Brazil
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Urban Planning For Rio De Janeiro's Favelas, By Mario Osava ~ Aug. 27
Poisoned Lives: The Price Of Tobacco Farming, By Marwaan Macan-Markar ~ Aug. 27
Violent Death The Domain Of Young Men, By Mario Osava ~ Aug. 27
Church Group Winning War Against Infant Mortality, By Mario Osava ~ Aug. 24
High Correlation Between Skin Color And Poverty, By Mario Osava ~ August 20
New Plant Fuels Debate Over Nuclear Energy, By Mario Osava ~ August 17
Rural Women March To Demand A Better Life, By Mario Osava ~ Aug. 10
Women Take The Lead In Local Elections, By Mario Osava ~ Aug. 9
Risk Of Massacre of Indians In State of Para, Amanaka'a Amazon Network ~ August 7
Oil Spill Is A Wake-Up Call, Say Activists, By Mario Osava ~ July 27
Military Police Murder Land Activist In Northeast Brazil, Grassroots International ~ July 31
Brazil Oil Spill Blamed on Human, Technical Errors, By Shasta Darlington ~ July 21
Gov't Grapples With Major Oil Spill, By Mario Osava ~ July 19
Gov't Targets Large Landholdings, By Mario Osava ~ July 17
Army Implicated In 1991 Killings Of Prospectors, By Mario Osava ~ June 6
Drought Brings Outages, Rationing To Cities In Brazil, By Mario Osava ~ June 6
Brazil In Search Of Quality And Equity, By Mario Osava ~ June 5
Lifelong Scavenger, Award-Winning Environmentalist, By Mario Osava ~ May 31
Radio Favela Persists 23 Years Later, By Mario Osava ~ May 31
Brazil Environmental Movement Wins Historic Victory for Rainforest, EDF ~ May 28
Land Reform Unviable, Says Former Brazilian Official, by Ricardo Soca ~ May 26
Threats To Amazon Unite Gov't and Activists, By Mario Osava ~ May 24
Foreign Debts Dim Hopes For Improvement, by Mario Osava ~ May 23
Huge Gap Between Law And Enforcement, by Mario Osava ~ May 19
Repression On The Rise as Agrarian Model Fails, by Mario Osava ~ May 19
Mary Robinson Collects Sheaf of Complains, By Mario Osava ~ May 18
U.N. High Commissioner To Evaluate Brazil, by Gustavo Capdevila ~ May 12
Operation Condor Justice 20 Years Overdue, by Mario Osava ~ May 11
Rewrite of Forestry Code Would up Yearly Forest Destruction 25%, by Nilo Sergio ~ May 10
Protests Expand Land and Wage Demands, by Mario Osava ~ May 10
Broad Opposition To Govt't Crackdown On Landless, by Mario Osava ~ May 8
Civil Society Takes The Initiative, by Mario Osava ~ May 7
Show Highlights Artists Excluded For 500 Years, by Mario Osava ~ May 6
Brazilian Truck Strike Continues Despite Gov’t Concessions, by Mario Osava ~ May 4
Brazilian Peasant’s Death Heightens Tensions, by Mario Osava ~ May 3
Brazilian Truckers And Landless Launch Protests, by Mario Osava ~ May 2
Brazilian MPs Attack Landless March, Killing One and Injuring Dozens in Paraná State
Indigeous People Gather in Acre/Brazil to Initiate the "Indigenous March 2000"
Brazilian Catholic Church Apologizes to Indians And Blacks, by Mario Osava ~ April 26
NEWS FROM BRAZIL, by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz) ~ April 28, 2000
Government Spends More on Celebration of 500th Anniversary Than on Indigenous. Official Commemoration of 500th Anniversary Marked by Conflict. President of Funai Resigns and Critique's Government's Repression of Demonstrations. Celebration of the 500th Anniversary of the First Mass in Brazil Marked by Protest. Study Gives Official Recognition to a "Quilombo". Government to Publish Yearly Publication on Women. Tension Rising Between Police, Landless Workers.
Urgent Action Appeal, SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz)
Landless Workers In Danger in The State of Para
Murderer of Expedito Ribeiro de Souza Escapes From Prison
Request For Solidarity in The Trial of Jose Rainha
IDB Called to Defend Clean Energy in Brazil, by Mario Osava ~ April 24
Greenpeace and Deni Indians Demand Removal of Logging From Indigenous Lands, Greenpeace ~ April 19
Police Action Stops Brazil’s 500th Anniversary Protests, by Mario Osava ~ April 22
Activists Denounce 500 Years of Destruction in Brazil, by Mario Osava ~ April 21
500th Anniversary Fiesta Already a Flop in Brazil, by Mario Osava ~ April 20
Indigenous Groups Protest 500th Anniversary Bash in Brazil, by Mario Osava ~ April 19
Brazilian Landless Leader Acquitted of Double Murder, by Mario Osava ~ April 6
Power Line Delay In Venezuela Could Tarnish Presidential Meeting, By Luis Córdova ~ April 5
Brazilian Artist Draws Attention to Logging Excesses, by Mario Osava ~ March 31
Italian Aid Targets Residents of Brazil's Slums, By Jorge Piña ~ March 23
Women Invade The Internet, By Mario Osava ~ March 17, 2000
Community Radios Fight For Legal Status, By Mario Osava ~ March 12, 2000
The Dreams of Landless, By Mario Osava ~ March 1, 2000
More Violence Against the MST in Paraná, by Maisa Mendoca, Global Exchange ~ February 25, 2000
Minimum Wage In Brazil Loses Buying Power While GDP Grows, By Mario Osava ~ February 22, 2000
Overdue, Incomplete Rights For Domestics, By Mario Osava ~ February 21, 2000
Indians Reject Celebration of Portuguese Arrival, By Mario Osava ~ February 17, 2000
Landless' Movement by LOURIVAL SANT'ANNA
Landless Worker Killed by Gunmen in Atalaia, Alagoas ~ February 2, 2000
Letter to the World Bank The National Forum for Agrarian Reform and Justice in the Countryside ~ January 6, 2000
The World Bank Undermines Agrarian Reform in Brazil By João Pedro Stedile
WTO and the Destruction of the Brazilian Amazon, By Beto Borges and Victor Menotti
Homeless Step Up Struggle For Affordable Housing, By Mario Osava
Land Rights a Fraud in Brazil - Landless Brazilians Challenge World Bank, by Abid Aslam
The voice of Subcomandante Marcos is heard in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, La Jornada, December 8, 1999
"Terra" a photographic exhibition by Sebastião Salgado promoting the work and our struggle of Brazilian People. (this is an external link)
Urban Planning For Rio De Janeiro's Favelas
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 27 (IPS) -- The city government of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's second largest city, has launched an urban development program to provide slum-dwellers with basic services -- including, for the first time, postal addresses.
By 2004, half of the people currently living in marginalized areas of Rio de Janeiro will have benefitted from the program, especially through improvements to the "favelas" (shanty-towns) that line the hills around the city, said Municipal Secretary of Housing Jorge de Oliveira Rodrigues.
By improving living conditions for a million local residents by 2004, Rio de Janeiro will be making progress on its contribution to the "Cities Without Slums" Action Plan launched last year by the World Bank. The Plan is one of the issues for discussion at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York from Sept. 6-8.
In his report to the Summit, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged support for the plan to improve living conditions for 100 million slum-dwellers worldwide by 2020, but did not put a pricetag on the initiative.
Two million of the city's residents -- slightly over one-third of the total -- live in the so-called "informal city" made up of hundreds of favelas, slums and run-down housing complexes, and lacking the infrastructure, services and rights enjoyed by the rest of the population.
The Program of Urbanization for Popular Settlements (slums) is gradually remedying that inequality. Its chief component, the Favela Neighborhood project, will benefit 80 percent of the nearly one million people currently living in favelas in Rio de Janeiro.
Roads and highways improving access to the favelas, sewer systems, city squares and other public recreational spaces like athletic fields, childcare centers and schools, and the provision of clean water and electricity are among the works that have had the greatest impact.
