The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.18           May 5, 1997 
 
 
Peasants In Brazil March For Land  

BY HILDA CUZCO
Tens of thousands of peasants and supporters converged in front of the presidential palace in Brasilia April 17 chanting, waving flags, and demanding land, employment, and justice. Many carried sickles and machetes used for work. The mass demonstration in the capital city of Brazil concluded a two-month march demanding the government immediately step up the distribution of land.

Contingents totaling some 1,500 landless peasants began the march to Brasilia in February from three points across the country - Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso - and received support at the places they stopped along the way. The final rally marked the one-year anniversary of the massacre of 19 peasants in Eldorado dos Caraja's by the Pará state police.

In the biggest challenge to date to the regime of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, thousands of students, union workers from across the country, metal workers, public, and retired employees as well as members of the clergy joined the rally. Globo television network of Brazil estimated the crowd at about 30,000 people, while organizers say there were 100,000. More than 2,000 military police and army troops lined the streets during the demonstration.

The rally was called by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), which organizes peasants to fight for land in this country where 20 percent of the population owns nearly 90 percent of the land.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Gilmar Mauro, a MST leader saying that the rally, "has mobilized the society. If we don't come to an agreement [with Cardoso], we will continue to organize the workers. No social transformation in the world has happened without a fight."

"My hope is to get land," said Lui's Beltrani de Castro, an 89-year-old sugar-cane worker who made the 630-mile march from Promissao, Sao Paulo. "And to demand agrarian reform and justice ... from the president in a nation where [the authorities] kill the landless like they did last year."

Cardoso, who had initially criticized the march, felt compelled to meet with the peasant leaders the day after the rally. There the president promised to take steps to meet the MST demands. Cardoso also stated that an administrative reform is necessary at the National Land Reform and Settlement Institute (INCRA), which manages the agrarian reform, in order to speed up the process. The Brazilian press reported that the government plans a package of measures to be implemented in May to try to defuse the protests. One of them would be the creation of a Banco de la Tierra (Bank for Land) that would facilitate loans to the peasants to buy land at subsidized interest rates, payable in 30 years.

The government claims to have given land to more than 100,000 families since 1995, including 62,000 last year, and Cardoso has promised to settle 280,000 families by 1999. The MST insists, however, only 25,000 families received land in 1996. "We investigated and found that most of these families had received their land well in the past," explained Egidio Brunetto, an MST leader.

Families organize land takeovers
The MST's central activity has been organizing actions where peasants take over tracts of land and then demand the government grant them title to it. Following the meeting with Cardoso, MST leaders vowed to expand the acampamentos (squatter camps) from 40,000 to 200,000 landless peasant families.

In response to these occupations, the land owners have hired pistoleiros - paid thugs - who often attack the peasants. Last year alone 47 peasants were killed, including women and children. In Rio Bonito de Iguá in the south, two members of the MST were killed in an ambush January 16.

Immediately after these killings, the organization announced its plans to "step up the campaign to occupy unproductive estates." The government has responded to this and other reported confrontations by sending more cops. A January report by Land Policy Minister Raoul Jungmann said the government has launched a "general disarmament" in southern Pará, led by the federal police, with logistical support from the army. During their meeting with the president, the peasant leaders denounced the interference of military police in the acampamentos in southern Brazil.

In Pontal, Sao Paulo state, the local television news showed in January a young rancher rebuking 5,000 landless peasants and threatening them from his horse. He turned out to be the vice president of the Rural Democratic Union, a vigilante group made up of big landowners. "The next attempted invasion, there'll be a killing. They want a body, they'll have it," he declared. This terrorist outfit says it will stage its own march in Brasilia to reaffirm the ranch owners' so-called land rights.  
 
 
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