BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
BRASILIA, Brazil - "Occupy, resist, produce!" This chant
resonated loudly through the streets of Brazil's capital
as 5,000 landless peasants, carrying their hoes, sickles,
and hundreds of fluttering banners, converged on the
presidential palace July 27 to demand land reform.
President Fernando Cardoso felt compelled to meet with a
delegation of 28 of the farmers, who had gathered here for
the third convention of the Movement of the Landless Rural
Workers (MST).
The July 24-27 convention put the struggles of rural toilers in a prominent national spotlight, drawing major news coverage. In response to demands by the MST, Cardoso pledged to grant land to 40,000 peasant families this year. He also promised loans at 12 percent interest for thousands of peasants throughout Brazil who have won legal recognition of lands they took over; interest rates here have skyrocketed to 28 percent.
The struggles of working people around the Americas were an important feature of the convention. A highlight of the event was a march to the U.S. embassy, where thousands of farmers demanded the lifting of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, protested imperialist economic policies toward Latin America, and called for the release of Mark Curtis, a framed-up unionist and political activist in the United States.
At the embassy, a delegation of parliamentary deputies from Brazil's Workers Party (PT) met with U.S. ambassador Melvyn Levitsky to discuss these demands. They handed him a pile of almost 5,000 letters signed by MST members demanding freedom for Curtis.
Among the international guests at the gathering were representatives of peasant organizations in Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Guests were also present from Sweden, Italy, France, Belgium, and the United States.
Growth of landless peasant movement
The MST convention, the largest since the group's
founding in 1984, reflected the growth of the movement of
landless peasants in recent years. Delegates came from 22
of Brazil's 26 states. Hundreds came from as far away as
Maranhao and other northeastern states - a 40-hour bus
ride.
The majority of the delegates were young, some in their late teens. Many were women. In addition, numerous students and urban workers attended as observers.
"We've been involved in a hard fight to demand the government take over the idle land of big landlords and give us legal right to it," said Heldisa Muniz do Amarai, a young farmer from the northeastern state of Alagoas. "I know we'll win." Her confident assertion captured the general mood of the delegates.
The convention often had the air of a festival, as arriving delegations marched in waving the big red banners of the MST and singing the movement's songs. Thousands of families brought rolled-up foam mattresses and camped on the floor of the fairground in downtown Brasilia where the convention was held. Many set up stalls and sold handicrafts and foods from their regions.
A large, mural-style banner over the speakers platform declared, "Land reform - a struggle by all." Another banner portrayed Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Mexican revolution, and Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army. Many delegates expressed their identification with the ongoing struggle for land in southern Mexico.
Convention proceedings began early in the morning each day, as participants heard reports on and discussed the broad campaigns and demands of the MST. Several documents summarizing these proposals were adopted by unanimous vote on the last day. The convention projected a series of demonstrations and land occupations in coming months to press the fight for agrarian reform.
"Most of these topics were previously discussed in our home states, so that facilitated the discussion here," explained Rogerio Machado, 21, at a regional workshop during the convention.
"For me, the most important point was number 42," Machado added, referring to a document listing demands on the federal government. Point 42 demands the government halt the use of cops to evict peasants. Last October, the police had forcibly evicted his community of 230 families who were occupying land owned by the Brazilian airline Varig.
Several prominent figures addressed the MST convention, including PT president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Vicente Paulo da Silva, president of the United Federation of Workers (CUT). The MST has close ties with the union- backed PT and with the trade union movement. The peasant organization actively supported the month-long strike by oil workers last May.
Struggle on land heats up
The struggle for land has been heating up in Brazil, as
the capitalist transformation of the countryside continues
to drive millions of peasants off the land and into the
cities. In a "Letter to Workers in the Cities" adopted by
the convention delegates, the MST points out, "Big rural
landlords represent less than 1 percent [of the
population] but own 46 percent of the land."
Meanwhile, MST leader Jaime Amorim explained, "there are 4.8 million landless workers in this country, 32 million people suffer from hunger, and only 60 million of the 400 million hectares of farmland are under cultivation" (one hectare is about 2.5 acres). Much of this cultivated land is devoted to lucrative export crops at the expense of food staples like rice, beans, and corn.
The prices peasants receive for their crops continue to drop while prices for needed equipment rise. While in early 1994 a farmer had to sell about 2,100 bags of soybeans to purchase a tractor, by April 1995 he had to sell nearly 3,500 bags of soybeans, losing almost half his purchasing power.
The Cardoso government's economic policies, designed to favor Brazil's capitalists, have aggravated this farm crisis. In the wake of the Mexican peso crisis last December, the Brazilian government has tried to stem the resulting capital flight by raising interest rates to record levels, threatening tens of thousands of farmers with bankruptcy.
In response to this crisis, scores of land takeovers have occurred throughout Brazil in recent years, particularly in the northeast and south. The tens of thousands involved in these occupations of big estates include agricultural workers, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, peasants subsisting on tiny plots, and unemployed workers.
