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Sowing the seeds for a new society at an occupied estate in northeastern Brazil.
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It
is now widely accepted that food security for local communities means the capacity
to access, develop and exchange seeds and to produce enough food for the households,
only selling the surplus to the markets.
Wangari
Maathai,
Kenyan environmentalist (1940-)
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Carving a life in the Santa Clara camp of tents.
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Key
figures, Brazil
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Total population:
168 million (1999)
GNP per capita:
US$ 4,420 (1999)
Agricultural workers as share of total labour force:
17 % (2000)
37 % (1980)
Agriculture as share of GDP:
9 % (1999)
11 % (1980)
Sources:
UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank. |
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Specialists
in various fields gather together and observe a stalk of rice. The insect disease
specialist sees only insect damage, the specialist in plant nutrition considers only
the plant’s vigour. It is time to change this approach.
Masanobu
Fukuoka, Japanese promoter of organic agriculture
(1913-)
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Brazil’s
landless peasants are fighting for more than just agrarian reform–their goal is to
build a new social order based on solidarity and mutual aid
Ared banner flutters
at the entrance to the August 8 camp, a town of black tent-houses and narrow alleys
located eight kilometres from Bagé and 120 kms from the border with Uruguay,
in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It features two peasants striding forth
from a green map of Brazil and the words “Landless Workers’ Movement.”
Founded in the 1980s in southern Brazil to fight for agrarian reform and land redistribution,
the Sem Terra movement operates in an unusual but effective way: peaceful occupation
of under-used land belonging to transnational companies and big landowners.
Brazil has plenty of such land. After neighbouring Paraguay, it has the world’s highest
concentration of land ownership. About one percent of landowners are thought to possess
46 percent of the land, while 90 percent have less than 20 percent. According to
the National Institute for Land Settlement and Reform (INCRA), the state body in
charge of agrarian reform, there are some 100 million hectares of idle land that
could be farmed. In the last 20 years, five million peasants and their families have
fled the countryside, largely because of this unequal land distribution, and proceeded
to swell the ranks of the unemployed in already overcrowded cities such as São
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
It’s an hour after dawn. Clouds and rain are giving way to the sun, which finally
emerges. A strong wind whips through the streets of the little town, although a nearby
thicket of eucalyptus trees affords some protection. On one side of the tents, men
and women wash clothes in a stream. The different teams in the camp are starting
their daily chores: some look for firewood, the only fuel available, others cook
food and clean, while others meet to discuss the next steps in the fight for land.
Eight hundred farming families live in the town’s 200 various-sized dwellings made
of wooden frames and black nylon walls and roofs. On both sides, behind wire fences,
are 2,700 hectares of idle land belonging to the Brazilian Agricultural Research
Corporation. By the fire, while the chimarrão1 of tea is passed around, César,
the leader of the camp, and Gilberto, his deputy, talk about the occupation of the
São Pedro estate a few kilometres away.
It began at 9pm when more than 3,000 people set out for the estate. When they reached
the entrance, soldiers opened fire from a car. Realizing the size of the advancing
crowd, the troops retreated to the safety of a building and continued firing. The
peasants surrounded the house and pleaded with them to stop. One marcher was killed
and two wounded. An hour later, the landowners and the soldiers surrendered and São
Pedro was occupied.
“We stayed there for a few days,” says Gilberto, “but then we decided to leave because
the government promised to give land to all the families within 10 days.”
When
black-tented camps grow into agro-towns
A
few months later, the families still had no land, so new protests were mounted including
a 450-km march to Porto Alegre, the state capital, and further occupations. More
than 30 children and adults died during the struggle. Today, nine years later, most
of the families from the August 8 camp have received land, but across Brazil there
are hundreds more black-tented camps.
Since 1984, landless peasants in Brazil have occupied more than 3,900 estates and
their campaign has become one of the largest protest movements in Latin America.
After each occupation, they ask the government to expropriate and redistribute the
land–as required by the 1988 Constitution–and when the state does their bidding,
the camp turns into a settlement with more permanent structures. About 22 million
hectares are thought to have been handed over in this way to 618,000 families, many
of whom eat what they grow and sell what is left over through a network of cooperatives.
The 8,000 settlements scattered through 24 of Brazil’s 27 states are not just rice,
bean and potato plantations. There are kindergartens, schools and clinics, meeting
halls and churches. The most developed, called “agro-towns,” boast farm industries
providing steady jobs for peasants and their families. As in other “mini-societies,”
teams of farmers are placed in charge of essential tasks such as planning, food supply,
hut-building, internal and external security, firewood, hygiene, religion, leisure,
education and sport.
