top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
Governor
of Pernambuco
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
top of page
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
top of page
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
top of page
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 obtain bank loans.
The government had given the owners six
months to present documentation that they acquired the land legally.
Today, the deadline to present ownership
papers, Jungmann formalized the nullification of titles for the 1,899
rural properties, now presumed to have been appropriated through
illegal means.
Just over one-third of the owners in
question could not prove they legally held title to their lands.
The minister stressed that a "major
legal battle" would be the next step to uphold the measure that
gives the state the equivalent to five times the area obtained over
the last five years as part of its agrarian reform program, or 23
percent larger than Spain.
Jungmann explained that the land recovered
by the government would not be available for sale, parcelling out,
inheritance or as collateral for credit either from public
institutions or private banks.
"The white book of land occupation in
Brazil," distributed by the Agrarian Development Ministry,
reports landownership irregularities in the country's poorest states
and reveals the mechanisms of fraudulent appropriations.
A typical case involves an area of nine
million hectares distributed among 83 municipalities in Pará
state in northern Brazil. It was registered under the name of
"Carlos Medeiros," who received the land in "onerous
assignment of hereditary rights."
They are lands Medeiros allegedly inherited
from two Portuguese citizens and then sold to dozens of different
people and businesses. However, they were previously public lands,
belonging to the national and state governments.
Investigations concluded that "Carlos
Medeiros" never existed. Even his supposed lawyers could not
locate him. Using a fictitious owner was apparently the method they
chose to illegally appropriate the land.
Most of the properties that have come under
suspicion are located in the Amazon states of northern and western
Brazil. They are regions where agricultural exploitation is fairly
recent, a process the Brazilian government promoted, especially in
the 1970s when the military regime pushed to populate the sparsely
inhabited Amazon forest.
With this offensive against large
landowners, the government hopes to clean up the scams of the past
and use these extensive areas for new settlements under its agrarian
reform program, promoting family farming as well as environmental
preservation, said Jungmann.
To prevent the illegal transfer of land in
the future, a bill is being debated in the National Congress that
updates the standards for real estate registry of rural lands and
their taxes.
The new rules would prevent illegal
appropriation by setting up a national land register, expanding
information and identification data on each property and increasing
penalties for those who abuse the system.
The minister told reporters that the
government's agrarian reform program, which settled 372,866 families
from 1995 to 1999, will continue this year, helping to settle at
least 90,000 more families.
The program performs a key social role by
allowing participating families to escape poverty and pursue
subsistence farming, he said.
Through the education of their children, an
essential component of the process, the families will achieve the
technological and productive conditions that will allow them to
compete on both the internal and external markets, stated Jungmann.
Improving the standard of living for the
rural poor in Brazil continues to be an important goal because 23
percent of the population, or 34 million people, still live in rural
areas. Half of that total is economically active and 13 million are
involved in family farming, according to data from the Ministry of
Agrarian Development.
END
top of page
Army
Implicated In 1991 Killings Of Prospectors
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun. 6 (IPS) Brazilian army
allegedly tortured and killed at least seven Colombian gold
prospectors near the border between the two countries in 1991,
claiming the victims were guerrilla fighters killed in violent
clashes, the local press reported this week.
An incident that came to be known as the
"Rio Traira conflict" has been the focus of newspaper
reports in Brazil since June 4, and could stand in the way of the
defense ministry's aim of creating two territories under central
government administration, in the area along the border between
Colombia and Venezuela.
The scandal has tarnished the image of the
army, which is to play a decisive role in the project as the dominant
force in the Amazon jungle border regions. For more than two decades,
the army has been involved in the "Calha Norte project" of
occupation and defense in jungle frontier areas.
The Chamber of Deputies Human Rights
Commission, presided over by members of the leftist Workers Party,
has launched an inquiry into the case, and aims to get the military
justice prosecutors office involved in the investigation.The head of
the Federal Public Ministry (public prosecutors office) of the
Amazon, Sergio Laura, stated that it was a grave matter that no
police-military investigation had been undertaken, the normal
procedure in such cases, and said he would demand one.
On February 26, 1991, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group involved in
that country's decades-old civil war, made an incursion into
Brazilian territory and attacked a military outpost, killing three
soldiers and injuring 12. Two Colombian "garimpeiros" (gold
prospectors) who were in custody at the time also died in the incident.
Over the following days, special Amazon
region troops as well as forces from Rio de Janeiro were mobilized to
the area with air force support in "Operation Tacano."
According to official reports, seven Colombian guerrilla fighters
were killed in clashes on March 5, 1991.
Then-army minister General Carlos Tinoco
told the Brazilian Senate that the military had no doubts that the
men were insurgents, because they were found with a gun, uniforms and
other items from the Brazilian military based attacked the week before.
But reports published this week by the
Brazilian daily O Globo, based on testimony from two soldiers and a
sergeant who took part in Operation Tacano, differed from the
official version."They were 'garimpeiros' and they were
executed" after being tortured, said former soldier
Vataíde Celestino do Nascimento, one of those wounded in the
FARC attack.
Do Nascimento, who works today as a cook in
Tabatinga, the largest city on the border with Colombia, said the
orders were to kill the Colombian gold prospectors and burn the
corpses. Since the operation was part of a "dirty war," the
military personnel involved removed their names from their uniforms,
in order not to be identified, he added.
The former soldier said he witnessed, one
and a half months later, the execution of three other gold
prospectors, who were first bound for two days to logs tied in the
shape of a cross, with no food, and stung by insects. "Everyone
knew they were 'garimpeiros', but they were executed as if they were
guerrilla fighters," said Do Nascimento.
Another soldier, Antelmo Lopes Ferreira,
said he steered the boat that took the military personnel and gold
prospectors to the spot where the latter were killed. However, he
demanded to be placed in the witness protection program before he
would provide the names of the officers involved.
Sergeant Alberto Carneiro said he witnessed
the shooting on a bridge of three gold prospectors who begged for
their lives.Other testimony indicates that as many as 15 people were
killed and/or disappeared during Operation Tacano.
Local Colombian trader Roosvel
Calderón said the first three victims were captured in a gold
prospecting venture on the Colombian side of the border. He provided
the names of all three men and said they had never crossed into
Brazil. Calderón, who was imprisoned and tortured at that
time, said he saw in his cell "a piece of scalp and other human
remains burnt with gasoline."He said the residents of the
municipality of Traira listed 15 disappeared victims, none of whom
had any ties to the guerrillas.
An air force officer who participated in the
army operation, Gen. Durval Neri, admitted that the number of victims
could be as high as 12, rather than the officially reported seven. He
insisted, however, that they were all insurgents.
Raul Regis, FARC military commander of San
Vicente del Caguán, in Colombia, acknowledged in an interview
with O Globo that members of his organization had attacked the
military base, "because Brazilian soldiers were mistreating poor
Colombians." But, he said, no rebel was killed in the Brazilian
army's reprisal. After the incident, the Colombian government
formally requested an investigation into the deaths of Colombian
nationals, but Brazil did not respond.
Brazilian Defense Minister Geraldo Quintao
backed the official army report, and said this week that the incident
had been "properly clarified." He said, however, that he
would not refuse to provide information to the Human Rights
Commission of the lower house of parliament.
The chairman of the Human Rights Commission,
Deputy Marcos Rolim, plans to meet with the witnesses cited by the
press and visit the site of the incident. Parliamentarians from
several different parties insisted on the need to clarify what
occurred during the "Rio Traira conflict," to protect the
army's image if nothing else.
END
top of page
Drought
Brings Outages, Rationing To Cities In Brazil
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun. 6 (IPS) -- Drought is
no longer just a problem for farmers in Brazil. Today, city-dwellers
are facing water rationing and the threat of power cuts.
