah which occupies large areas in the centre of Brazil, became aware of their common struggles and their considerable importance in national life, as suppliers of water resources and food crops for a large proportion of the country.

This first nationwide People’s Assembly, which is intended to become a permanent fixture, was attended by 180 indigenous people from 20 communities throughout Brazil.

They participated directly in the forum on “Values, gender and ethnicity”, and also discussed all 10 central issues on the meeting’s agenda, as their lives are affected by all of them, from the economy to health and education, said Aurivan Barros, a leader of the Truká indigenous community.