“Our battle isn’t just to get land,” says economist João Pedro Stédile,
the movement’s national coordinator. “We’re building a new way of life, socially,
culturally and politically. Land is just a stepping stone towards this new society,
and each occupation is a chance to start building our future.” The movement, he says,
“is changing the life of peasants who were once marginalized and had no future. Today,
they are working the land with dignity and earning each month about the equivalent
of three times the minimum wage, which is more than the average person living in
the countryside.”
Fierce
resistance from the country’s big landowners
During
the first government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-98), agrarian reform
was presented as vital for the growth of family farming, a solution to food shortages
and the way to reduce rural conflict. But Stédile argues that the new policy
followed the agricultural development model promulgated by previous military regimes.
“That economically-driven policy failed to recognize the importance and potential
of small-scale farming in the production process. Family plots are still seen as
backward in the capitalist scheme of things. Governments seem to have ignored the
fact that over the past 36 years, since agrarian reform began under President João
Goulart in 1964, rural conflicts have continued and are growing. Over the same period,
food production has risen but so has the number of hungry Brazilians.”
In Stédile’s opinion, family plots are under siege from a single model of
agricultural development that encourages growing cereals (especially soy) for export,
and which requires huge investment in transport infrastructure.
“Each occupation opens up a new area of political and social formation, of struggle
and resistance,” he says. “By occupying land, the peasants are constantly recreating
their own history and winning a chance to negotiate. They’re also winning a chance
to get a new kind of education for their children in the settlement and the right
to a bigger say in decisions about their future.”
The road has been far from easy. As expected, the occupations prompted fierce resistance
from the big landowners, who ruthlessly worked to stamp them out–persecuting and
physically attacking peasants and their leaders through gunmen and paramilitary forces
employed to drive protestors off the land. According to the Catholic Church’s Land
Commission, which backs the Sem Terra movement, 1,169 violent deaths have occurred
in rural Brazil since 1985, including those of trade unionists, peasants, lawyers
and priests. Only 16 culprits have been tried and jailed.
In an effort to end these conflicts, Henrique Cardoso decided during his second term
to ban the expropriation of occupied estates. Stédile views this as contradictory.
“The government wanted the landless to stop occupying the estates by warning them
that occupied land would not be expropriated, but the fact is that land is only handed
over after occupation and struggle.”
Violence against peasants has diminished in recent years though Brazil is still lumbered
with the problem of how to redistribute its surfeit of land. The landless have opened
up a breach and have won property to farm alongside rewards such as the Alternative
Nobel Prize2.
Despite this, the current minister of agricultural development, Raul Jungmann, recently
suggested that the Sem Terra has strayed. “I think it’s important to have mediators
leading the protestors. But the landless movement no longer plays this role. It hasn’t
been able to adapt to changes in the world and to agrarian issues in Brazil.”
The minister pointed out that since he took office in 1996, the average annual number
of newly settled families has grown tenfold. The government’s action, he stated,
has two clear objectives: “reduce the number of conflicts in the countryside and
make land reform more efficient.”
The movement contests this analysis and remains well aware that the future of their
struggle will largely depend on not forgetting its original aims.
1. A metal recipient
used by Brazilian peasants to drink a local blend of herbal tea.
2. Created in 1980 and given on the eve of the Nobel Prizes in the Swedish Parliament
to reward actions in favour of the environment and human rights.
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A
fine record on schooling
To the peasants
of the landless movement (MST), agrarian reform is not just about land and capital.
It also means giving people the tools to become full-fledged citizens. This is where
access to education becomes critical.
From the outset, MST leaders have not only striven to teach families in the settlements
basic literacy and numeracy skills, but also to develop the political awareness necessary
to take a critical look at their lives. Agrarian reform, social justice and the class
struggle are some of the topics teachers commonly deal with, as well as encouraging
discussion of everyday living conditions.
The MST believes an organization can only survive if it trains its own leaders, so
it has set up several schools for this purpose and a college (Iterra) to train agronomists.
There is also a medical brigade trained at Cuba’s International School of Medicine,
and eight university teachers have been contracted to train MST officials.
Primary and secondary education are also given pride of place: the movement has opened
about 1,000 schools on occupied land since the mid-1980s, in which some 2,000 teachers
give classes to 70,000 pupils.
To reduce truancy and combat illiteracy, the MST decided early on to adapt the schools
to the agricultural calendar. The school year, which had always started in February
or March, no longer clashes with local sowing and harvest times in the rainy season
between January and May. This tripled the number of pupils in rural areas and halved
illiteracy and the dropout rate in many schools.
The Brazilian government acknowledged the success of this approach and decided to
follow suit in its own public schools. The new school model involves adapting education
to rural conditions and respecting local cultural values such as harmonious relations
with nature, a spirit of solidarity, a particular perception of time, along with
people’s close bond to the land and their need to defend it.
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