Since June 1, three million people in Sao
Paulo have been on a rationing system, going without water one day
out of three.
But the more severe troubles of the big
metropolitan region of Recife in northeastern Brazil date back to
1983, with urban residents often facing the problem of dry water
pipes six days a week.
In the northeast, Brazil's most impoverished
region, drought is a chronic problem, and most of the rivers do not
run year-round.
Sao Paulo in the southeast, on the other
hand, is suffering from a drought that occurs cyclically, about every
three decades, due to alterations in the winds caused by the heating
of the waters of the Pacific ocean, according to meteorologists.
The National Institute of Meteorology
forecast almost zero rainfall in south-central Brazil up to
September, which is expected to cause the worst drought in 25 years.
In the state of Sao Paulo, which has been
hit hardest by the drought, just two millimeters of rain fell in May
-- compared to the month's average of 90 mms -- after a very dry April.
The rationing had begun even earlier in
several cities in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo, like
Sorocaba, just over 100 kms from the state capital.
In nearby Itu, schools have asked students
to use the bathroom only once a day, and school lunches consist
solely of food that does not have to be cooked, in order to save water.
The city of Sao Paulo is also suffering the
effects of pollution of its water courses and springs, due partly to
unauthorized housing and slums crowding the banks of rivers and reservoirs.
The current rationing was adopted to prevent
the exhaustion of the water in the Guarapiranga reservoir, which
supplies three million residents in the southern and western parts of
the city of Sao Paulo, explained the president of the Basic
Sanitation Company of the State of Sao Paulo, Ariovaldo Carmignani.
But the real cause of the problem is urban
sprawl around the greater Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, with the
expansion of the metropolis towards the area where several rivers
have their source, polluting the water and reducing the available
supplies of clean water, he said.
The non-governmental Socio-Environmental
Institute (ISA) reported that the Guarapiranga river basin lost more
than 15 percent of its vegetation in the past 10 years, while
urbanization around it grew by 50 percent.
Although so far this year rainfall has
surpassed the normal average in Sao Paulo, the water level in the
reservoir dropped to less than half of the maximum level after two
months of drought, despite normal consumption levels.
That meant the system's water collection
capacity dropped, said ISA official Marussia Whately.
Whately said illegal urbanization along the
banks of rivers and reservoirs continued, and could lead to a
permanent shortage of water in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo,
a city of 17 million located on a plateau near the source of several
rivers, which means the area has limited possibilities for collecting water.
The inefficiency of Brazil's sanitation
companies, which post losses of 40 percent of the water distributed,
is another aspect of the problem.
But in Sao Paulo the losses amount to just
17.2 percent, "better than in Europe," according to
Carmignani. Although the official rate is 32 percent, much of that is
due to unregistered consumption -- the result of fraud -- and to
errors in measuring, he maintained.
The low levels of water are also worrying
industrialists in south-central Brazil, who are concerned that
electricity might begin to be rationed in the next few months, and
who fear an even more severe crisis next year, during a time of
economic recovery.
The effects of climate change in Brazil are
also greater than in other countries, because rivers provide 93
percent of the country's power supply.
But that high level of dependence is to be
reduced to 80 percent, thanks to the construction of 49
thermoelectric plants that will use natural gas. However, it is not
likely that they will all begin operating by the 2003 deadline.
One problem is a shortage of interested
investors. Another is the fact that the global industry of gas
turbines, made up of a handful of companies like Germany's Siemens
and the U.S.-based General Electric, has warned that its production
levels will fall short of meeting the needs of Brazil's energy program.
The eventual energy shortage, and consequent
outages, could affect 11.9 percent of southeastern and west-central
Brazil next year, states a report by Electrobras, the public power
company, which points out that the acceptable level is six percent.
Voluntary rationing is the only way to keep
the situation from getting worse, said the Brazilian Association of
Energy Consumers, which links 52 large industrial groups that account
for one-fifth of energy consumption in the country. The association
urged the government to immediately begin to implement a rationing program.
The Federation of the Industries of Rio de
Janeiro distributed among its members a document warning that
rationing would be inevitable next year, and perhaps as early as this
year. The federation urged companies to expedite their
power-generation and energy conservation plans.
Minister of mines and energy Rodolpho
Tourinho denied, however, that rationing would be needed, pointing
out that Brazil has begun to import electricity from Argentina: 1,000
megawatts, to climb to 2,000 by year-end. He also pointed to the
inauguration of a number of thermoelectric and hydroelectric plants
in the near future.
END
top of page
Brazil In
Search Of Quality And Equity
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun. 5 (IPS) -- Quality and
equity are the big challenges for Brazil's education system today,
now that enrollment has expanded to 96 percent of children aged 7 to
14, up from 89 percent in 1994, said education minister Paulo Renato Souza.
In Latin America's giant, where schooling is
compulsory through the eighth grade, an additional 4.5 million
children have been incorporated into the education system since 1994,
the minister told foreign correspondents here.
In secondary education, enrollment has risen
57.3 percent, from 4.9 to 7.8 million students, or 32.6 percent of 15
to 17-year-olds. University enrollment, meanwhile, rose 28 percent
from 1994 to 1998, to 2.1 million.
The priority so far has been put on the
first eight years of school, which Souza described as the bottleneck
of an inefficient system. Only slightly more than half of all
students actually finished eighth grade from 1994 to 1998, and they
did so in an average of 12 years, instead of eight.
High rates of failure lead, in turn, to high
repetition and dropout rates. But today, said the minister, students'
performance has improved, and the average time youngsters spend
completing the basic eight-grade course has been reduced to 10 years.
Basic education is decentralized, and comes
under the jurisdiction of state and municipal governments. The
central government, however, has used the mechanisms over which it
has control, especially financial aspects, to bolster enrollment and performance.
A new "fund for development of basic
education and valuation of the teaching profession" has helped
boost teachers' salaries, while state and municipal governments have
expanded their education budgets.
"Teachers who earned $20 a month now
earn 10 times that" in parts of the impoverished northeast, said
the minister.
The improvements have translated into a boom
in middle-school enrollment, and are beginning to have the same
effect at the university level, he explained.
But secondary school has become the new
bottleneck, with an overly abstract curriculum that puts too much
emphasis on theory, thus failing to adequately prepare students for
the workplace or even university. Overhauling the high school
curriculum has become the new priority, said Souza.
Secondary school remains virtually the
exclusive realm of the children of the middle-class and the wealthy,
a legacy of the elitism that has traditionally dominated education in
Brazil. The quality of primary education must improve if the poor are
to be given the opportunity to make it to high school and college.
The reforms undertaken by the ministry of
education have been primarily based on changes in the subject matter
taught at primary and middle school, with a new curriculum aimed at
putting education in context and bringing it into closer contact with
local realities, through an interdisciplinary approach.
In the past, secondary education was geared
to preparing students for university entrance exams. But the new
focus, Souza told reporters on June 2, is on "lifelong
education" and "opening new horizons" for students,
providing them with a basis for going on to other areas, not only the university.
A TV network providing support for teachers,
which already reaches 60,000 schools with more than 100 students
each, higher quality textbooks distributed on time to all schools
through eighth grade, and a recently initiated process of
computerizing schools are other initiatives with which the education
ministry is seeking to boost the quality of teaching.
The process of computerizing schools has
begun with the training of 20,000 teachers and the creation of 220
recreational centers, previous to the widespread installation of computers.
Souza said the ministry studied the
experiences of developed countries, and found that efforts to
incorporate computers into the school curriculum had sometimes fallen
flat due to the failure to previously train teachers.
One major problem which secondary and higher
education has yet to overcome is the exclusion of the poor. But the
minister said he did not believe "affirmative action"
initiatives in which spots at university would be reserved for Black
students were effective.