But the mere straightening of the narrow, winding streets of the favelas to allow the passage of traffic and the assigning of street numbers to housing units have also been important steps, providing local residents for the first time with a postal address -- essential for them to feel like full citizens and to obtain loans or other services.
The changes have curbed the power of drug traffickers in the favelas, because new lighting, heavier traffic in the streets, and the formal numbering of housing units and assignation of postal addresses are all enemies of the underworld and crime, pointed out a local community leader in one shanty-town.
The Favela Neighborhood is "a good project in favor of the poorest of the poor, as it boosts their self-esteem and integrates them into the city," said Jorge Wilheim, former under-secretary general of the United Nations Habitat Conference in Istanbul in 1996 and former Sao Paulo secretary of planning.
However, reducing poverty requires policies aimed at income generation and training, he added, noting that projects of this kind should be accompanied by economic and fiscal measures, as well as efforts to make credit available.
Another goal of the Millennium Summit, according to Annan's report, is for the more than 150 heads of state and government to agree on a target of cutting in half the number of poor people (those who scrape by on less than a dollar a day) in the world -- currently representing 22 percent of the global population -- by 2015.
Favela Neighborhood was launched in 1994. Over the years it has incorporated new tasks, such as an adult literacy drive, vocational training, the organization of workers' cooperatives, courses in computers and other activities that generate jobs or income, said the director of the program, Andrea Cardoso.
These activities, which were previously carried out in a separate but parallel manner, became components of the program after the second contract for financing was signed with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which is providing 60 percent of the funds, or $300 million, in each of two stages.
The first IDB loan went towards works in 56 favelas. The second, which was recently granted, will be used to improve conditions in 73 shanty-towns.
Other programs are underway, such as one that focuses on small favelas of up to 500 households, and another aimed at legalizing property ownership and extending title deeds to families living in shanty-towns that are home to a combined 600,000 people.
The current policies were adopted after a lengthy debate, and after several previous attempts to resolve the problem of the favelas and other precarious housing fell flat.
In the 1960s, the mass transfer of entire communities to housing complexes built far from the city center merely ended up creating new hotspots of poverty and violence.
Later, the idea of transforming the favelas themselves into proper neighborhoods, rather than moving their inhabitants elsewhere, slowly began to take hold. But efforts were limited to "timid investments and isolated actions," such as installing a few sewer systems, said Cardoso.
In 1993, a master plan was drafted, outlining an integrated program based on new concepts of "urban planning as part of public policies," she explained.
No longer did authorities see the problem as "a shortage of housing, but as a deficit of urban planning," since the housing units existed, and the real problem was that they lacked water, electricity and other services, said Under-Secretary of Housing Antonio Augusto Veríssimo.
What is needed is to "build the city, not houses; to stretch the city to excluded areas," Rodrigues added.
Respect for the social rights of residents of poor neighborhoods increased when the state recognized that they had made significant investments in building their homes and providing the favelas with certain services. That recognition served as the foundation for justifying public investment in urban development efforts.
Favela Neighborhood is "a program of the city, not of any party or the government," and its continuity is ensured through a four-year contract with the IDB independently of whether or not Mayor Luiz Paulo Conde is re-elected in October, said Rodrigues.
The project has enjoyed the support of numerous politicians, including opposition parties, he pointed out. Rodrigues also underlined that local communities are lobbying hard to be included in the project.
If that continuity is confirmed, by around 2020 Rio de Janeiro will be in a position to increase its participation in the Cities Without Slums Action Plan twofold, extending the project to all people living in overcrowded shanty-towns and other precarious housing.
For the process of urban development of those areas, the methodology followed is important, as is public investment. In that sense, Rio can offer other cities and countries the know-how accumulated by experience, "including the lessons learned from our errors," said Carlos Fernando Andrade, president of the Institute of Brazilian Architects.
It is a good example, but not a model that can be reproduced without addressing the specific conditions of each city. The Favela Neighborhood project, for example, "is not active in homes, but in public spaces," preventing the eviction of slum-dwellers.
And even in Rio, there are dangerous areas whose inhabitants must be relocated, Andrade pointed out.
END
Poisoned Lives: The Price Of Tobacco Farming
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 27 (IPS) -- For the world's anti-tobacco movement, a small town in southern Brazil has become a symbol of a silent tragedy unfolding among communities which have turned to tobacco farming for a livelihood.
What has contributed to such symbolism is the "very high rate of suicides" in that town, Venancio Aires, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, says Angela Cordeiro, an agronomist and a Brazilian activist in the movement. While the national average in Brazil has been three suicides per 100,000 people, in Venancio Aires it is seven times higher -- 21 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
For Cordeiro, the suicide rate in Venancio Aires can be traced to the "dangerous pesticides" used by the tobacco farmers in that area.
"The organophosphate pesticides that farmers use in the tobacco fields have chemicals known to affect the neurological system. They often get depressed after exposure and try to kill themselves," she adds.
This diagnosis, in fact, has been confirmed by researchers at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Studies have revealed that a majority of those who committed suicide in Venancio Aires were farmers, and they had killed themselves during the months when organophosphate pesticides were used extensively in the tobacco fields.
For the tobacco-control movement, such a disturbing phenomenon is only one of a litany of problems that has been plaguing those who work on tobacco farms. In this country, for instance, the plight of the Huichol Indians working in the tobacco fields in the western state of Nayarit has become a cause for concern.
Says Patricia Diaz-Romo, a Mexican anti-tobacco activist, the most glaring as been the impact of pesticide poisoning on the pregnant Huichol Indian women who have worked in the fields.
"They give birth to deformed children, some who have no genitalia and die within days of being born, some who have no limbs," she reveals.
And during the 11th World Conference on Health Or Tobacco held early this month in Chicago, activists drew attention to such realities in their effort to expose the health hazards faced by tobacco farmers.
According to Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a physician at the Boston University School of Medicine, the poisoned lives of tobacco farmers has received little attention from governments, due to "very few knowing the dangers of harvesting tobacco."
"When used properly, some of the pesticides can cause respiratory irritation, pose a danger to pregnant women and contribute to cancer over many years," observes Sharfstein, who has researched the health implications and national regulation of tobacco pesticides.
But, he remarks, "when used indiscriminately or improperly, some of the pesticides can cause nerve damage, troubled breathing and death."
For the World Health Organization (WHO), the scarcity of attention to the health hazards of tobacco farmers reflects the larger global picture regards occupational health problems. A WHO study points out, for instance, that "the evaluation of the global burden of occupational diseases and injuries is difficult. Reliable information for most developing countries is scarce."
This stems from the "serious limitations in the diagnosis of occupational illnesses and in the reporting systems."
Referring to Latin America, for example, the WHO reveals that only between 1 and 4 percent of all occupational diseases are reported.
Says Cordeiro, there is a desperate need to change this culture of silence. "A surveillance system has to be established in Latin America, Africa and Asia to monitor the impact of pesticides on tobacco farmers and their families."
Tobacco is grown in more than 100 countries, including about 80 developing nations, states a 512-page report released during this month's conference. And in recent decades, it adds, the growth in world tobacco production has multiplied significantly in low- and middle-income countries.
"Between 1975 and 1998, production in developed countries fell by 31 percent, while production in developing countries rose by 128 percent," note the authors of the report, 'Tobacco Control in Developing Countries,' a joint publication of the WHO and the World Bank.
The reason for that stems from the type of crop tobacco is. It is labor intensive and has the "ability to generate dependable cash flows for poor small farmers." On most tobacco farms, the demand is high for seasonal labor for "transplanting young plants from seed beds or greenhouses to fields, and for removing tops when plants begin to flower."
According to tobacco-industry estimates, this has meant some 33 million people being employed worldwide in tobacco fields. In a country like China, for instance, which tops the current list of tobacco-growing countries, some 15 million people work on tobacco fields.
