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    Vol.63/No.17           May 3, 1999 
 
 
Leader Of Landless Peasants From Brazil Tours Georgia  

BY MIKE ITALIE
ATLANTA - Augusto Olsson, a leader of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) of Brazil, met with farmers, unionists, and immigrant workers during his April 8-14 visit to Georgia. The MST has been at the forefront of the battle for land in Brazil, a nation of 140 million where millions of rural toilers have been dispossessed by landlords and capitalists. The MST has organized land takeovers by tens of thousands of farm families throughout the country.

Olsson, 27, is a member of the MST's National Coordinating Committee from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He is a leader of an MST-run cooperative farm involving 28 families in Piratini, near the border with Uruguay.

As a leader in the fight for the land in Brazil, Olsson was interested in meeting farmers in the United States to share experiences. As part of an April 8-10 seminar in southern Georgia sponsored by Agricultural Missions, a group affiliated to the National Council of Churches, Olsson met farm leaders Willie Head and Gladys Williams.

A few days later Olsson traveled to central Georgia to meet Eddie Slaughter, vice president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA). The BFAA is active in the fight of farmers against decades of U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) racial discrimination.

"Meeting Augusto helped put things in an international perspective," Slaughter said, "especially because I've been reading about peasants in Australia, land reform in Cuba, and what they're doing in South Africa." Slaughter noted many similarities between the fight of Black farmers in the United States and the struggle of landless workers in Brazil. There is a difference, Slaughter added, "in Brazil they don't have the land, while here we're losing it. But we face many of the same conditions. When I grow peanuts, I'm forced to use certain companies' chemicals, and in Brazil they're forced by the government to grow particular crops and use chemicals from the same powerful companies. When he mentioned Monsanto as part of their problem, I thought that that was really something, because Monsanto has a bite on me, too."

Olsson spoke to 25 people at the Mision Catolica, a church and community center. He was welcomed by Father Carlos Carreras, who noted that "many in this church are and have been migrant workers. They come to this country looking for solutions, but the problem is the same here."

Olsson began by explaining that in Brazil "2 percent of the landowners own 46 percent of the land" and traced some of the history of this extreme concentration of wealth from the colonialists' dispossession of the indigenous peoples to the time of slavery and after, when the freed-slaves were blocked from becoming landowners.

"The first principal of the MST," Olsson continued, "is the fight for the land. We organize large numbers of landless workers to go onto areas of unused land that is owned by the giant landlords. Today there are 50,000 families living in these encampments, in plastic tents. They have occupied the land and are waiting to win title to the land under the Agrarian Reform Law. They live in this way for two, three, up to nine years. We now have another 200,000 families throughout Brazil who have won the land in this way."

Olsson emphasized that "land itself is not enough. We must have a real agrarian reform. We want education, health care, culture, credit, and access to industry so people can have jobs. And we fight with other workers to create a more just society. The society that exists today will not bring us the land and agrarian reform. We face violence from the big landowners, who organize gunmen, murders, and attacks, and collaborate with the government and police against us."

In the discussion period, a worker agreed with Olsson on the need to win more than the land itself, explaining that "in Ecuador there is `agrarian reform' but the people have to leave the land. They didn't have the infrastructure. Banks wouldn't give loans and the government wouldn't support the farmers."

Another participant asked "What is the alternative? I am an agronomist from Columbia. You need to change your strategy. You can't rely on old plants like yucca and bananas. Try for crops that have a market like cilantro and other herbs."

"In Brazil there is vast hunger," Olsson responded, "so we're thinking about crops like beans, rice, and corn. We don't really have a government in Brazil, but a clown who does the bidding of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the problem throughout Latin America. During the so- called Green Revolution a model was imposed on us that disrupted our agriculture and polluted our country. When we asked for bank loans a certain percentage had to be spent on poisonous herbicides and pesticides. The government focuses on a monoculture of crops for export. But we don't want Brazil to be a platform for export. In a country as immense as Brazil, rich in land and climate, we should be able to produce enough beans for all. Instead beans have to be imported."

Later in the week Olsson spoke at the Militant Labor Forum. When asked what he had learned in his time in Georgia, Olsson said, "When I came to the U.S. I was surprised to find many farmers have problems, especially the Black farmers I met in south Georgia.... I found out not only about race, but class. I was glad to meet people like you, and find out that workers and farmers here are resisting imperialism." Earlier in the day Olsson visited the Ford Assembly plant in Hapeville, where he was toured by a United Auto Workers (UAW) member and stopped to shake hands and exchange quick conversations with workers as they worked on the line. Olsson felt the experience gave him a better understanding of the exploitation faced by workers in the United States.

In the discussion at the forum, Olsson described some of the MST's activities in solidarity with the struggles of other workers and farmers around the world. In particular he made it clear that "We have great respect for the Cuban revolution and the Cuban people.... To show our solidarity, in the settlements we organize, the people collected pencils and paper for Cuba, and after the recent devastating hurricane each family donated enough to buy three kilos of beans for Cuba."

Mike Italie is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 1997.

 
 
 
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