In Brazil, it would even be difficult to
identify just who would benefit from such quotas, given the fact that
such a large percentage of the population is "brown" or
mixed-race, rather than identifiably "Black,"
"White" or "Indian."
Moreover, it is the poor in general, and not
only Blacks, who lack access to a higher education, said Souza, an
economist and former university rector who has been involved in the
field of education since 1984.
The minister said a better approach was to
offer more favorable conditions allowing Blacks better access to
university. As an example, he cited courses that the University of
Sao Paulo offers to help Black students overcome their disadvantages
with respect to students whose families could afford to send them to
private high schools.
Souza is also attempting to modify
university admissions, previously based exclusively on entrance
exams. Souza is working to establish tests in high school that assess
capacity to learn rather than information accumulated.
Secondary and tertiary education are still
the domain of the elite, thus "reproducing the social
inequalities" that characterize Brazil, the minister acknowledged.
END
top of page
Lifelong
Scavenger, Award-Winning Environmentalist
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 31 (IPS) -- Scavenging
garbage in the streets has been her life since she was eight, and
still is. But Maria das Gra'as Mar'al has found a way to turn what
was once a stigma into a source of recognition of her environmental
activism and community leadership.
Das Gra'as Mar al, known locally as Do'a
Geralda, was one of 10 individuals and institutions awarded prizes
last October by the Brazilian office of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for their
successful initiatives in areas like human rights, education and citizenship.
Do'a Geralda -- a wastepicker or
"basuriega," "excavadora," "pepenadora"
or "hurgadora" as those who make a living out of trash are
known in Latin America -- shared UNESCO's Science and the Environment
prize with Paulo Nogueira Neto, one of Brazil's leading authorities
on the environment.
Do'a Geralda's father died when she was just
three months old. She was the only one of 12 brothers and sisters to
survive, due to the "tough living conditions, with our mother
sick," she said.
Her mother later had two more children in
her second marriage.
Do'a Geralda began to work at the age of
eight, gleaning paper in the streets to sell. She never went to
school. She had nine children with her mechanic husband, who also
took to collecting paper when he retired.
Do'a Geralda, 50, was illiterate until the
age of 48. "We were oppressed, mixed up and identified with the
garbage itself," she recalled. "City government inspectors
took away the material we had gathered, and accused us of making the
streets dirty."
When she helped found the Association of
Collectors of Paper, Cardboard and Reusable Materials (ASMARE) in
1990 in Belo Horizonte, capital of the eastern state of Minas Gerais,
Do'a Geralda's life turned around.
"I won my citizenship," she said,
explaining how she discovered that wastepickers have rights, that
they must stand up for themselves, and that their work must be
respected. ASMARE was created on the initiative of the Catholic
Church as a way to help homeless people in Belo Horizonte. At first,
just 10 out of hundreds of scavengers accepted the idea of setting up
an association.
"They didn't believe in anyone, the
consequence of a long history of exploitation by middlemen and
persecution by inspectors and police," says Jos' Aparecido
Gon'alves, who is active in the Catholic Church's social outreach
work and is the administrator of ASMARE.
Little by little, the wastepickers were won
over, and today the association has 237 members, representing more
than 1,000 beneficiaries of the project. ASMARE has helped them boost
their income to an average of three minimum salaries, or the
equivalent of $250 a month.
Associates also benefit from protection
against robbery, which was frequent in the past, adequate clothing
and equipment for hazardous work, medical assistance and cheap credit
to build their own homes. At the start, eight of every 10 associates
were living in the streets, and today they all have their own houses,
Gon'alves pointed out.
But membership in the association also
entails responsibilities. The rules set by consensus in ASMARE
require that all members keep their children in school and off the
streets, and that members must not show up drunk at work or carry
stolen goods in their carts, while collecting a minimum of 100 kgs of
garbage a day.
Many of Belo Horizonte's wastepickers have
not joined the association. In 1993, the Catholic Church pastoral
service counted a total of 511 unaffiliated scavengers, said
Gon'alves, who attributed the resistance to the discipline demanded
or to continuing mistrust.
The associates comb the streets for
recyclable and reusable material at night. Paper, aluminum cans,
plastic, wood and metals are the most sought-after materials. The
sorting and selection is done during the daytime.
ASMARE pays its associates at market price,
based on the material collected by each. By selling to the recycling
industry, the association often obtains better prices offering the
material packaged or pressed. It also receives waste products donated
by around 80 companies.
Sufficient revenues are obtained to finance
the running of the organization, the salaries of its 25
functionaries, and any necessary investment.
The remainder is distributed among the
associates at the end of the year. Last year 130,000 reals ($72,000)
were distributed among associates at the end of the year, based on
the productive capacity of each, said Gon'alves.
"That is our Christmas bonus,"
said Do'a Geralda, who is considered the leader of the organization.
In the past, she has served as general coordinator, and today is the
treasurer as well as the head of the Education and Culture Commission
which offers tutoring to the children of associates.
"She is the living symbol of the
project," said Vilmar de Oliveira, coordinator of the Belo
Horizonte city government's Street People Program. Her enthusiastic
involvement and unflagging efforts were decisive in overcoming the
mistrust of wastepickers towards local authorities and even the
Church, said De Oliveira.
The result is significantly cleaner streets,
especially in downtown Belo Horizonte, and the bolstering of the
self-respect -- and the earnings -- of the scavengers, said the official.
Meanwhile, ASMARE "gave new life to
Do'a Geralda," said De Oliveira. Due to the success of the
project, the 50-year-old gleaner was invited to the United Nations
New York headquarters to share her experience.
"I have also travelled within the
country" working on fomenting a movement of similar
associations, which have already been set up in 10 municipalities in
the state of Minas Gerais, said Do'a Geralda.
Besides receiving the UNESCO award in the
capital, Brasilia, she was cited as one of the five most outstanding
women of the year in 1999 by the women's magazine Claudia, published
in the city of Sao Paulo.
END
top of page
Radio
Favela Persists 23 Years Later
By Mario Osava
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, May 31 (IPS) -- Even
as it won awards from the United Nations and local officials, Radio
Favela, a pirate station that has provided essential services to the
residents of shanty towns in this Brazilian city for 23 years, was
the target of police raids, arrests and the confiscation of equipment.
Radio Favela operates out of a three-story
building still under construction in Vila Nossa Senhora de
Fátima, the largest of 11 "favelas" or shanty towns
comprising the Aglomerado da Serra, home to 160,000 people.
The station was finally visited by
communications minister Joao Pimenta da Veiga late last year, who
announced that it would be granted a license to operate as an
educational station.
The announcement came after a court and the
ministry of communications recognized the social role played by the
radio station.
The station, the focus of a full-length film
currently being shot by Brazilian director Helvecio Ratton, had
already won three United Nations awards since 1997 for its
contribution to preventing drug use and violence, as well as a 1997
prize from the Belo Horizonte town council.
In September 1998, Governor Itamar Franco of
the central Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, of which Belo Horizonte
is the capital, described Radio Favela as "one of the most
important vehicles for the cultural, political and social expression
of residents of shanty towns and outlying neighborhoods in our city,
contributing to the exercise of their rights of citizenship."
A cover-page article in the Feb. 4, 1999
edition of the Wall Street Journal reported that Radio Favela helped
poor Brazilians weather the sharp price swings of basic goods, after
the devaluation of the local currency, the real, the month before.
And a European guide for tourists recommends
that visitors to Belo Horizonte listen to Radio Favela, which has
been written up a number of times by the national press.
But the pirate station has been closed down
several times by local authorities, and its equipment confiscated.
"I was arrested seven times," said Misael Avelino dos
Santos, one of the station's founders.