The MST has mobilized rural toilers by demanding the government take over idle lands on big capitalist estates, with compensation to the owners, and distribute it to landless peasants. At the convention, delegates also demanded the government expropriate 1,276 "deadbeat" landlords who are the biggest debtors to the Bank of Brazil, and give this land to peasants. The MST points to the 1988 Constitution, which authorizes such government action for the purpose of agrarian reform.
130,000 peasant families organized
The organization is also demanding that the government
legally recognize the thousands of squatter camps
throughout the countryside. Most of these camps
(acampamentos) are on vast estates that are barely
utilized. Thousands of other peasant settlements
(assentamentos) have won partial or complete government
recognition, and the MST is fighting for these to receive
state-furnished credit, equipment, schools, clinics, and
other basic services, as well as price guarantees for the
peasants' crops. In addition, it calls on the government
to demarcate Indian lands to protect them from landlords
and other thieves.
In the past decade and a half, the MST has organized 130,000 families on some 900 settlements, most of which were recognized by the government only after the peasants had occupied them. Dozens of these communities are organized as agricultural cooperatives.
"In our area we have a squatters camp of 1,500 families on a big, unproductive estate," said Roberto Ferreira, a 21-year-old from the state of Pará who sported a T-shirt portraying Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. "We also have an assentamento of 240 families. It's not easy because the government doesn't support us. We produce rice, beans, corn, and cassava, mainly for subsistence."
"We were working on an estate where the landlord denied us social security and other basic rights. We occupied a piece of his estate last October for 20 days," said Roberto Machado, from the western state of Rondonia. "After being evicted by the cops, we organized a march through the town. Through these pressures, the government was forced to grant us the land. Now we have some dairy cattle and we're selling a little on the market."
Machado was glad the government was promising land to 40,000 peasant families this year, although the MST had demanded enough land for 100,000. "I don't think they will actually carry out their promises, but it'll be easier for us to pressure them when we carry out occupations," he said.
Dozens of other delegates reported on similar fights, many of which had scored victories.
These struggles have met with fierce repression by the cops and the landlords' goons. Several dozen MST members have been murdered every year, and even more have been framed up and jailed. So it is not surprising the organization has embraced the campaign to win parole for fellow fighter Mark Curtis.
March demands release of Curtis
The march to the U.S. embassy and the call to release
Curtis drew national media coverage. It was covered
prominently on television, in the nationally circulated
Folha de Sao Paulo, on the front-pages of two major
Brasilia dailies, and in a Reuters news dispatch.
All along the six-mile route, as thousands of demonstrators marched toward the U.S. embassy in three single files, MST activists explained over and over from a booming sound truck, "We are marching to demand freedom for Mark Curtis. This brother is a unionist who was jailed and sentenced to 25 years in jail on fabricated charges of rape because he defended immigrant workers in the United States. We say to Bill Clinton: Stop this persecution of workers - in the United States and the world."
A five-person delegation, headed by PT federal deputy Jacques Wagner, delivered a letter from the MST to U.S. ambassador Levitsky. Besides calling for freedom for the unionist, the letter demanded an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba and rejected Washington's efforts to strong-arm the Brazilian government into approving a patent law that, among other things, would allow U.S. agribusiness to patent breeds of animals and plants. It condemned imperialist bankers for extracting $15 billion a year in payments on Brazil's foreign debt.
The delegation also gave Levitsky 5,000 letters by MST members addressed to U.S. president Bill Clinton calling for Curtis's release. "We approach you to ask that this frame-up conviction be reviewed," it stated. "We peasants in Brazil, representing millions of rural working people, were outraged when we found out about this case. We didn't think this could happen in the United States, with all the propaganda that it is a democratic country." The letter expressed "solidarity with Mark and with all those in the United States who are victims of injustice."
Meanwhile, on the lawn outside the embassy gate, a lively rally took place. The farmers waved banners and an effigy of Uncle Sam. PT congressman José Dirceu and other speakers called for "the freedom of the imprisoned unionist in the United States." The crowd lustily booed Washington and cheered whenever revolutionary Cuba was mentioned, as speakers condemned the U.S. trade ban. Many MST members wore buttons and T-shirts in support of the Cuban revolution.
Atop the sound truck, rally organizers presented a representative of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, Martín Koppel, with a second set of 5,000 letters to Clinton and asked that they be delivered to the authorities in Iowa, where Curtis is imprisoned. Koppel read greetings from the U.S. unionist. In his message Curtis expressed solidarity with Brazil's farmers and workers and thanked the MST for championing his case.
A few days earlier, the 49-member PT caucus in Brazil's parliament sent a letter to the U.S. government requesting a review of Curtis's case.
Similarly, the chemical workers union in the industrial center of Campinas, outside Sao Paulo, published an editorial in the July issue of its newspaper condemning the frame-up and "the cowardly beating of Mark Curtis" by Des Moines cops.
After the embassy rally, dozens of delegates approached this reporter asking that he convey their support to Curtis. Francisco Moura, 24, from the northern state of Pará, remarked, "I was victimized too. They accused me of taking part in an illegal occupation of a landlord's estate by 1,500 families. The cops attacked and beat us. I spent five months in jail, until I was acquitted.
"But we're still occupying the land," he concluded. "Tell that to Mark."