For the London-based Panos Institute, however, such high employment figures have come with a price, given that "tobacco needs heavy applications of pesticides." And it accuses the tobacco industry of "rarely publishing" the figures stemming from pesticide poisoning, both of the farmers working in the fields and of nearby communities.
According to the United States-based Pesticide Action Network (PAN), the manner in which tobacco companies "exert a great deal of control over the farmers" cannot be ignored. In Brazil, for instance, "the company determines the size of the area to be sown and the amount of fertilizers and pesticides to be used," it declares. And to ensure that farmers are following company guidelines, such as the required use of pesticides and fertilizers, "company inspectors visit the fields regularly."
Studies done by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) state that "occupational exposure is probably one of the most important to tobacco farmers, since they and their families are exposed constantly to a large amount and variety of pesticides."
During the tobacco crop cycle, furthermore, PAHO estimates that anywhere between 30 to 60 kilograms of pesticides per hectare are used. In addition, there is exposure during "contact with raw materials, storage and transportation" of the pesticides.
What is more, reveals the PAHO, not only adults face such hazardous situations during work, but children, too. In Brazil, for instance, there are over 1 million children working on tobacco farms "who are exposed to huge mounts of pesticides."
Unfortunately, admits the PAHO, "few health professionals are prepared to draw a causal nexus between symptoms of acute or chronic intoxication and pesticide exposure."
For Sharfstein, that has led to troubling consequences, since the tobacco farmers need to have "regular access to doctors and nurses to address their) health problems -- both by means of treatment and prevention -- that result from the work on tobacco farms."
And for Diaz-Romo and Cordeiro, the need to secure such medical care and attention for the tobacco farmers has become a priority, requiring greater pressure from the anti-tobacco movement to expose the health hazards of tobacco cultivation.
END
Violent Death The Domain Of Young Men
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 27 (IPS) -- Policies intended to reduce violence in Brazil, as in many other countries, must focus on the young male population, urges a new study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Young men ages 15 to 24 are more likely than any other age group, male or female, to be the victims of assassinations, car accidents and suicides in Brazil, according to the UNESCO report, based on data from 1998.
The rate of violent deaths among this group is 82 percent higher than the rest of the Brazilian population, pointed out Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, the sociologist in charge of the study "Map of Violence in Brazil." Only Colombia, Kuwait and the United States report similar disparities.
UNESCO's greatest concern is the loss of so many young lives. In Brazil, 35.1 percent of deaths among young people nationally are from homicide and other violent causes, with the rate jumping to 47.7 percent in urban areas.
But the sharpest imbalance is gender. Of a total 41,836 homicide deaths in Brazil in 1998, 8.3 percent were women. Among youth, the proportion is even lower, as just 7 percent of homicide victims were female.
The UNESCO report also indicates that violence tends to be concentrated in Brazil's state capitals and major urban areas, especially in the southeast, which is the wealthiest and most industrialized region.
"It is primarily an urban phenomenon," and it is young men who most often kill and are the victims of killers, Waiselfisz said.
Several studies show that a life of crime begins in adolescence, as very rarely does a person begin committing serious crimes as an adult. Preventing violence thus requires special attention to the age group most at risk.
A global trend is also contributing to deepening urban violence: finding a job has become increasingly difficult. In Brazil, unemployment has reached alarming levels, especially among young adults.
From 1989 to 1998 the number of Brazilian workers ages 15 to 24 who were unable to find jobs jumped from one million to 3.3 million, says Marcio Pochmann, researcher at the Center for Labor Economy Studies at the University of Campinas.
This so-called youth unemployment shot up from 5.8 to 17.1 percent. While 2.3 million young people entered the labor market, there was a loss of two million jobs for that age group in the formal sector.
Older, more experienced workers are now competing for jobs traditionally performed by younger people, explained Pochmann, author of a book on the subject titled "The Battle for a First Job," published in Brazil in June.
This period of rising unemployment in Brazil, attributed to the opening of the national market to more imports, and to the eruption of economic crises -- both at home and overseas -- coincided with the expansion here of the illegal drug trade and urban crime.
With 26.2 deaths (not from natural causes) for every 100,000 inhabitants, Brazil is the fifth most violent on a list of 38 countries, after Colombia, Venezuela, Russia and Estonia.
At the other extreme are Spain and Ireland, where safety is underscored by just 1.2 deaths per 100,000, according to the World Health Organization.
In addition to quantity, the rapid increase in homicide rates is particularly alarming.
From 1989 to 1998, murders increased 45.5 percent among the general population and 51.7 percent among youth. For perspective, the Brazilian population grew 13.7 percent in that period.
The situation has hit a critical point, one that is difficult to reverse, acknowledged Gen. Alberto Cardoso, chief of the Cabinet of Institutional Security, a division of the government's Executive branch.
The homicide rate averages 173.7 per 100,000 inhabitants among young men (ages 15 to 24) in the Brazilian capitals. At the top of the list is the most violent, Recife, capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, where the rate reaches 255.7 homicide per 100,000 young males.
Because murders involve relatively few female victims, 10.5 per 100,000 in the capitals, the increase of such deaths among men contributes to a widening gender imbalance in the population.
Suicides are also on the rise here, though still relatively low as Brazil ranked 33rd among the 38 countries studied, according to the WHO. But the startling fact is that in 1998 the suicide rate was 56.9 percent higher than in 1989.
This is also a predominantly male problem. In Brazil, 80 percent of suicide deaths are men. Among the youth population, the male portion of suicides is 76 percent. The gender disparity increases with age, but people between the ages of 19 and 30 commit the vast majority of suicides.
Strangely, the southern region of the country, where homicide rates are lowest, reports the highest suicide rates - double the national average. Also, there is an inverse relationship evident as the three most violent Latin American countries -- Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil -- have relatively low suicide rates.
Gender disparity is also evident in deaths caused by traffic accidents, though age is not a significant factor. The ratio of male to female deaths from this cause is four to one in Brazil.
END
Church Group Winning War Against Infant Mortality
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 24 (IPS) -- The infant mortality rate has plunged in thousands of poor communities in Brazil thanks to the non-governmental "Pastoral das Criancas," whose work has made it a sort of parallel ministry of health.
The group, which belongs to the Episcopal Conference of the Catholic Church, trains 145,000 local volunteers to do outreach work benefitting more than 1.5 million children under age 6 and nearly 80,000 pregnant women in 60 percent of the country's 5,500 municipalities.
The infant mortality rate in the more than 31,000 communities where the Pastoral is active ranged from 12 to 18 per 1,000 in 1999, compared to a national average of 36 per 1,000 live births in the first year of life.
But a strictly quantitative comparison fails to reflect the magnitude of the feat. It must first be understood that the Pastoral is active only in the "pockets of poverty" where many more children usually die of malnutrition and infectious diseases than in other parts of the country.
Furthermore, the cost of the Pastoral's work is insignificant: less than one real (55 cents) a month per child assisted.
That has been made possible by the unpaid work of community leaders, local residents who mobilize and orient their neighbors in basic health-related actions, such as identifying and treating malnutrition, encouraging breastfeeding, and keeping on the lookout for and treating respiratory ailments and diarrhea, which claim many young lives.
The outreach workers make monthly visits to the 10 to 20 families under their care to provide information on health-related topics and nutritional advice.
Each community also holds a monthly weigh-in of babies in a so-called "celebration of life," in which people sing and say prayers "to strengthen community ties," said Zilda Arns Neumann, the pediatrician and specialist in preventive care and hygiene who founded the Pastoral in 1983 and continues to coordinate it today.
Among the 1.5 million children benefitted by the program, malnutrition plunged to 8 percent, half of the national average in this country of 167 million.
There are many reasons for the Pastoral's success, said Arns Neumann, starting with faith and unyielding dedication to the objective of fighting for life "by helping families deal with their problems on their own."
Other factors are an information system, with indicators to evaluate the health of each child, periodic evaluations by the central coordinating team of the work in each community, training and educational activities in local communities, and easily reproduced technologies and techniques that adapt well to local conditions.
Over 80 percent of the mothers of small babies assisted by the program's volunteers now breastfeed, Arns Neumann added.