Dos Santos recalled how some 800 police
swooped down on Vila Nosa Senhora de Fátima with horses and
two helicopters in September 1997 in an attempt to implicate the
radio station in the drug trade.
Nevertheless, the station survived and
remains an indispensable communication tool for local shanty towns,
helping to locate missing children, calling ambulances for the
injured and ill, locating the families of accident victims, and
providing information on important issues.
Local hospitals telephone the radio station
to locate and inform the families of accident victims, said Dos Santos.
"One day, when the station was unable
to operate due to interference from a competitor station, a sick
woman waiting for transportation died outside the door to the
building," said Aparecida de Fátima Belisario, the radio
station's secretary and the announcer for the women's programs.
Radio Favela operates out of a three-story
building still under construction, with electric cables hanging
loose. A school for adults will function on the upper floors.
Water is almost always running down the
steep narrow street through which visitors reach the building, due to
the sewerage company's poor maintenance of the pipes, said
Fátima Belisario.
The women's programs educate listeners,
especially women, on questions like their rights and preventive
health care and treatment.
"Many people are dying of cancer, and
they know nothing about the disease," said Fátima
Belisario, who plans to give a formal organizational structure to the
Cultural Association of Favela Community Communication FM, which
finances and runs the station.
The station's programming is characterized
by complaints of discrimination suffered by the poor, discussions of
problems and solutions, a high level of listener participation, all
in simple, down-to-earth language.
Listeners can dance to a range of rhythms
and hum along with songs with hard-hitting lyrics depicting the harsh
side, the inequality and injustice, of life in Brazil.
The station also carries out campaigns to
urge the residents of shanty towns to register for legal documents,
which have already led 6,000 people to apply for identity cards,
although 95 percent of them were unable to obtain a card because they
lacked other essential documents.
"There are at least 5,000 children
without birth certificates" in the Aglomerado da Serra, said Dos Santos.
Since socialist Mayor Celio de Castro took
office in 1997, the Belo Horizonte city government has recognized the
social labor carried out by the radio station and helped keep it going.
Radio Favela "is one of the four most
popular radio stations in the greater Belo Horizonte," and the
second most popular in the morning hours, said Dos Santos.
That popularity is partly due to a growing
number of listeners among the middle classes and students, made
possible by the station's location high up on a hillside, which
allows people to tune in up to 50 kms away.
The radio station receives frequent visits
from politicians of all stripes, students, tourists and well-known personalities.
Elizabeth Sily, a professor at the Newton
Paiva University Center, took her journalism students to the station,
explaining that "this is an example of community media, which
democratizes communication and responds to the yearnings of the poor."
The success of Radio Favela is mainly
attributed to Dos Santos, a community leader who has been involved in
the project from the very start, when he was 16. "There was a
nearby commercial station that never even said 'good morning' to
favela residents, which challenged us to set up our own station,"
he recalled.
Of the nearly 50 youngsters involved in the
project at the start, only four are left. "Many of them are
dead, because of drug trafficking," lamented Dos Santos.
END
top of page
Brazil
Environmental Movement Wins Historic Victory for Rainforest
Environmental Defense Fund ~ May 28
Leaders of Brazil's Congress last night
shelved proposed legislation to increase the area and rate of Amazon
forest destruction, handing the ranchers' and large landowners'
caucus (ruralistas) of the Congress a major, and precedent-setting,
defeat. "Environmental organizations such as the Instituto
Socioambiental, parliamentary leader Senator Marina Silva (Worker's
Party - Acre) and Amazon union and grassroots groups struck a chord
that echoed in Brazilian public opinion in denouncing the destruction
law as irresponsible and contrary to the national interest,"
said Steve Schwartzman, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense.
"The ranchers' caucus is the human face
of the inequality, injustice, class privilege, and impunity that have
plagued Brazil for 500 years," said Schwartzman. "The fight
over this legislation was really between the 19th century and the
21st century over the future of the Amazon. It's important that the
21st century won - for now."
The representatives of the rural oligarchy
had pushed a draft law through a joint House/Senate Committee that
would have loosened restrictions on Amazon deforestation, and could
have caused a 25% increase in annual rates of clearing and burning.
Massive email and fax protests to the Brazilian Congress and the
President, and broad national media coverage orchestrated by
Brazilian environmental and grassroots groups killed the measure
before it could come to the House floor. The defeat marks the first
time that the Brazilian environmental movement has prevailed over the
ranchers' powerful special interest group.
The latifundistas' caucus, with some 200
votes in the Congress, represents the rural oligarchy - the 1% of the
landowners who control some 50% of Brazil agricultural land (while
50% of the farmers have only 3%). The group has specialized in
holding government-sponsored legislation hostage to parochial,
pork-barrel concerns considered unseemly even by the standards of the
Brazilian Congress. These maneuvers have yielded tens of billions in
official debt forgiveness, overwhelmingly for the few, largest
debtors, while health care, education, and environment budgets
suffered deep cuts. In this case, the group threatened to derail a
vote on the minimum wage, considered critical by the government, to
keep the government out of the Committee vote.
END
top of page
Land
Reform Unviable, Says Former Brazilian Official
by Ricardo Soca (IPS) ~ May 26
A former head of agrarian reform in Brazil
says efforts to redistribute land in the past 15 years have failed
because they are based on an unviable productive model. Agronomist
Francisco Graziano headed the National Institute of Colonization and
Agrarian Reform (INCRA) at the start of the first term of Pres.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (who took office in 1993).
His criticism this week came on top of
complaints by the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST, the landless
movement) and the Catholic Church, although it differed from their
objections on a number of points.
Land ownership in Brazil remains deeply
unequal, with one percent of rural landholders owning nearly half of
the arable land in this country of 162 million. But authorities would
need $40 billion to immediately distribute land to the 4.6 million
peasant families demanding a plot of their own -- an investment that
the state cannot afford, Graziano pointed out. And even if it could,
he added, the expense would be useless.
Four presidents -- José Sarney
(1985-90), Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-92), Itamar Franco
(1992-93) and Cardoso (1993-98 and reelected that year) -- settled
600,000 families on 25 million hectares of land, an area eight times
the size of Belgium, in the past 15 years, without seeing any rise in
agricultural output.
Cardoso gave a significant boost to the land
reform process, distributing 12 million hectares to 370,000 families
in just five years, along with technical and financial support to
help the farmers get on their feet. But according to Graziano,
"the economic inviability of the new settlements means one of
every four settled families sells off their land at the first chance
they get."
The former president of INCRA accused the
MST of "getting rich" -- as an institution -- off of land
reform, and of recruiting jobless people from shantytowns surrounding
the major cities to swell the ranks of the movement. The issues of
land ownership and rural employment have substantially changed in
today's world, due to the impact of new technologies, which tend to
accelerate the loss of jobs in the countryside, said the expert, who
describes himself as "a leftist who never stopped being one."
Graziano advocates a new model of agrarian
reform, with settlements that are not exclusively dedicated to
farming, but whose residents would also be engaged in other
endeavors, such as building houses and producing furniture and other
goods. He also proposed a broader range of activities for those who
work in rural areas, suggesting, for example, that forest rangers
serve simultaneously as tourist guides.
The model on which his proposal is based is
a "kibbutz" (collective farm) which Graziano visited seven
years ago in Israel, where 900 people lived on just 10 hectares,
running a small farm on which they grew crops and raised 400 dairy
cows. The difference between the kibbutz and the models still in
vogue in Latin America is that the great majority of the residents of
the collective farm in Israel were involved in non-agricultural
activities, such as running a restaurant, school, preschool, hotel
and even an industrial assembly-line, the former government official explained.
