RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Broad Opposition to Gov’t Crackdown on Landless

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 8 2000 (IPS) - Although public support for Brazil’s increasingly radical landless movement (MST) has been waning, there has also been widespread opposition to the government’s decision to expand the National Security Law, a symbol of the 1964- 85 military dictatorship, to crack down on the movement.

More than 40 MST activists were arrested for taking part in successful or unsuccessful attempts at occupying public buildings in 19 Brazilian cities on May 2. In some cases, the occupations of offices included threats to officials and damages to public property.

Two of the detainees have already been prosecuted under the National Security Law, which dates back to the de facto military regime.

The head of Brazil’s bar association as well as the governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Mario Covas, where police are holding 14 MST activists, joined opposition parties in criticising the use of what they described as “authoritarian” legislation.

Even the minister of Agrarian Development, Raul Jungmann, and General Alberto Cardoso, the head of the president’s Institutional Security Cabinet, came out against the measure.

The MST offensive mounted last Tuesday was aimed at forcing the government to speed up its land reform programme and increase the availability of soft credits to families who have already been settled on plots of land.

The MST protesters were also demanding direct negotiations with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso or one of the ministers on his economic team.

The government responded by invoking the National Security Law to order the federal police, working in conjunction with the local police in each state, to crack down on the activists.

The federal government also announced sanctions to be applied against invasions of unproductive land – another MST tactic – while decentralising the agrarian reform process, authorising local officials to distribute land and set up new settlements in their states.

Cardoso accused the MST of “deviating from democracy” and trying to “seize power.” He threatened to send in military troops to dislodge the activists occupying the 14 public buildings since May 2.

Advised to do so by leftist parties, the MST leadership gave the order to pull out of the buildings on Friday.

Even the National Federation of Federal Police, the union representing 12,000 agents who answer to the Justice Ministry, recommended that its members reject the use of the National Security Law to crack down on landless activists.

The head of Brazil’s bar association, Reginaldo de Castro, said the measures adopted and the government’s threats were more “typical of military governments.” He said it was an error to resurrect a law decreed by a de facto government.

De Castro, Governor Covas – a member of Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democracy Party – and opposition leaders concur that the government is mistaken in addressing a “social question” – the struggle for more equal distribution of land – with police or even military tactics.

But Cardoso’s cabinet maintained that tough measures were needed to tackle a “threat” to democracy, and warned that military troops would be employed to dislodge the activists occupying the public offices, in case the governors refused to call out the state police for the task.

But lawyer Miguel Reale, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo who has turned down several offers to head the Justice Ministry in the past, said “that is an exaggeration,” because there was and is no risk to Brazil’s democratic stability.

The government based its decisions on opinion polls indicating a plunge in public support for the MST caused by the occupations of public offices and the holding of officials as “hostages.”

Independent polls have shown that public sympathy for the movement advocating faster, broader land reform has been gradually declining over the past four years, from a peak of over 80 percent of Brazilians.

While the public widely supports the MST’s occupations of land left idle by large landowners, it is opposed to the movement’s more radical and violent actions.

Agrarian reform, however, is still seen by a broad majority of Brazilians as a solution to the heavy concentration of land in a few hands, high unemployment and the rural exodus by landless peasants, who swell the shantytowns surrounding Brazil’s big cities.

The MST was forced to suspend its offensive last week due to the government’s harsh reaction and the distancing of the movement’s leftist allies, especially the Workers Party, whose leaders have been working to reestablish negotiations between the landless movement and government officials.

But the government measures, which put many in mind of the repression of political opponents during the military dictatorship, could offer the MST a chance to shore up its waning support and alliances.

The National Confederation of Agricultural Workers, a trade union that links rural wage-earners and small farmers, has called a demonstration this Wednesday in Brasilia demanding broader land reform. Organisers hope to draw at least 10,000 protesters.

The Confederation, more moderate than the MST, also condemned the government decision “to criminalise actions by a social movement.”

The MST now has a new martyr, peasant farmer Antonio Tavares Pereira, a 38-year-old father of five who was killed by police during the May 2 demonstrations in the southern state of Paraná.

The movement’s leaders also reported that four demonstrators have gone missing, while witnesses said they had seen another protester with a bullet wound to the head after the police crackdown.

The violent repression could also boost the MST’s support abroad, with demonstrations of solidarity for the imprisoned activists, who the movement considers “political prisoners.”

The MST won strong domestic and international support when 19 of its members were killed during an April 1996 protest march in the northern state of Pará. None of the 155 military police who opened fire on the peaceful demonstration have been brought to justice, despite the fact that the bloody incident was filmed and broadcast all over the world.

The MST, founded 15 years ago, has become the opposition group capable of mobilising the greatest number of demonstrators in Brazil. The movement estimates the number of landless rural families living in camps set up throughout the country while they wait for a plot of land at more than 100,000.

The MST also has the support of most of the 400,000 families – according to government figures – settled as part of the land reform process since the 1980s.