The Struggle for Sovereignty in Brazil

author : David Lavender topic : Brazil

by David Lavender

I traveled recently to Brazil. Much of the time I spent there I was involved with Via Campesina and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). My travels included the inauguration of the MST's Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes near the city of Guararema, hanging out in the city of Sao Paulo (one of the world's largest cities which recently celebrated its 450th anniversary), in Porto Alegre for the World Social Forum, and near Candiotta in the south of Brazil at a MST settlement. The following is a brief overview of these groups and my experiences in Brazil.

Via Campesina is an organization made of movements of indigenous and peasant people from all over the world. Their commitments are as follows: "To defend and protect seeds against privatization. To defend and protect seeds against contamination and transgenics. To defend our sovereign rights to use and maintain our own knowledge systems. To teach our children the values, principles and form of behavior that will enable them to live in harmony with nature. To intensify and stimulate the resistance and disobedience against agricultural policies imposed by governments and transnational corporations. To resist the imposition of technologies that damage life. To promote and support the autonomy of peasants and indigenous peoples to reach food and political sovereignty by taking an insurgent stand against neoliberalism."

Tens of millions of people around the world make up Via Campesina, and they represent many groups. The Coordinadora Latinoamerica de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) is a good example of the structure of the Via Campesino movement. CLOC is made up of about forty organizations from Latin America. One of these organizations is Confederacion Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia (CSCB), which itself is made up of thirty organizations. Each group has its own unique circumstances and therefore the tactics used differ, but many key issues are held in common and these groups see the strength in working together.

Via Campesina is a very active, powerful movement and has been a strong force to help create the World Social Forum. The World Social Forum is four days dedicated to creating the space for discussions, debates, networking, and organizing between different social justice groups around the world. There are workshops on many different subjects such as labor conditions in southeast Asia, informational discussions on different native peoples of Brazil, to discussions on the impacts of neoliberalism on the world and what we are doing about it. The theme of the World Social Forum is "Another World is Possible".

I was registered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre with Via Campesina. The place I slept at was an arena where about 500 hundred people from different Via Campesina groups in South America stayed as well. This area was also part of the Social Forum, with speakers every day specifically geared toward the Via Campesina Movement. The needs of everyone at the arena were met with the cooperation of all the different groups. This made for some really nice days of networking, sharing of information, and a fun time with lots of music and dancing and such. For myself, I most enjoyed this opportunity to meet and talk with people from all over the world. The World Social Forum itself was huge, with different areas being separated by more than an hours walk. There was a tent city with about 30,000 people sleeping there, and it was a carnival like setting with many vendors selling a variety of things. There were over 100,000 people registered for the World Social Forum and an estimated 200,000 at the opening day march.

So a lot of my time was spent with and learning more about the MST. There are over two million people in the MST, and these people are organized into regional and other groups that make up the larger organization. One tactic used by the MST is to occupy land that is not being used and to bring it into cultivation, thus receiving titles to the land. These actions, which take thousands of people and an understanding of Brazil's Constitution which allows for this to happen, have resulted in about 400,000 families having a place to live, cultivate, survive. Another result has been the wrath of the latifundios (rich land owners), who often used to "own" the land the MST now occupies. The MST does not see peoples' access to land as a point of debate, but as an inherent right. To try to keep the land, the latifundios hire thugs with guns to intimidate and even kill MST members.

The MST settlement I stayed in is in the southern part of Brazil. This is where BioNatur is located, a seed company that has MST members grown seeds. This helps develop seeds adapted to the environment, helps save seed genetics, helps with the farmers abilities to take care of themselves, and now is bringing in some income as the local government is buying the seeds for free distribution. With thousand of people in this settlement there are many different community and farming situations.

During my visit to the MST settlement I stayed at the CEPA, which in English translates to the Center for the Practice of Alternative Education. About thirty to thirty-five people of all ages attended classes at CEPA in the six days I was there. Educational topics included language, plant identification and uses, politics, agriculture and more. This area was also a center for working on and fixing equipment used by people in the settlement.

Another big part of my time with the MST was at a school inauguration about an hour from Sao Paulo. The school is near the city of Guararema, the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes, is a school on human political and cultural organization. Students cover thoughts and writings on revolution, capitalism, Marxism, socialism, and other less known ideas as a basis for the discussion and creation of alternative models for human organization. The inauguration consisted of four days of speakers and music and food, attracting hundreds of people from all over the world. I heard people talking from South Korea, South Africa, Russia, Cuba, Libya, Palestine, Columbia, etc. This was another great opportunity to meet and dialogue with people from all over the world engaged in different yet similar struggles. The stories were many, some inspirational, others breaking your heart, and all important to hear.

The popular movement is strong in Latin America. Groups in the U.S. could learn a lot from these movements ability to unify broad segments of society for common goals of social justice and change. There was a strong critique of neoliberal capitalism in Brazil, the current structure used by the rich to impose their agenda on the masses. So people there are not just focusing on a few particular individuals or a particular administration or a particular party (sound familiar), but a system that was set up to benefit a select few specifically by targeting the majority of the people as a resource for exploitation. Makes sense to me.

From mid-April to May, ten thousand members of the MST are going to march hundreds of miles to Brasila, the capital of Brazil, to keep the pressure on the Brazilian government for land reform being a necessary component of a democratic and stable Brazil. On April 1st there was a fundraising event at Traditions CafÈ in Olympia, and there will be another event April 15th in Portland. For more information on the MST, info on how to support the MST, or details about the April 15th event in Portland call 259-1879, or me at 705-1971.