Graziano's remarks fanned the flames of a
debate already heated up by recent "landless" protests,
harsh police crackdowns and criticism by Catholic bishops of the
"slow" and "insufficient" nature of efforts to
distribute land.Cardoso, who has described Brazil's as "the
world's biggest agrarian reform project," rejected Graziano's
diagnosis, and said the current New Rural World program
"integrates the new settlements into productive life."
Georges de Lamazière, the president's
spokesman, said Cardoso and his current minister of agrarian reform,
Raúl Jungmann, had successfully and directly "linked land
reform with family farming."
MST leaders said they agreed with some of
Graziano's criticisms, but insisted that the main problems with land
reform were a lack of subsidies and a sharp drop in access to credit
for small farmers.
MST leader Juan Pedro Stédile, an
economist, pointed out that during the 1964-85 military dictatorship,
$31 billion went towards subsidies for small farmers, but when
democracy was reinstated, that support was cut off. Stédile
criticised Brazil's current agro-export model of agricultural
development, and said transnational corporations used technological
advances as just one more instrument of exploitation under that
model. He said that today a farm must be at least 50 hectares in size
to generate an income equivalent to one minimum salary ($80 a month).
The MST activist cited Brazilian Institute
of Geography and Statistics figures according to which nearly one
million farms went under from 1985 to 1996, 96 percent of them
smaller than100 hectares. In fact, only 17 percent of Brazil's farms
are considered truly viable today, while 60 percent are wobbling on
the brink of bankruptcy, he added.
END
top of page
Threats To
Amazon Unite Gov't and Activists
By Mario Osava (IPS) ~ May 24
The government and the environmental
movement have formed a tenuous alliance in a parliamentary battle
underway in Brazil, whose outcome could intensify deforestation
activities in the Amazon and the country's savannahs.
This unexpected coalition came about in
response to the National Congress's debate on passage of the Forestry
Code that would permit landowners to more than double the amount of
deforested area on their property, which would be a
"disaster," according to environmental activists.
The event that mobilized the government and
a major portion of public opinion was a parliamentary commission's
approval on May 10 of a bill that would establish a reduction of the
minimum area of forest reserve on rural Amazonian properties from 80
to 50 percent, and from 35 to 20 percent in what are known as
"cerrados" (the Brazilian savannah).
But parliamentary leaders, backed by the
government, decided to annul the commission's decision and redo all
the paperwork after being bombarded with protests from various social
sectors to reject the bill presented by Deputy Moacir Micheletto.
Dominated by rural legislators and landowner
representatives, the commission had approved Micheletto's bill with a
vote of 10 to three. The initiative also included measures to
facilitate the further penetration of livestock and farming in the
forested areas.
That bill seems to have completely ignored a
Forestry Code bill drafted by the National Environmental Council
(Conama) in a debate process that included the participation of 800
institutions in nearly 100 meetings held in 20 of the 27 Brazilian states.
"The scare was a positive thing"
because it triggered a national reaction, reaching environmental
officials, the academic world, the press and even children, commented
Robert Smeraldi, local coordinator of the non-governmental
organization Friends of the Earth.
He pointed out that 14 editorials against
the Micheletto bill have been published in the last 13 days in
newspapers throughout the country.
Environmental Minister José Sarney
Filho promised to present Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso with a
Provisional Measure (a decree that is valid for 30 days and
renewable) in the next few days, with the Conama-approved bill, which
"is consensual and reflects the desires of Brazilian society."
This measure would substitute the statute
that has been in effect for the last four years. In addition to
maintaining forest reserves at their same proportions, it establishes
stricter rules, eliminating some of the previous
"flexibilities," such as compensating excessive
deforestation on one property by maintaining forested areas on
another, explained André Lima, attorney for the
non-governmental Socio-Environmental Institute.
Congressional leaders announced that within
a month or two they would create a new committee to study the
Provisional Measure and provide the text that would go to full vote,
which would become a permanent law.
The new committee would be made up of 28
deputies and senators, twice the size of the previous committee. It
is an attempt to balance representation and eliminate the
"ruralist" majority, though the speaker would still be
Deputy Micheletto, who is linked to landowner interests.
"We have won a preliminary victory"
by annulling a disastrous resolution, but "we have not yet won
the war," warned Lima, because the threat of a deficient
Forestry Code is still pending.
Congress will make its decision under
pressure from all sides, and the landowner bloc of representatives is
very influential, he explained.
When the special commission voted May 10,
for example, the government did not take action against the
Micheletto bill because it feared losing the support of the
"ruralists," whose votes were necessary to prevent an
increase in the minimum wage, an issue also up for vote that day. If
the minimum wage bill had passed, it would have hurt the government s
fiscal adjustment measures.
"The game starts over from square
one," and now there will be time for "a more objective
debate that is not restricted by parliamentary maneuvers," nor
by the crisis of trying to prevent passage of a destructive law, said Smeraldi.
"Rules, regulations are not enough"
to ensure that 80 percent of landholdings in the Amazon and 35
percent of savannah territories remain untouched. The government
supports legislation that protects the forests on the one hand, but
then encourages activities that can only be pursued through
deforestation on the other, the environmentalist explained.
Official policy promotes low-production
cattle ranching and soya farming through its banks, tax incentives
and development agencies. In addition, its investments are
concentrated in highways, waterways and other forms of infrastructure
that support farming for export, all of which contributes to the
destruction of forests, charges Smeraldi.
Beyond passing a good Forestry Code, it is
essential to change the development model for the Amazon and the
savannahs, and this means discussing alternatives and taking
advantage of the parliamentary debate, he added.
The managed extraction of natural latex and
wood, tapping into biodiversity, rational farm or livestock
production in the 165,000 square km of already deforested and
abandoned areas, are just some of the activities the environmentalist
advocates, because "they keep the forests standing" and
foster economic development.
Despite appearance, the reality is that
there is no unity between environmentalists and the government, nor
is there a confrontation with the "ruralists," according to
senator Marina Silva, a recognized leader of the fight to protect the
Amazon environment and its peoples.
It is not just an issue of protecting the
forests and maintaining them untouched, it is about changing the
development model and promoting the experiences that have already
been proven to be economically viable without throwing the
environment out of balance, maintained the senator, who is linked to
the Amazon's "seringueiros," who collect natural latex.
END
top of page
Foreign
Debts Dim Hopes For Improvement
by Mario Osava (IPS) ~ May 23
Brazil's foreign debts have resurfaced as a
thorn in the national economy after their marked deterioration in
April, even as the country begins to feel the impact of an interest
rate hike in the United States. April's account deficit of $3.08
billion, the worst showing since the January 1999 devaluation of the
Brazilian real, was a result of rising interest payments on the
foreign debt. In annual terms, it reached $23.8 billion, or 4.06
percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).
The convergence of several negative factors
renewed market fears about the vulnerability of the Brazilian
economy. Rising international interest rates, following the U.S.
example, make it difficult for developing countries with economic
stability problems, like Brazil, to attract capital.
The impact of reduced foreign investment
could be intensified as an indirect consequence of neighboring
Argentina's growing inability to comply with the fiscal goals set in
its accords with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Any crisis in
Argentina, a major Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) partner,
would drag Brazil down with it, putting off the nation's dreams for
economic growth indefinitely.
Foreign investments fell to $1.01 billion in
April, less than half the previous month's total. The drop was far
out of the range of normal fluctuations, said the director of the
Brazilian Central Bank's Economic Departments, Altamir Lopes. But the
trend is toward a reduction in direct foreign investment, following
an influx of more than $30 billion last year, which was
unprecedented, according to assessments by the Brazilian Society of
Transnational Companies and Globalization Studies (SOBEET).