The dimension of volunteer work is also a decisive factor, said the coordinator of the Pastoral. It makes possible more direct and frequent contact, since the community outreach workers have no more than 20 families in their charge, while health ministry workers attend up to 200 families.
Moreover, the Pastoral is ecumenical, which means it pools resources from a range of areas -- from those involved in efforts in health and nutrition to people working in education and in providing sewerage services.
The work and methodology of the Pastoral served as the model for a government initiative, the Community Health Program, in which agents have provided local assistance to families in specific communities since 1991.
In fact, the first 700 agents working with the government program were trained by the Pastoral, Arns Neumann pointed out with visible pride.
"We are more efficient where the government agents and community outreach workers work together," because the volunteers tend to forge closer and more affective ties with the families, and are available "on Saturdays and Sundays as well," thus complementing the technical capacity of the government workers in their areas of specialization, she said.
The organization expanded its activities to adult education, game rooms for children and large community gatherings of 200 or 300 people to evaluate and "celebrate" the progress made, exchange information, and discuss approaches to combatting domestic violence and other issues of concern to local residents.
It also promotes a kind of "community mental health therapy," with massage to reduce the stress of pregnant women or help elderly persons with insomnia, and other kinds of mutual aid.
The Pastoral has gained international recognition, winning awards like the one granted by the United Nations Childrens' Fund, and could be nominated by the Brazilian government as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize next year.
The campaign to nominate the Pastoral is backed by Health Minister José Serra, who sees its work as the most effective kind of effort carried out by non-governmental organizations in social areas.
Of the organization's annual budget of just over 16 million reals ($9 million), 82 percent comes from the health ministry, Arns Neumann pointed out.
Besides contributing decisively to reducing the mortality rate among children under six in Brazil, the Pastoral helps track infant mortality trends in the country using its solidarity network.
Early last year, for example, the Pastoral's volunteers detected a rise in infant mortality in the poorest parts of Sao Paulo State, attributed by the program's local coordinator Waldemar Caldin to the increase in poverty.
Brazil's children were hit hardest by the economic stagnation caused by the country's financial difficulties and the fallout of the international financial crisis that swept through Asia and Russia in 1997 and 1998.
END
High Correlation Between Skin Color And Poverty
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 20 (IPS) -- People with dark skin in Brazil have a disproportionate poverty rate and low social mobility, reflected by the fact that not a single member of the diplomatic corps is of African descent, activists here say.
The fight against discrimination has picked up steam in Latin America's giant in the run-up to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, to be held next year in South Africa, and as part of the debate on the inclusion of economic and social rights in the government's National Program on Human Rights.
A recent study found a close correlation between poverty and dark skin color in Brazil, pointing to a high level of racial discrimination.
The United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index (HDI), which measures life expectancy, school enrollment and per capita income, ranked Brazil 79th among 174 countries classified in 1999, with an HDI of 0.739.
But while Brazil, one of the world's 10 largest economies, has a relatively low ranking, the HDI for people of African descent (a category comprising all those who described themselves as "black" or "brown" in the last census) would stand at 0.671 -- even lower than that of the population of South Africa, which freed itself of a racist political regime in 1994.
According to a study by the Federation of Entities of Social Assistance and Education, Brazilians of African descent would thus rank 108th, compared to a ranking of 49th for people who figure in the census as "white."
Andrea Coutro, with the Center for the Articulation of Marginalized Populations (CEAP), said Brazil's latest census estimated people of African descent at 45.2 percent of a total population of 167 million, while 54 percent described themselves as "white," and only 0.8 percent as "yellow" (including the 0.2 percent of the population counted as indigenous).
Such distinctions are complex in a country with such a highly racially mixed population.
The gap between "whites" and people of African descent in this country is twice as wide as the gap in the United States, a country notorious for its racial tension, pointed out economist Marcelo Paixao, the chief author of the study by the Federation of Entities of Social Assistance and Education.
Depending on the source of the estimate, one-third to half of the population in Brazil lives below the poverty line. A presidential adviser, Vilmar Faria, says 13.9 percent of Brazilians -- in other words, around 21 million people -- live in extreme poverty. The campaign against hunger, meanwhile, refers to 32 million chronically malnourished people.
Faria also recognizes that 69 percent of the poor in Brazil are "black" or "brown."
The fact that a disproportionate percentage of the poor in Brazil are dark-skinned means the fight against racial discrimination inevitably overlaps with the struggle for social rights. The National Movement for Human Rights (MNDH) recognizes that in its attempt to get the government program for human rights to incorporate its proposals.
The international secretary of the MNDH, Pierre Roy, a Catholic priest from Haiti who has been working in Brazil for eight years, says the top priority is to bring the black population's access to public services into line with that of whites, in order to eventually improve conditions for everyone.
According to official statistics, only 26 and 49.7 percent of Brazilians of African descent have adequate housing and basic sanitation, respectively, compared to 54 and 73.6 percent of those counted by the census as white.
The gap in living conditions is also reflected by the infant mortality rate, which stands at 62 per 1,000 live births among Afro-Brazilians and 37 per 1,000 among whites, according to the latest figures, from 1996. A similar difference is seen in education, with the illiteracy rate among blacks twice as high as that of whites.
Affirmative action programs, such as reserving 40 percent of places in public universities or setting hiring quotas for people of color, figure among the proposals that organizations of civil society are pushing to get included in the program that the government is preparing to study in 2001, which is to incorporate economic, social and cultural rights.
An effective human rights and anti-poverty plan must be focused on people of African descent, stressed Coutro, at the Center for the Articulation of Marginalised Populations (CEAP).
The executive secretary of CEAP, Ivanir dos Santos, said that demanding that quotas be set, even small or unfeasible ones, was a "means to trigger a debate and lay bare the existing discrimination."
For example, it would be enough simply to demand that a 5 percent quota be set for people of color on Brazil's diplomatic corps to highlight the existing discrimination, because there has never yet been even a single black ambassador, he pointed out.
Similar discrimination exists in the navy and the air force, which demand a high level of technical training, added Dos Santos.
Women were successful in getting a 30 percent quota reserved for female candidates in elections "because it favors the middle class," said Dos Santos, who argued that a similar measure for blacks in universities or certain professions ran up against heavy opposition because it would in effect benefit the poor.
Besides affirmative action-style measures, non-governmental organizations want the government's new National Program on Human Rights to go beyond mere lip service and good intentions.
The new plan must replace the current vague promises to "support and stimulate" equality with "concrete targets and time frames" for securing that objective, said Roy, who inaugurated the MNDH office in Rio de Janeiro early this week.
Other demands by activists are that a "living" minimum monthly salary be set, six times the current 151 reals ($84); broader land reform with more credit available to beneficiaries; and access by blacks to social security, of which most are now deprived because they work in the informal sector of the economy.
Human rights groups point out that although Brazil is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the government has failed to deliver either of the two reports due on its progress in adopting policies advocating such rights.
Moreover, the government as well as organizations of civil society have limited their focus so far on advocating political and civil rights, something that "has to change, because without solutions for the grave social problems, like extreme poverty, human rights cannot exist," said Roy.
END
New Plant Fuels Debate Over Nuclear Energy
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 17 (TIERRAMERICA/IPS) -- The Angra 2 nuclear plant, located about an hour outside Rio, has finally switched on its reactors, 17 years after the original deadline but at the perfect moment for proponents of nuclear energy due to a desperate power shortage in the country.
Brazil needs the energy produced by Angra 2 to sustain the economic growth that has returned after the recession triggered by the 1997-98 global financial meltdown, and to ward off the threat of power outages in the next few months.
The nuclear plant, which began to operate on July 14 with a 1,309-megawatt capacity, accounts for just 2 percent of the country's capacity for generating power, while nationwide consumption is projected to grow by 6 percent a year, three times the capacity of Angra 2.
