Brazil - making a living from the ground up

[Tony Gosling]

Making a life from the ground up 

                         Brazil's Rural Workers Movement says its 
occupation tactics
                         have won land and dignity for up to 400,000 
families

                         By Alex Bellos in Novo Sarandi

                         The Guardian - Thursday May 20, 1999

                         It hardly looks like the vanguard of a
social 
revolution, but the Conoal
                         cooperative's milk and crop depot at Novo 
Sarandi is exactly that. The farmyard
                         buildings 200 miles inland from southern 
Brazil's main city, Porto Alegre, are
                         the concrete result of a radical communist 
movement using capitalist tools to
                         change people's lives all over Brazil. 

                         In 1985, almost 10,000 hectares (24,000 
acres) of unproductive land here was
                         invaded by 1,000 poor families, who squatted 
in shacks covered with binliners,
                         until the government gave them land rights 
three years later.

                         On assuming control, the ex-squatters set 
about turning the area into an
                         agricultural cooperative. Now, they say, 
Conoal has an annual turnover of £8m,
                         sells its products to food multinational 
Parmalat, and has transformed its
                         inhabitants from disposessed people on the 
fringes of society to moderately
                         prosperous farmers.

                         'Before, we had nothing,' says Luiz Pilatti, 
39. who was part of the original
                         squat. 'Now [my family] has a nice house, a 
milk cow, car, a tractor, 15 hectares,
                         a TV and a freezer.'

                         The Novo Sarandi squat was one of the first 
actions of the Landless Rural
                         Workers Movement (MST), which was founded in 
1982 as the result of land
                         rights campaigning in the southern state of 
Rio Grande do Sul. The movement
                         has since spread through all Brazil and is 
now the largest direct action
                         movement in Latin America.

                         MST says that so far 300,000 to 400,000 
families have been given land rights
                         after squatting on unproductive land, and 
75,000 are currently in rural squats
                         waiting for approval under a constitutional 
law that asserts that unproductive
                         land must be handed over to the people
living 
on it.

                         This has not been an easy process. In the 
first seven years of the decade there
                         was an average of 46 deaths a year during 
conflicts between landless and
                         landed, with most of the deaths on the 
landless side, MST officials say.

                         The Marxist-run MST has succeeded in making 
land reform a very big political
                         issue in Brazil, a country whose grossly 
unfair pattern of land ownership can be
                         traced back to practices in the colonial era 
when the Portuguese crown handed
                         over vast tracts to 14 'captains' in 1534. 
Today,1% of all land holdings still
                         cover 45% of the country.

                         The government's own estimate of the number 
of 'landless' people living in
                         abject poverty is 4.8m families or well over 
10m people out of a national
                         population 160m. The MST believes the number 
is much more.

                         Even though the process of handing over land 
to occu piers has speeded up
                         under the centrist government of President 
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the
                         MST is highly critical of his failure to 
introduce root-and-branch land reform,
                         including financial help to farmers starting 
up.

                         'Even though Cardoso has seen more [people 
getting their land rights] he has
                         also seen 400,000 small farmers sell off 
their land and move on during the
                         same period because they couldn't make a 
living from it. He has done nothing
                         for proper agrarian reform,' declares Milton 
Viana, the main press officer for
                         MST.

                         Novo Sarandi has prospered because the land 
there is very fertile, and its
                         acceptance has been helped by Rio Grande do 
Sul's tradition within Brazil as a
                         cradle of social reforms.

                         The year after the first seeds were planted 
Novo Sarandi was already selling to
                         local markets.

                         But land in other states, particularly in
the 
drought-plagued north-east where
                         the political oligarchy is strongest has 
proved harder to farm at anything
                         beyond subsistence levels.

                         MST activists schooled in the movement in
Rio 
Grande do Sul are sent to other
                         areas to promote the fight.

                         Milton Viana adds: 'Each state needs a 
different solution, in terms of
                         organisation and technology. Some states
need 
more financial help than
                         others. This is something the government has 
never done.

                         'In the north-east there is lots of money 
going for the drought, but this goes to
                         the politicians who keep it in their
pockets. 
This money never reaches the
                         needy population.'

                         MST activists are still occupying land but 
have also adopted new tactics that
                         include invading public buildings and
looting 
supermarkets. These aggressive
                         measures have guaranteed publicity, but 
eroded the wealth of public support
                         previously enjoyed by the movement.

                         In Novo Sarandi the greatest benefit to the 
inhabitants goes deeper than the
                         material dividends of working their own land 
in security. The people feel they
                         have gained dignity after lives on the 
margins of society.

                         'I still feel a stigma from some people,' 
says Luiz, who was recently elected a
                         local councillor. 'But it is changing and it 
will change.'