The organization predicts a total of $25
billion in foreign investment for this year, falling to $20 billion
next year. Brazil will not be able to count on this as a source of
continued financing of its overseas financial responsibilities, which
rise along with the growing debt, interests and the remittances of profits.
One solution lies in expanding exports in
order to push up the trade surplus. To do so, the government set its
2002 export goals at $100 billion, double last year's total and an
objective the authorities themselves believe is impossible. Such
skepticism is justified by the fact that the devaluation of the real
16 months ago has yet to produce the expected results. Foreign trade
officials have already ruled out the possibility of reaching a
favorable trade balance of $4 billion this year.
From the start of the year through May 19,
Brazil accumulated a trade surplus of $399 million,according to the
preliminary figures cited by the Foreign Trade Secretariat -- not
quite 10 percent of the original goal, and the year is nearly half
over. The stagnation of the Latin American economy, the principal
market for Brazil's industrial products, and low international prices
for raw materials have hampered the nation's export performance.
The business community wants the government
to implement a more aggressive, continuous policy to promote exports,
but economists point to the low added value on exportable goods as
one of Brazil's greatest disadvantages. The hefty investments that
have found their way into Brazil recently, and continue arriving,
have not translated into increased export capabilities, as the
defenders of foreign capital had announced they would.
The problem is that 80 percent of direct
foreign investment from 1995 to 1999 -- some $117 billion -- was
earmarked for services, according to SOBEET. It is a sector that does
not export, but instead pours investment into the national market and
transfers earnings and dividends overseas.
Future increases in these remittances will
mean further pressure on the country's foreign accounts, acknowledged
Francisco Gros, president of the National Economic and Social
Development Bank, coinciding with the rising concern among the
political opposition's economists.
Large foreign companies operating in Brazil,
mostly producers of exportable goods, do not contribute to improving
the nation's trade balance either. Their imports of raw materials,
components, machinery and technology have expanded much more than
their exports, according to various studies.
But other factors increase the economic
threat and are more serious in the short term than rising interest
rates in the United States, says the Central Bank's director of
Economic Policy, Sergio Werlang. Rising oil prices, which last month
still represented a hefty portion of Brazil's imports, and the
devaluation of the euro, which cuts into Brazil's ability to compete
in the European Union, its largest foreign market, push trade balance
improvements farther out of reach.
The sharp decline in the U.S. stock market's
Nasdaq index, which covers the trade activity of high technology
firms, as well as rising interest rates also affect the flow of
capital, diverting funds away from countries perceived as high risk,
like Brazil.
The Sao Paulo stock exchange lost $1.288
billion in foreign investments from Jan. 1 to May 10 -- a flight of
capital attributed primarily to the instability of the global market.
The Brazilian stock market has also suffered
shrinkage as more and more companies are transferring their stocks to
Wall Street in the United States, where they are likely to be safer
and there are fewer costs.
END
top of page
Huge Gap
Between Law And Enforcement
by Mario Osava (IPS) ~ May 19
The enormous discrepancy between laws and
their effective application in Brazil was the main concern expressed
by United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson on her four-day
visit here. Grave problems like torture, murders, discrimination and
a frightful inequality in income distribution stand in stark contrast
to laws guaranteeing the rights of all Brazilians, said Robinson, who
visited the cities of Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. But she
also highlighted the "strong commitment" by national and
state authorities to seeking solutions. Furthermore, she said,
government officials admit that there are problems, "an
important step" towards combatting them.
Robinson called on local authorities to make
greater efforts towards reducing the gap between laws and their
enforcement in questions like child labor, indigenous rights,
violence against women, racial discrimination, police brutality and
appalling prison conditions. An alliance with civil society, as well
as U.N. support through a variety of mechanisms and international
conventions will help promote human rights, she said in a press
conference on the last day of her visit yesterday.
Robinson signed a memorandum of
understanding on May 16 with the government of Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, in which the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights offered assistance and technical cooperation to
Brazil, through projects to be agreed on by a mission to visit the
country in the near future.
At the end of her visit, Robinson stressed
the willingness of Cardoso, his justice minister José Gregori,
and the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho,
to move forward with programs designed to boost respect for human
rights. She also praised the intense activity of local
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Human Rights Commission
of the lower house of Congress.
NGOs advocating the rights of Blacks, for
example, have been pressuring the government to organize the
inter-American meeting on racism, to be held in preparation for the
Aug. 31-Sept.7, 2001 World Conference Against Racism in South Africa.
Brazil initially offered to host the
regional gathering, but withdrew its offer last month, arguing a lack
of funds. Robinson said it would be important for Brazil to hold the
meeting in Brazil. As secretary-general of the World Conference
Against Racism, she pledged $1 million in U.N. funds for the country
hosting the regional meet, to help defray the costs. The national and
regional conferences must be held before February 2001, she pointed out.
In Rio de Janeiro, Robinson visited one of
the best-known "favelas" (shantytowns), Mangueira, where
private companies and the local government have implemented
successful sports and educational programs aimed at keeping youth out
of trouble. Thanks largely to those projects, juvenile delinquency in
Mangueira has virtually disappeared, according to local authorities.
Robinson backed Gov. Garotinho's idea of
setting up a special police force to work in the favelas. Agents must
be trained to respect the poor residents of shantytowns, in order not
to "burst in, guns in hand, or already shooting," as they
tend to do according to complaints by local citizens, he said.
In Sao Paulo on May 17, the U.N. official
received reports on abuse, including torture, suffered by children
and teenagers confined in the juvenile delinquency centers of the
State Foundation for the Welfare of Minors.
In the past few months, young inmates have
held riots in the reform schools to call attention to the brutality
to which they are submitted by their guards and the appalling
conditions in which they are held.
END
top of page
Repression
On The Rise as Agrarian Model Fails
by Mario Osava (IPS) ~ May 19
The escalating repression of social protests
in Brazil is one more indicator that the government's agricultural
development model has failed, said the principal leader of the
Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST -- Landless Movement), Joao Pedro
Stédile.The government's own statistics reveal that Brazilian
farmers have grown increasingly poor over recent decades, a process
that has continued during the five years of the Fernando Henrique
Cardoso administration, Stédile told the foreign press today.
A 1996 agricultural census by the Brazilian
Institute of Statistics and Geography indicates that 942,000 small
farms had disappeared since 1990, 400,000 of them under Pres.
Cardoso's watch in 1995 and 1996. The disappearance of small farms
has intensified the process of land concentration in a country where
a few large landowners hold the vast majority of the arable
territory, according to Stédile. In addition, two-thirds of
the 784,539 owners of rural businesses were on the verge of
bankruptcy, reporting insufficient income or even losses. Among the
4.07 million family farmers in 1996, 2.4 million were in a similarly
untenable situation.
This panorama leads to predictions that two
million poor rural families will leave the countryside in the coming
years, adding eight to 13 million more people to the misery in the
outskirts of Brazil's major cities. Government experts acknowledged
as much in an article published in the Agricultural Ministry's
journal last November, said Stédile.
This "disaster" is the result of
the agricultural development model, inspired by the United States,
which encourages the production of grains for export, especially soy,
with heavy investment in transportation infrastructure, such as
railroads and ports. This implies the "denationalization of the
Brazilian agricultural market, which passed into the hands of the
major foreign corporations," and, among small farmers, favoring
those who are integrated with agro-industry, observed the
philosophical leader of the MST.
Such policies lead to further poverty and
the expulsion of millions of peasants from rural areas, undoing any
advances in agrarian reforms, which, according to the minister of
Agrarian Development, Raul Jungmann, resettled more than 300,000
families in rural areas over the last five years. This rural poverty,
Stédile said, is the true obstacle to raising the national
minimum wage, which the government has maintained at 151 reais ($83)
since April, despite the protests of unions and even of some
parliamentarians who support Pres. Cardoso.