Brazil will have to start rationing energy by year's end, and Angra 2 can do little to alleviate that situation, said Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, a physicist and graduate professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The next three years will be critical, until many of the projected 49 thermoelectric plants to be run on natural gas begin functioning, said Pinguelli Rosa, an expert on energy questions.
But even though Brazil's capacity to generate electricity falls short of demand, the start of operations at Angra 2 sparked a heated debate on the feasibility and risks of nuclear energy.
According to Ruy de Goes, the coordinator of Greenpeace Brazil's anti-nuclear campaign, the construction of the plant was "an absurd, erroneous decision" in a country that has many "less costly, safer and ecological" alternatives, such as biomass or solar energy.
Building Angra 2 meant investment in technology that industrialized countries are starting to abandon, said De Goes. The United States, for example, has not built any new nuclear plants for 20 years, and a number of European countries have decided to scrap plans for expanding existing plants, or even to gradually phase them out.
Asia is virtually the only region that is still building new nuclear power plants, said De Goes and Pinguelli.
But Everton de Carvalho, the president of the Brazilian Association of Nuclear Energy (ABEN), said the critics of nuclear power in Brazil were confusing "their desire with reality."
The United States authorized the extension of the useful life of four nuclear plants from 40 to 60 years, leading a global trend, said the head of ABEN, which links professionals and institutions in favor of the peaceful use of nuclear science.
Moreover, the capacity of the 104 plants operating in the United States was boosted by 6 percent -- equivalent to building four Angra 2's, De Carvalho pointed out.
And in Europe, countries like Germany and Sweden that decided to gradually phase out nuclear energy have put off their plans, said De Carvalho, an adviser to Brazilian Nuclear Industries, the company that will produce the fuel for the two Angra power plants.
Europe's biggest challenge is meeting the 2025 targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, which it will not be able to accomplish unless it builds at least 65 nuclear power plants, he maintained.
The choice today is between nuclear energy and global warming, argued Iván Salati, of the National Commission on Nuclear Energy, which answers to the ministry of science and technology, the body in charge of setting and enforcing regulations in the sector.
There are no completely clean or risk- or problem-free sources of energy, experts agree.
Brazil now has two nuclear power plants on a beach in the municipality of Angra dos Reis, 130 kms from Rio de Janeiro and 220 kms from Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest cities. The plants are administered by the Rio de Janeiro-based state-run Eletronuclear company.
Angra 1, whose technology and equipment was acquired from the U.S. company Westinghouse, has experienced frequent interruptions of its operations since it began to function in 1984, said Pinguelli, who underlined that the plant has suffered many problems.
For example, rust is affecting 10 percent of the steam generator pipes, which are in need of a thorough inspection, he said.
But Eduardo Mendonça Costa, the National Commission on Nuclear Energy's coordinator of reactors, replied that the plant underwent regular inspections, and that the generator would only have to be replaced in the long-term.
Pinguelli conceded that Angra 2, which uses German technology, is safer than the first plant because it has a barrier that provides a safeguard against possible leaks of radioactivity. But the width of the wall, 60 cms, is just one-third of the standard width used in Germany, he pointed out.
Mendonca, on the other hand, maintained that the barrier provided total safety, because the 180-cm wall used in Germany was designed to protect nuclear plants from possible crashes of military planes, while there is no air traffic in Angra that would justify such a width.
He added that 60 cms is the width used in the United States.
Another source of controversy is the emergency plan in place to deal with accidents. Only those living within five kms of the plant, rather than the originally planned 15 kms, are to be immediately evacuated -- "an arbitrary decision," according to Pinguelli.
Environmentalists also stress the poor condition of the only highway available in the case of a mass evacuation, a problem that is acknowledged by ABEN's De Carvalho, an engineer at Eletronuclear.
Radioactive waste also poses a problem, and a draft law regulating the handling of the toxic waste has only been passed by the lower house of parliament, and is still pending approval by the Senate.
The National Commission on Nuclear Energy estimates the number of people living within five kms of the plant, to be immediately evacuated in case of emergency, at 12,000. Mendonca pointed to the existence of a detailed emergency plan, complete with training and regular drills.
But in case of a serious accident, all 120,000 residents of the city of Angra dos Reis -- the center of which is located some 20 kms from the nuclear reactors -- would have to be cleared out.
The Angra dos Reis municipal secretary of planning and the environment, Raul Ribeiro Vaz, is calling for a clearer definition of the tasks that would fall to the municipal government in case of an evacuation.
Ribeiro Vaz pointed out that the population of Angra dos Reis swelled in summer, with tourism. Furthermore, the construction of Angra 2 drew many migrants in search of work, with the consequent growth of semi-permanent settlements around the power plants.
The risk of accidents, tiny according to authorities at the National Commission on Nuclear Energy and the Eletronuclear company, has not affected tourism, said Ribeiro Vaz.
In fact, a number of hotels are being built in the area to cope with the inflow of tourists drawn by the green mountains and the bay of Angra dos Reis, which offers gorgeous beaches and spectacular islands.
Angra 1 and 2, which stick out like a sore thumb in one of the most beautiful areas of Brazil, also carry the stigma of having emerged as part of an ambitious plan of the military regime that ruled Latin America's giant from 1964 to 1985, which Greenpeace's De Goes said had an ulterior motive -- to build an atomic bomb.
An agreement signed with Germany projected the construction of eight nuclear plants in addition to Angra 1. But the failure to complete the program pushed the cost of Angra 2 up to 12 billion reals ($6.6 billion at the current exchange rate), according to Eletronuclear figures.
That makes Angra 2 the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world, say critics. The financial and maintenance costs of the plant, which remained unfinished for years, explain a large part of that expense.
The battle will soon be on for the construction of Angra 3, the equipment for which has already been purchased. Those in charge of the project say the plant will inevitably be built, because there is no other way to generate the cheap energy needed to meet the growing demand.
Three functioning nuclear power plants would provide the scale needed to make the production of nuclear fuel possible in Brazil, said De Carvalho.
Large countries with diverse geographic regions like Brazil cannot rule out any possible source of energy, in the view of physicist Anselmo Paschoa, the National Commission on Nuclear Energy's former director of safety and security.
Decisions in the field of energy must be based on a thorough evaluation of local realities, the economy and the risks presented by each source of electric power, said Paschoa.
The Brazilian constitution approved in 1988 approves the peaceful use of nuclear energy, pointed out Vilmar Berna, editor of the Journal of the Environment and the only Brazilian journalist to win the Global 500 prize, which the United Nations awarded him in 1999.
"I am against nuclear energy, but I recognize that I am in the minority," said Berna, who stressed that a broad-based democratic debate on the issue was essential.
END
Rural Women March To Demand A Better Life
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 10 (IPS) -- More than half of all women in Brazil's countryside begin working before the age of 10, and end up toiling as long as 18 hours a day, said the leaders of a protest march in Brasilia today.
The march of the "Margaridas" mobilized some 15,000 women protesting the government's economic policies, poverty and violence in rural areas. They staged demonstrations outside the Central Bank, the Ministry of Justice and the National Congress in the Brazilian capital.
The National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), comprised of 3,600 rural unions representing 25 million workers, organizes this march on a yearly basis in order to underscore the specific demands of rural women.
The date of the annual event is in honor of Margarida Alves, a trade unionist from the northern state of Paraíba who was assassinated 17 years ago on the order of powerful local ranchers.
The rural women workers face the worst situation of any group in the country, as they suffer sexual discrimination on top of the harsh conditions of life in the countryside.
Women represent nearly a third of the rural labor force and of the nation's food producers, but 85 percent work without any sort of contract and thus lack the labor rights and social security provided by law, stressed Raimunda de Mascena, coordinator of women's programs at CONTAG.
They do not have access to pensions or paid maternity leave. In the agrarian reform process, they are generally prevented from holding land titles or from obtaining credit, which are given to the husband instead of being granted to the couple jointly.
In addition, 56 percent of rural women are sent to work before they reach their 10th birthday, in most cases having been forced to drop out of school, and 60 percent have their first child before age 21, said Mascena.
