BRAZIL: Landless March Biggest Ever to Reach Brasilia

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Felipe Seligman

BRASILIA, May 18 2005 (IPS) - Close to 12,000 landless peasants wrapped up a 17-day, 200-km march with a series of demonstrations in the Brazilian capital, which were marred by violence when riot police clashed with protesters, leaving several dozen wounded.

The march was organised by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and other rural organisations to demand swifter progress in agrarian reform, and in particular, to call on the Brazilian government to live up to its pledge of settling 430,000 families on land of their own by the end of 2006.

But this was not the only demand made by the marchers, who also voiced their opposition to “U.S. meddling” in Brazilian affairs and to the economic policies adopted by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – leader of the governing leftist Worker’s Party (PT) – which “contribute to creating greater wealth for a privileged minority,” said Marina dos Santos, an MST national coordinator.

After taking office in 2003, the Lula administration has consistently failed to fulfil its promises to hundreds of thousands of landless peasants.

A total of 60,000 families were supposed to be settled on their own land during Lula’s first year in office, but only 36,800 actually were. And while the goal for 2004 was to provide land to 115,000 families, barely 80,000 lots were actually distributed, according to the MST.

In addition, the government has fallen far short of providing the resources it was meant to devote to agrarian reform efforts, releasing only one-third of the amounts pledged for both 2004 and 2005.

In April, Agrarian Development Minister Miguel Rossetto publicly protested the budget cuts made in this sector.

The MST and other civil society groups that organised the march drafted a 16-point manifesto to be delivered to Lula. A 50-member delegation representing the marchers met with the president on Tuesday afternoon.

Among other demands, the manifesto calls on the Brazilian government to provide land to 430,000 families, as promised, by the end of Lula’s term; to reduce basic interest rates; to allocate part of the country’s fiscal surplus to investments in housing, health care and public education; to reject the Free Trade Area of the Americas; and to democratise the media.

Before their meeting with Lula, the landless representatives held talks with Senate leader Renan Calheiros and Chamber of Deputies leader Severino Cavalcanti.

Calheiros told the delegation that he supported the idea of dialogue, while Cavalcanti expressed anger over the unequal distribution of land in Brazil. “I cannot accept a country where a small few have kilometres and kilometres of land while others have none at all,” he declared.

For Marina dos Santos, the National March for Agrarian Reform has already yielded positive results. “We are here to revive the debate on agrarian reform, and to call on the government to go back to its agrarian policies, which have been abandoned.”

The country has more than enough resources to live up to the promises the government has made, and “All that is needed are the right policies,” she added.

According to figures gathered by the MST, there are 500,000 families in Brazil who have been settled on plots of land, while another 200,000 are living in camps under highly precarious conditions, waiting to be provided with land of their own to farm.

Nevertheless, distributing land is not enough, stressed dos Santos. “The government also needs to provide infrastructure, to ensure sustainability for the families who are settled,” she said.

Close to 15,000 demonstrators made their way through the main streets of Brasilia on Tuesday, as protests were staged at various spots around the city.

The first stop was the U.S. Embassy, where the protesters shouted out slogans condemning “U.S. terrorism” and demanding world peace and respect for human lives.

One group of demonstrators dumped and burned garbage in front of the embassy, as a way of symbolically giving back “the garbage produced by the United States.”

As the marchers passed the Ministry of Agriculture, an MST banner was unfurled from one of the windows, while shredded bits of paper rained down from another, in a show of solidarity from ministry workers.

The struggle for control over land in Brazil dates back to the days when the country was still a Portuguese colony. King Joao VI divided up the coast into large sections of land that he distributed among his favourites, who acquired the right to occupy these lands and pass them down to their descendants, but not to sell them.

In return, they had the obligation to build villages and plantations, and even establish judicial systems. This gave rise to the system of latifundia: large estates of land with a single owner. Concentration of land ownership became increasingly marked over time, partly because of the growth in population.

Today, as a result, 46 percent of Brazil’s land is in the hands of one percent of the population, according to the MST.

The demonstrators’ second stop was the Finance Ministry, where they voiced their opposition to the leftist government’s conservative economic policies.

Despite a heavy police and army presence, the demonstration here proceeded peacefully. Some in the crowd shouted out, “We want land and food, the police are for thieves.”

For her part, Maria Dominga Silva Santos, who had travelled from the eastern state of Bahía to join the march, and was dressed all in white, sprinkled water on the police officers cordoning off the ministry. “I want to cleanse their souls, because they are dirty,” she commented.

But violence erupted when the march reached its next stop, Congress, where clashes between police and protesters left 30 people wounded, according to police sources.

After spending Tuesday night in Brasilia, the march participants began heading back to their home states on Wednesday, hoping that the journey they began on May 2 will have some impact on their futures.

This was the largest demonstration ever held in Brasilia. In 1997, the MST led up a similar march to the capital, to make the same demands. Up until now, however, the situation faced by Brazil’s landless peasants has changed very little.