A minimum monthly wage of $100, as the
political opposition is demanding, would only intensify the exodus
from the countryside, because a domestic employee in the city would
earn more than a family farmer, argued the MST leader.
For Brazil's economic authorities, the
fiscal deficit makes it impossible to raise the minimum wage. Nearly
13 million retirees earn this amount, and any increase would only
deepen the imbalance of the social security system.
Maintaining the current agricultural
policies makes true agrarian reform impossible, Stédile said.
There are more than 100,000 families in 500 camps set up on rural
lands they have taken over or along highways. Many of them have been
waiting years for the government to assign them land, he said. As a
result of growing rural poverty, social movements intensified their
protests, "and it is not just the MST."
The Rural Women's Movement united 4,000
peasant women for a protest in Brasilia last March, rural unions and
local small farm organizations occupied farmland, government
buildings and highways to demand land, loans and better conditions in
the agricultural market, Stédile pointed out.
From 1990 to 1996, officials reported an
average of 100 to 120 invasions -- or "occupations" in the
parlance of the MST -- of rural lands each year. This total since
1997 reaches 480 and "tends to keep growing as social
discontent" increases and other organizations begin to engage in
this form of struggle, he said.
The government is responding to this
situation with police repression and is attempting to discredit the
MST through the mass media, said the movement leader. In addition to
attacks that include gunfire and teargas, which resulted in one death
and dozensof arrests on May 2, when the MST took over the Finance
Ministry's offices in several Brazilian state capitals, the
government has created a political repression division within the
Federal Police, threatened to mobilize the army and decreed new laws
against land occupations.
The repressive wave felt in this country
since last month also saw the brutal police breakup of a
demonstration involving 3,000 indigenous peoples and blacks. They had
intended to protest the official celebrations on April 22 of the
500-year anniversary of the Portuguese arrival at a beach in what is
now Bahía state. Some days earlier, the police destroyed a
monument the indigenous demonstrators had erected to pay homage to
their ancestors who died in resistance to Portuguese colonization.
Most recently, a street battle yesterday in
Sao Paulo reportedly left more than 20 people injured when police
attacked public employees, primarily teachers and professors, as they
protested their low salaries.
The MST will respond to the government's
repression with "larger mobilizations, alliances with other
social organizations, without radicalization," affirmed
Stédile, but will maintain its traditional forms of struggle,
such as taking over unproductive farmland and government buildings --
actions the government condemns as "anti-democratic."
Meanwhile, the movement is attempting to
negotiate with authorities to find a solution for the more than
100,000 families living in camps as they await land on which to
settle, and to obtain loans for the families who have already been settled.
END
top of page
Mary
Robinson Collects Sheaf of Complains in Brazil
By Mario Osava (IPS) ~ May 18
The U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights,
Mary Robinson, will be carrying a hefty sheaf of complaints of human
rights abuses when she departs Brazil today after a four-day visit.
Robinson was given a report on violence in
the countryside in Sao Paulo yesterday, which documents the murders
of 1,167 rural workers in the past 10 years in Brazil. Of that total,
just 86 cases went to trial, and only seven people were convicted in
connection with the murders.
The document also points out that not one
person has been brought to justice for the April 1997 massacre of 19
peasant activists shot and killed by police during a protest in
Eldorado de Carajás in northern Brazil.
The report drawn up by the Landless Movement
(MST), the Center for Global Justice and the Catholic Church Pastoral
Commission on Land also details the repression unleashed this month
by the government of the southern state of Paraná, in which
one person was killed and dozens were arrested.
The MST is a powerful national movement
well-known for its occupations of land left idle on rural estates and
of government offices in the struggle for broader, more effective
agrarian reform. Many MST activists figure among the victims of the
violence that has long been monitored and documented by the Catholic
Church Pastoral Commission.
In meetings with non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) in Brasilia, the capital, on May 15 and 16,
Robinson also heard reports of human rights abuses and infringements
of international standards.
The rights of women, for example, are in a
"critical" situation in Brazil, said Guacira de Oliveira,
coordinator of the Women's Research and Advising Center (CFEMEA), due
to their low level of participation in government, continued gender
discrimination supported by outdated laws, and non-compliance with
the international commitments assumed in conventions signed by Brasilia.
De Oliveira termed Robinson's visit
"very timely," and said it could bring positive results,
because pressure framed "in the English language has greater
repercussions than our denunciations in Portuguese."
In her meeting with Pres. Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, Robinson supported the women's movement's longstanding
demand that a woman be named to the Supreme Court. Brazil's highest
court is still comprised solely of male judges.
The U.N. official also criticised human
rights violations in Brazil at a special meeting of the National
Council on the Rights of Human Beings, which comes under the ministry
of justice.
"Despite the advances made,"
Brazil's human rights record is still tarnished by numerous reports
of police brutality, torture, death squads and violence against
children, blacks, Indians and landless activists, said Robinson.
The NGOs pointed out that women accounted
for a mere six percent of the members of parliament, and just 13
percent of high-level posts in the public administration, although
they made up 44 percent of the total number of public employees.
The penal code, reforms of which have been
blocked for over a decade, is obsolete with respect to women's
rights, said De Oliveira. For example, it lets off those who commit
violence against "indecent women."
Furthermore, the National Council on Women's
Rights, created in 1997 to promote gender equality, operates with
scant funding.
"We want a solution before June,"
when the "Beijing plus 5" meeting takes place in New York
to assess the results of the Fourth World Conference on Women held in
1995 in the Chinese capital, said De Oliveira.
Brazil has also failed to comply with its
commitment to submit periodic reports to the United Nations on the
situation of human rights here, Robinson pointed out in her meetings
with authorities in Brasilia.
The government still owes reports on
Brazil's progress towards compliance with the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women since 1984,
when it ratified the document.
Also pending since 1984 are regular reports
on economic, social and cultural rights, to be submitted to the U.N.
committee in charge of studying those questions.
A delegation of NGOs, parliamentarians and
prosecutors from Brazil presented its own follow-up report in Geneva
in April, without the government having done so -- unprecedented in
the history of the U.N. committee on economic, social and cultural rights.
Representatives of the Black movement
complained to Robinson of continuing discrimination in Brazil, and
criticised the government's decision to withdraw its offer to hold
the inter-American conference on racism in Brazil.
The regional meeting, preparatory to the
September 2001 World Conference Against Racism and Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in South Africa,
must be organized this year, pointed out Sergio Martins, the
coordinator of the Zumbi dos Palmares National Office, an
organization that advocates and defends the rights of Blacks.
The Cardoso administration said it withdrew
its offer to hold the inter-American meeting due to a scarcity of
funds, also given as the excuse for failing to organize the national
meeting it was to hold.
But Robinson and the Inter-American
Institute on Human Rights had offered to help cover the costs of the
regional conference, said Martins, who added that there must have
been other reasons underlying the government's decision.
Robinson's visit came at a time when the
Brazilian government is in the international spotlight for its poor
human rights record.
The 500th anniversary of the arrival of the
first Portuguese to the territory known today as Brazil was
celebrated on April 22 amid a violent police crackdown on indigenous,
black and peasant demonstrators protesting their exclusion from the
events commemorating the "discovery" of Brazil.
In the days following the commemoration of
the 500th anniversary, an MST member was killed in Paraná by a
police bullet, and a number of activists were taken into custody, and
some of them charged with violating the National Security Law, a
holdover from the 1964-85 military dictatorship.
While Robinson was visiting Brazil,
"Operation Condor," the coordinated repression of opponents
by the dictatorships ruling the Southern Cone of the Americas in the
1970s and 1980s, shot back into the headlines in Brazil.