There are 2.2 million women in rural Brazil working without payment, enduring a form of slavery, says economist Hildete Pereira de Melo, a specialist in women's labor issues at the Institute of Applied Economic Research, a division of the Ministry of Planning.
Exclusion and discrimination leave peasant women more vulnerable to domestic and social violence because they lack the protective mechanisms available to women in many cities, such as police stations specializing in assisting the female population.
Economic globalization, with its neo-liberal policies imposed on the nations of the developing South, has aggravated the conditions in which rural women workers live, charged activists at the protest in front of the Central Bank, an institution perceived as an instrument of the international integration process.
The participants in the March of the Margaridas called on the Ministry of Justice to halt the impunity that feeds violence in the countryside, especially the frequent assassinations of union activists and peasant farmers.
The marchers then presented parliamentary leaders with a document listing the principle demands of the rural women's movement, outlining legislation and measures to ensure recognition of their constitutional rights.
The women's protest coincided with another by the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST landless movement), which began its fourth national congress on Aug. 7 in Brasilia, attracting 10,538 delegates from 23 of Brazil's 26 states.
The MST activists joined forces with others from labor unions, social movements and leftist parties outside the National Congress to protest corruption in the government, accusing politicians, judges, bankers and business leaders.
The demonstrators specifically called for a legislative investigation into the scandal unleashed by the discovery that 169 million reais ($94 million) had been illegally diverted from the Regional Labor Court construction project in Sao Paulo.
The case has already led to the impeachment of a national senator, Luis Estévao, but investigators have yet to identify all the beneficiaries and responsible parties involved in illegally transferring the money in the period 1992 to 1998.
The MST also demands that Senate president Antonio Carlos Magalhaes speed up approval of a bill that would transfer cases of human rights crimes to federal courts, a measure considered essential for bringing the perpetrators of peasant massacres to justice.
The most infamous massacre occurred four years ago in Eldorado de Carajás in northern Brazil, where 19 rural workers were murdered. Of the 155 police officers accused of the crime, none has faced trial.
Local courts are subject to pressure from powerful landowners and police authorities, according to the MST leadership.
The MST national congress, with the theme of "Agrarian Reform: A Brazil Free of Large Landownership," concludes tomorrow, when delegates are to approve the organization's working agenda for the next five years.
In addition to fighting for extensive redistribution of land, the MST says it is essential to change the current agrarian model, which is based on production for export, and to prevent cultivation of genetically modified grains because it fosters dependence on the transnational seed corporations.
END
Women Take The Lead In Local Elections
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 9 (IPS) -- Female candidates competing with each other for the mayoral posts of three of Brazil's state capitals have generated a sense of excitement among women about the Oct. 1 municipal elections.
Marta Suplicy and Luiza Erundina, two left-wing candidates, are the favorites in the race for mayor of Brazil's largest city and economic hub, Sao Paulo, population 10 million.
The latest opinion polls show that the Workers Party's Suplicy is the front-runner with 26 percent, against socialist Erundina's 17 percent.
The only candidate who could prevent a runoff between Suplicy and Erundina in a second round of voting is former mayor Paulo Maluf, who trails Erundina with 15 percent in the polls. But his image has been tarnished by a corruption scandal that is shaking up the government of his protégé, Mayor Celso Pitta.
Female candidates are also slugging it out in the campaign for mayor in the northeastern cities of Natal and Maceió.
That region, Brazil's poorest, is where women have the strongest voice in local government, said sociologist Delaine Martins Costa, coordinator of the Nucleus of Women and Public Policies of the Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration.
The three races in which both front-runners are women is the most novel aspect of the current campaign, which will bring about a continued increase in women's presence in local governments, Martins Costa pointed out.
In 1996, when a system of quotas was adopted to force parties to reserve at least 20 percent of their candidacies for women, the number of female city councilors rose by 111 percent, to a total of 6,536 nationwide, said Almira Rodrigues, with the Women's Research and Consulting Center (Cfemea).
In addition, 302 women mayors were elected, 60 percent more than in the previous elections, held in 1992, before any mechanisms had been put in place to boost the participation of women.
In this year's local elections, at least 30 percent of the candidates for town council fielded by the parties must be women. Analysts thus predict that the number of women councilors will double once again, said Rodrigues.
But even if that does occur, women will still account for less than 12 percent of the total number of city councilors in Brazil, said Martins Costa.
The growth in the number of female town councilors has been partly the result of an increase in the number of municipalities, from 4,972 in 1996 to the present 5,505.
Moreover, women's increased participation in local government has not been reflected at higher levels. In Brazil's national Congress, for example, women have actually lost ground in the past few elections, with the number of female lawmakers dropping from 34 in the 1994 elections to 28 in 1998.
Martins Costa pointed to a "gender divide" or glass ceiling in politics, in which women's growing participation is only tolerated at the local level, where women are traditionally closely involved in social and community questions.
That phenomenon has been especially prevalent in the northeast, a region where "family networks" are strong, and where women have long played a role in municipal governments.
After rising to top offices at a municipal level, male leaders of a clan often move on to the state or federal level, leaving their wives or other close relatives as their local political heirs, she explained.
Thus, women already governed 3.2 percent of municipalities in the northeast by 1973, and 8.6 percent in 1997 -- in both instances more than double the proportions seen in the more developed regions of southern and southeastern Brazil.
Nevertheless, the growing number of female mayors makes women's progress in winning spaces in politics more visible, and the office of mayor often serves as a stepping-stone to the office of state governor, rarely won by women in Brazil up to now.
Besides the three state capitals in which women are expected to dispute the office of mayor between themselves, there are leading female candidates in other major cities, such as Fortaleza, the capital of the state of the same name, also in the northeast.
And in the state of Sao Paulo, popular female candidates are running for mayor in Santos, Brazil's largest port, and Sao José dos Campos, the capital of Brazil's aeronautics industry.
The women's movement remains critical of the parties, which have generally failed to fully respect the quota law, or which pay little attention to their female candidates, who are often registered merely to comply with the law.
New mechanisms are needed to boost women's participation, especially in parliament, say activists.
A district-based electoral system, with seats representing a specific constituency, "would favor the representation not only of women, but of minorities as well, such as Blacks and the disabled," said Maria Aparecida de Laia, the president of the Council on the Situation of Women in Sao Paulo.
Or the system could be a mixed one, with some candidates elected by district and some elected according to the current system, in which everyone disputes the votes from the entire municipality or state, said Laia.
That would give more chances to candidates known for their social involvement in certain neighborhoods, while reducing the influence of big money publicity campaigns, she added.
Today, political parties give priority to the candidates with the widest name recognition, who can draw many votes from throughout the entire municipality or state, and thus boost the party's overall representation.
The parties channel most of their financial resources into the campaigns of these prominent candidates, at the expense of women, who are generally much less widely known because they are new on the political scene -- a dynamic that tends to favor the status quo and work against change, said Laia.
END
Risk Of Massacre of Indians In State of Para
Amanaka'a Amazon Network ~ August 7
A telephone call a few minutes ago brought this request for your assistance. There is a risk that yet another massacre of Indian relations is about to break loose in northern Brazil. I ask that you contact the closest Brazilian embassy/consulate/trade office to you & let them know that you are watching, that the whole world is watching.
The Caiapos Nation numbered an estimated 20,000-30,000 just 25 years ago. Today there are about 3,000-5,000 survivors struggling to maintain their livelihood in this small corner of the vanishing Amazonian rain forest. Most of the deaths have been due to attacks by paramilitary gangs of heavily armed men, many suspected to be army & police units of the State of Para. The Caiapos have been recognized as proprietors of their ancestral lands by Brazilian courts, but have not been able to force the state government to abide by either the decrees of the courts or the directives of the federal government to "demarcate' the Caiapos ancestral territory.
In Brazil, demarcation is the setting aside of anywhere from 5%-10% of an Indian Nation's ancestral territory as being exclusively for their use/control/management. The demarcation, however, requires the agreement of state governments, so over 80% of the few surviving Indian Nations in Brazil are still awaiting confirmation of their rights even though the courts & federal government have declared the land in question to be Indian land in every legal sense. (This "state govt veto power over Indian rights" sounds a lot like the model Presidential hopeful George Bush Jr. intends to apply in the USA.)
