POLITICS-BRAZIL: Army Defends President Cardoso’s Ranch

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 19 1999 (IPS) - The Brazilian army sent 250 soldiers Friday to protect president Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s country estate, threatened with invasion by a group of homeless peasants.

The president prides himself on providing land to more than 300,000 families during his term, more than was granted during the last 30 years. But he now finds himself in the position of large land owners whose properties have been occupied by the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST – Landless Movement) in a bid to pressure the government for agrarian reform.

Cardoso’s estate, Córrego da Ponte, covers 1,046 hectares in the Buritís municipalitiy, some 200 km from Brasilia.

Approximately 200 MST activists set up camp Tuesday at the property entrance, demanding the loans the government promised for their subsistence crops in 22 settled areas and two camps in the surrounding areas.

Thursday, the MST members attacked a truck as it left the estate, seizing its load of soya seed and fertiliser. They will be returned when MST’s demands are met, assured Gilmar de Oliveira, a leader of the movement.

Fearing a full-out invasion, vice-president Marco Maciel ordered troops from the Battalion of the Presidential Guard, in Brasilia, to occupy and defend the property Friday.

Cardoso is out of the country this week on a government visit to Italy and the Vatican.

The military will remain at the ranch until the conflict with the peasants is resolved, stated Defence minister Elcio Alvares.

The National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) sent its land registry director, Eduardo Freire, to negotiate an agreement with the MST Friday. But his offer to free up the loans after the activists withdraw from the ranch was rejected.

The proposal “is a provocation,” and the demobilisation of the “vigil” will occur once the group obtains guarantees of rapid distribution of the funds, which were promised in June and already approved by the Bank of Brazil, responded Luciano Ravanelo, an MST leader.

If they do not receive the money this month, the peasants will miss the planting season and face food shortages, he explained in justifying the protest’s urgent and radical measures.

“But a channel of communication has been opened,” he observed, and the movement’s leaders announced they are willing to negotiate a solution in Brasilia with the INCRA leadership.

But Agrarian Policy minister Raúl Jungmann said that “negotiations will not be renewed as long as the demonstrators” remain at the president’s estate.

The truck attack was “unacceptable” because it insults the national institution of the presidency, the “symbol of the authority of the people,” stated the minister upon his return Thursday night to Brasilia. He left the Cardoso delegation in Italy in order to try to resolve the conflict at home.

Freeing up loans and handling other MST demands can be accomplished, said Jungmann, but “not with the affront to presidential dignity.”

The Cardoso estate has been a favourite target for the MST’s political acts, because it provides media impact and because the group has many activists in the region.

A neighbouring property of 4,500 hectares was occupied by MST peasants five years ago. Because the land was not in production, it was expropriated by INCRA. But the settlements on the land were never granted final authorisation because of legal issues, which triggered tensions.

Thousands of additional peasant families have settled in the surrounding area and many maintain ties with the movement.

The fact that president Cardoso owns a ranch of more than 1,000 hectares is a good demonstration of the “atavism among the Brazilian elite” who feel they must own extensive properties even though they are not farmers, is a common refrain repeated by MST director Joao Pedro Stédile.

There is no other explanation for why an urban intellectual, an internationally respected sociologist who won the Brazilian presidency, would be the owner of so much land, which he does not even use on the weekends, quipped Stédile.