Of the (conservatively) estimated 15,000,000-20,000,000 Indians in Brazil in 1800, less than 200,000 remain alive today. CONAI, the Brazilian government's equivalent of a Dept of Indian Affairs, with it's staff of six (6) people, has estimated that over 100,000 Indian men, women & children have been butchered by "paramilitary units" since 1960. Because they "stand in the way of development" (ie, their legal rights impede the plundering of the Amazonian basin by multinational corporations currently stripping the land bare of all its natural resources). The Indians simply do not want to be "progressed."
In this current situation, the state government (based in Belem) is particularly hostile to any recognition of any Indian rights. The governor of the state, (well paid by the multinational corporations) has repeatedly declared that the demarcation of Indian Nation territories is an "anti-democratic, communist strategy to stop development & progress" & he has openly unleashed the state security forces to "search & destroy" Indian villages over the past few years, citing the Indians' resistance to the constant raids & massacres by the paramilitary gangs as indicative of their "terrorism."
So now we have 16 non-Indian "fishermen" who were captured by surprise while "peacefully fishing" in the area where the Xingu & Iriri rivers converge, just south of the town of Altimira in the State of Para. These "peaceful fishermen" were armed with grenades, submachine guns & automatic weapons. They were captured as they slept (they'd been drinking heavily a few hours before) & not a single one was harmed in any way. But now the Governor of Para is mobilizing his "militia" & stating that they will "destroy these uncivilized terrorists once & for all." The Indians are demanding only that the demarcation of their lands be legally recognized by the state government before they agree to release their prisoners unharmed.
Please folks, take the time to make that call, send that fax to the closest Brazilian government representative to your location. Demand that the federal government of Brazil ensure that this incident does not become the excuse for yet another massacre in the ongoing genocide of the relations in Brazil. Demand that the Governor of Para State be forced to rein in his killing machine & agree to the demarcation of Caiapos territory. Hundreds of lives as precious as yours, as your children's are hanging by a very slim thread today.
Brazilian Embassy (US)
Chancery: 3006 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Washington, DC 20008 Phone: (202-745-2700) (FAX 202-745-2827)
Brazilian Embassy (UK)
His Excellency Paulo-Tarso FLECHA DE LIMA, Ambassador
E-mail: infolondres@infolondres.org.uk
END
Oil Spill Is A Wake-Up Call, Say Activists
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul. 27 (IPS) -- An oil spill in the Iguazú River, which runs across southern Brazil to join the Paraná River on the border between Argentina and Paraguay, served as a wake-up call to the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc on the need to harmonize its environmental laws and policies, say activists.
The process of integration must urgently be extended to the area of environmental protection, according to a joint statement addressed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Brazil and Argentina's Fundación Vida Silvestre to the governments of the four members of the bloc -- Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Negotiations towards a Mercosur Environmental Protocol, which began over four years ago, have ground to a halt, although a "sub-working group" continues to hold periodic meetings on the question, the environmentalists pointed out.
The July 16 oil spill occurred when a pipeline in a refinery of Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobrás cracked and four million liters of crude poured out, most of it running into the Bariguí River, which empties into the Iguazú.
Petrobrás and Brazil's environmental authorities say the oil will not reach the border, as its advance was stemmed by barriers set in place across the Iguazú River. According to the Environmental Institute of the state of Paraná, less than 250,000 liters of oil remain to be cleaned up in the river.
But Argentine Tourism Secretary Hernán Lombardi said he was afraid that traces of oil had polluted the waters of the Iguazú National Park, a major source of tourism revenues located more than 500 kms downstream from the spill, where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil converge.
Both Argentina and Paraguay said they planned to demand indemnification from Brazil in case of losses caused by the spill.
Although its direct effects have been limited to Brazil, the oil spill is a "supranational" incident that laid bare the bloc's lack of a common environmental policy framework, Alvaro Luchiesi, an expert in foreign trade with WWF-Brazil, told IPS.
The signing of the Mercosur Environmental Protocol is indispensable in order to begin coordinating the laws of the four member countries, which share a large number of rivers, he said. Society at large must also have a much greater say in discussions and decision-making, he added.
Negotiations on the protocol have been held up by conflicting interests in various areas, especially biotechnology, said Luchiesi. In the past few years, no progress has been made towards an agreement, he complained, despite the five or six annual meetings held by the "sub-working group."
Brazil has stricter environmental laws and standards than its neighbors, especially with respect to genetically modified live organisms. That has led to discrepancies with Argentina, currently one of the world's biggest producers of transgenic crops, second only to the United States, the activist pointed out.
Brazil's reluctance to authorize the planting and sale of transgenic crops has unleashed a heated battle in the courts over imports of Argentine corn.
Environmental and consumer defence groups have successfully blocked the unloading of several shipments of corn found to contain genetically altered kernels.
Luchiesi's hope is that in the next six months, during which Brazil holds the presidency of Mercosur, and now Argentina's new government is settled in, the "sub-working group" can be "shaken" into action to take "some concrete step that would give rise to the possibility of an accord being reached by the end of next year."
The environmental problems common to all the Mercosur countries mainly involve water, as many rivers, like the Iguazú, begin in Brazil and flow towards the other member countries.
In the past, the use of some of the rivers to generate hydroelectricity has triggered conflicts with Argentina, as in the case of the Itaipú dam and power plant on the Paraná River, shared by Brazil and Paraguay.
The Paraguay-Paraná river basin, considered key to the integration of Mercosur, is at the center of a raging dispute between those who want a plan to broaden the waterway to go ahead, and environmentalists, who fear irreversible damages to the Mato Grosso swamp, an enormous wetland ecosystem mainly located in Brazil, but extending across the Bolivian and Paraguayan borders as well.
The four countries are now trying to hammer out a joint program for research, conservation and sustainable use of the Guaraní aquifer, a huge reserve of subterranean water extending from southern Brazil to northeastern Argentina, eastern Paraguay and northern Uruguay.
Another source of cross-border environmental disputes is the coal-run thermoelectric plant of Candiota in southern Brazil, which according to Uruguay produces acid rain that falls on its territory.
Coordinated environmental laws and policies would also have to take into account their differing economic and social effects in the four member countries, said Luchiesi, who pointed to the example of fishing, and how it could be affected by agricultural or industrial activities in other countries.
END
Military Police Murder Land Activist In Northeast Brazil
Grassroots International ~ July 31
There are approximately 4.8 million families without land in Brazil, and, in the past 10 years alone, more than 1,000 rural workers involved with the struggle for land reform have been assassinated. The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) of Pernambuco states that five people have been assassinated and more than 80 peasants have been tortured and imprisoned by the military police in Pernambuco.
Murder in Recife
On July 25, approximately 200 unarmed landless workers protested in front of the Banco do Brasil in the Boa Viagem neighborhood of Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil. At about 2:30 p.m., 12 military police confronted the workers. The officers threatened the workers with billy clubs and then opened fire on them. One of the shots struck Jose Marlucio da Silva, age 47, in the chest. The bullet pierced his liver and lung. Silva died at the Restauracao Hospital due to massive hemorrhaging.
Grassroots International (GRI) vehemently condemns this incident. As part of its Brazil program, GRI provides financial support to the MST's human rights program in Pernambuco.
We urge you to send messages calling for a thorough investigation of this case and the end of all repression against landless workers in Brazil.
Please contact the following officials:
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Praca do Tres Poderes
Palacio do Planalto, Terceiro Andar
70.150-900 Brasilia DF Brasil.
e-mail: pr@planalto.gov.br
Fax: (011-55) 61-322-2314
Tel: (011-55) 61-411-1169
or/and
Jarbas de Andrade Vasconcelos
e-mail: governo@fisepe.pe.gov.br
Fax: (011-55) 81-424-4671
Tel: (011-55) 81-425-2116
Please send copies of any e-mails you send to sbari@grassrootsonline.org
For more information about the struggle of the landless in Brazil, visit the web site for MST English or Portuguese
END
Brazil Oil Spill Blamed on Human, Technical Errors
By Shasta Darlington ~ July 21
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - After bringing Brazil's biggest oil spill in 25 years under control, state oil giant Petrobras (PETR4.SA) pinned the blame on Friday on a forgetful worker and faulty equipment.
On Sunday a burst pipe at a refinery near Brazil's southern city of Curitiba spewed 1.06 million gallons (4 million liters) of crude into the Iguacu River, upstream from a number of cities and from the internationally known Iguacu Falls.
"The conclusion points to both human and technical errors,'' a press spokesman for Petrobras in Curitiba told Reuters on Friday.
A worker forgot to open a valve to let incoming oil flow in and then a pipe joint broke before the emergency pressure valve was triggered, he said.
"But almost half of the spill has already been cleaned up,'' he added. "The worst has passed.''
By Wednesday more than 1,000 workers had contained the slick with retention barriers and runoff channels 25 miles (43 km) from the refinery and far upstream from the city most at risk and from Iguacu Falls.
They have since vacuumed most of the oil that managed to escape from the refinery off the surface and expect to complete the first phase of the cleanup by next Wednesday. Afterward they have to scrub rocks and banks to remove residue.
Sunday's accident was Petrobras's second spill in six months. It was three times bigger than the January spill, but still smaller than Brazil's worse oil accident in 1974 when 1.6 million gallons (6 million liters) poured from a foreign tanker into Guanabara Bay in front of Rio de Janeiro.
Environmentalists said the biggest danger had passed, but noted the still-present risk to the region's flora and fauna and to residents in Uniao da Vitoria, 185 miles (300 km) from the refinery.
"The thick part of the spill has been contained, but a thin toxic film is still contaminating the river downstream,'' Delcio Rodrigues of Greenpeace in Brazil said.
Some of the 70 species of fish -- 12 of them endemic to the region -- and river birds and plants were at risk. If the film did not evaporate before arriving at Uniao da Vitoria, the town of 75,000 people could also have drinking water problems.
Out of danger were the majestic cascades of Iguacu Falls on the border with Argentina, activists and officials said.
"There is no way the oil will reach the falls, whatever gets by the barriers would evaporate first,'' Rodrigues said.
Petrobras said it will soon present a six-to-12 month project aimed at helping salvage the flora and fauna around the latest spill.
Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Brazil mounted pressure on Petrobras to carry out a thorough recovery program in the Iguacu River and demanded that the company beef up prevention and emergency controls.
END
Gov't Grapples With Major Oil Spill
By Mario Osava ~ July 19
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) -- The state-owned oil company Petrobrás says it has contained a four-million-liter spill that had been advancing down the Iguazú River in southern Brazil after a burst pipeline caused the petroleum giant's worst accident since 1975.
The black slick, eight km long, had been moving at a speed of one km per hour since the spill occurred on July 16 after a pipe at the President Getulio Vargas Refinery in eastern Paraná state sprung a leak.
Brazilian foreign affairs officials contacted their counterparts in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, telling them that Brazil is making "every effort to prevent the petroleum from crossing the border." The governmental Brazilian Environmental Institute also pledged that the slick would not reach neighboring countries.
In the first day of clean-up, not even 0.1 percent of the spilled oil had been collected, according to estimates by environmentalists, and the slick had already taken its toll on the river's plant and animal life.
By Petrobrás' own reckoning, crews had so far collected just 10 percent of the total volume of crude spilled.
The slick was flowing with the Iguazú river currents toward the Paraná River, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet at the massive Iguazú Falls, 800 km from the original spill. It is unlikely the oil would ever reach international waters, but the possibility sparked concern among the authorities.
The site where the rivers meet at the spectacular waterfalls is one of South America's leading tourist attractions, and is shared by the three bordering countries.
The Petrobrás spill is Brazil's worst oil accident ever to occur on a river.
Floating containment barriers, vacuums and other equipment were mobilized, along with clean-up specialists, to stop the advance of the oil slick downstream toward the city of Uniao da Vitoria.
All water supplies for this city of 73,000 come from the Iguazú and would be affected by the spill by this evening or tomorrow morning if containment efforts fail. Rains aggravated the problem as they pushed up water levels and accelerated river currents.
Several towns along the river have complained about the strong smell of petroleum, which exacerbates respiratory problems. The authorities warned of the possibility of fire.
Along the Iguazú there are also five hydroelectric plants, the first located just 40 km downstream from Uniao da Vitoria. Despite the risk of damage to the dam's equipment, technicians for the Paraná Electrical Company assured there would be no loss in energy production levels.
But there is no way to reverse the ecological damage. Fish, plants, animals and birds were the first victims, charge local environmentalists.
Petrobrás was slow to react, and provided inadequate clean-up equipment and personnel who lacked training for this type of accident, according to Teresa Urbán, of the environmental organization Rede Verde (Green Network).
The clean-up crews are using the same methods here as in marine environments, which are not effective for river spills, she said.
The giant state oil company, the pride of nationalists who have fought privatization efforts, has consolidated itself as an enemy of environmentalists.
The frequency of accidents throughout the Petrobrás system calls for prison sentences for the firm's executives, as stipulated in the Environmental Crimes Act, charged Joao Paulo Capobianco, of the non-governmental Socio-Environmental Institute.
Seven spills have occurred just since December, two of which were extremely serious -- the current incident and the spill in January, when a pipeline dumped 1.3 million liters of petroleum into Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro.
In 1975, Brazil suffered its worst oil-related accident when the hull of the Iranian tanker Tarik Ibn Ziyad failed, spilling at least six million liters of crude into Guanabara Bay.
The $28 million fine Environment Minister José Sarney Filho charged Petrobrás for last January's spill is nothing for a company that deals in multi-billions, and has not been enough to change its attitude toward the environment, said Capobianco.
Minister Sarney, however, announced that the fine for this week's spill would be doubled to at least $56 million because it is Petrobrás's second major accident in just six months.
The July 16 accident is the result of ongoing negligence in safety and environmental disaster prevention, he said.
Oil-worker unionists accuse Petrobrás of sacrificing safety in order to cut costs, postponing necessary maintenance measures.
Complicated tasks are being performed by "workers who lack adequate training," charged Mauricio França Rubem, head of the Federation of Petroleum Workers.
The refinery in Paraná where the most recent spill occurred had cut its personnel from 1,200 to 580, stressed Helio Seidel, president of the local union.
In addition, the company has failed to update equipment and technology. The pipelines at the refinery are 23 years old, the same age as the plant itself, said Seidel.
Petrobrás president Henri Philippe Reichstul attributed the latest accident to "misfortune" and stated that personnel cuts were the result of the increasing use of computers in refinery operations, which he said strengthen safety.
This week's accident came just as the state company began implementation of its Program for Environmental Excellence, a billion-dollar project triggered by the January spill in Guanabara Bay.
Brazilian Green Party legislative Deputy Fernando Gabeira said it is unacceptable to attribute the spill to "misfortune" because it was evidently due to human error.
"There exist intelligent systems" of control that are capable of preventing this type of disaster, Gabeira said as he visited the spill site on the Iguazú.
END
Gov't Targets Large Landholdings
By Mario Osava ~ July 17
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) -- Brazil's minister of agrarian development, Raul Jungmann, declared today that the titles of 1,899 large rural landholdings have been declared null and void, affecting 62.7 million hectares, or 7.4 percent of the country's territory.
"It is the beginning of the end to the latifundia" in Brazil, said Jungmann in a message broadcast over radio and television.
The measure is part of a government-led process to reorganize agricultural properties and fight fraud in landownership after a study revealed irregularities in 3,065 large estates averaging 10,000 hectares each.
The Ministry of Agrarian Development suspended the registration of the lands in December and banned their supposed owners from selling the rural property, transferring possession or offering it as collateral to o