The latest denunciations related to
Operation Condor, implicating Brazilian military intelligence
services in the regional repressive scheme, were triggered by a
Supreme Court authorization for Argentina to investigate in Brazil
the forced disappearance of three Argentine nationals in this country
in 1980.
Against that backdrop, Robinson collected
her packet of complaints and reports in Latin America's giant,
notorious for its enormous social inequalities, reports of street
children killed by death squads, and soaring levels of violence in
its large cities.
END
top of page
U.N. High
Commissioner To Evaluate Brazil
by Gustavo Capdevila, (IPS) ~ May 12
The United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Mary Robinson, is about to launch a tour of Brazil, a
visit that will likely give the South American nation a more visible
presence on the world human rights agenda, just as Brazilian
activists had hoped.
At the government's invitation, Robinson
will meet with state officials and representatives from
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to discuss Brazil's most
burning social issues, such as landless rural workers, street
children, prison overcrowding, discrimination and racism, said her
spokesman, José Díaz.
In April, Brazilian NGO leaders went to
Geneva to seek the support of U.N. agencies and other international
organizations based there to make social issues a priority and put
Brazil on the human rights agenda.
The Brazilian delegation included federal
legislator Nilmario Miranda, of the opposition Workers Party (PT),
Romeu Olmar Klich, Presbyterian minister and secretary general of the
National Human Rights Movement, and Franciscan priest Rodrigo de
Castro Amédé Péret, director of Pastoral and
Social Life in the Rural Environment (APR).
The activists met with the independent
experts who make up the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, which is entrusted with verifying member nations'
compliance with the international covenant consecrating those rights.
Brazil ratified the agreement in 1992 but
has yet to present the U.N. committee with any report on the nation's
status as far as the rights covered in the pact, letting two
opportunities to do so pass by in 1994 and 1999, maintained the
delegation's members.
Brazil has "scandalously omitted"
the presentation of a report, said Miranda.
The country is among the world's 10 largest
and its economy is one of the most important, but the Human
Development Index, prepared by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP),
ranks the nation 63rd in the world.
The low living standards of major sectors of
the Brazilian population are not due to the lack of resources, but to
their inequitable distribution, according to the UNDP report.
The U.N. agency's data cited by the
Brazilian delegation indicate that the wealthiest 20 percent of the
nation's 166 million people (according to the 1991 census) control 64
percent of the country's wealth, while the poorest 20 percent survive
on just 2.5 percent.
In the absence of a governmental report on
economic, social and cultural rights in Brazil, local NGOs decided to
prepare their own report, coordinated by the human rights committee
of the Brazilian parliament's Lower House.
In this South American country, 26 million
people live in unsafe conditions, lacking health, education,
sanitation and other services. An estimated seven percent of
Brazilian children suffer from malnutrition despite the fact that the
country's grain production is more than enough to feed the entire population.
In their presentation before U.N. officials,
the Brazilian activists pointed out that territories constitutionally
designated for indigenous groups are constantly being invaded by
local landowners, who "use violence and coercion to intimidate
the native peoples and drive them off their own land." From 1993
to 1998, said the delegation, there were more than 194 assassinations
of indigenous members of these violence-ridden communities. The 68
million members of the Afro-Brazilian community, meanwhile,
disproportionately suffer the consequences of centuries of
exploitation, according to the Brazilian human rights defenders.
Brazil's government, they said, is concerned
about the country's international image, and presents it as a
"racial democracy." But there are no black or indigenous
members of parliament, or of the upper ranks of the armed forces or
the financial sector. "They can only be found in the slums and
in the prisons."
The civil society report on economic, social
and cultural rights also mentions educational deficiencies, abuse and
discrimination against women, and the erosion of workers' rights.
The High Commissioner's spokesman reported
that Robinson had received the Brazilian representatives in April,
and they had presented her with their alternative report on the
reality of economic, social and cultural rights in their country.
Robinson's agenda in Brazil, May 14 to 18,
includes a meeting in the capital with NGOs that are working on
implementing the measures arising from the 1995 Social Summit in
Copenhagen. In Sao Paulo, she is to meet with members of civil
society who are involved in the fight against gender and racial
discrimination. Brazil had proposed that the 2001 world conference
against racism should be held here, but the meeting was ultimately
scheduled to take place in South Africa.
In Rio de Janeiro, the U.N. official is to
visit the offices of a program that works to eradicate violence and
discrimination against homosexuals. Other important interviews
include a meeting with Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brasilia,
and with Roman Catholic Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns in Sao Paulo.
END
top of page
Operation
Condor Justice 20 Years Overdue
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 11
The justice systems of Latin America's
Southern Cone countries have begun working together to investigate
the crimes of Operation Condor, created by the region's military
dictatorships in the 1970s to carry out repressive political actions
beyond their national borders. Brazil's Federal Supreme Court
recently admitted a request by Argentine Judge Claudio Bonadio to
investigate the disappearance of three of his fellow citizens there.
The Brazilian armed forces and police are now expected to provide the
appropriate information to Argentina's justice authorities.
Horacio Domingo Camiglia, Mónica
Susana Pinus de Binstock and Lorenzo Ismael Viñas disappeared
after arriving in Brazil 20 years ago, in the midst of dictatorships
there and in their home country. The first two were en route by plane
from Panama to Buenos Aires, but it is suspected that they were
detained at the Rio de Janeiro airport in March 1980. The third left
Santa Fe, Argentina by bus in June of that year, but never reached
his destination in Rio de Janeiro.
The Federal Supreme Court's decision
prompted a new wave of media attention about Operation Condor, with
new revelations about the trans-border collaboration and actions of
the political repression forces under the military regimes of
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
But the cases of Brazilians who disappeared
in neighboring countries must also be investigated, says Cecilia
Coimbra, spokeswoman for Tortura Nunca Mais (Torture Never Again), a
non-governmental organization that is pressing the Brazilian state to
clear up cases of political repression and human rights abuses
committed during the country's military regime (1964-1985).
At least 15 Brazilians disappeared in other
countries, most in Chile and Argentina, according to Torture Never
Again. In addition, suspicions have resurfaced that Brazil's former
presidents Joao Goulart (1961-1964) and Juscelino Kubitschek
(1956-1960) were assassinated, and not the victims of illness or
accidents as history would tell it.
Goulart was living in exile in Argentina
when he died of supposed heart problems in 1976.Suspicions of
assassination arose because authorities did not permit an autopsy,
nor did they allow his body to be returned to his childhood home in
southern Brazil.
The integration of the region's repressive
forces gained notoriety in 1978 when Uruguayans Lilian Celiberti and
Universindo Rodríguez were detained in southern Brazil,
tortured and clandestinely transferred to Montevideo. Police and
military personnel from both sides of the border participated in the
action, which was harshly denounced by the media.
But the events, personalities and the
magnitude of Operation Condor remained secret even after the region's
military governments came to an end. Information about Operation
Condor is being revealed gradually, mostly the result of legal
efforts by relatives of the "disappeared" and human rights
organizations. But occasionally it surfaces by accident or former
agents of its covert operations come forward.
In the early 1990s, Paraguayan attorney
Martín Almada uncovered the secret files in which the police
forces of dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) kept record of
their repressive actions. Some of these files indicate that Argentine
and Uruguayan political opposition activists being held in Paraguay
were transferred into the hands of military personnel from Argentina.
The detainees subsequently disappeared.
Other documents indicate that Operation
Condor was set up in 1975 at the behest of Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet (1973-1990), who two years earlier had overthrown the
popularly elected socialist president Salvador Allende.
In an interview with the Jornal do Brasil
newspaper, retired Brazilian colonel Carlos Alberto Ponzi confirmed
the existence of Southern Cone military agreements about the exchange
of information and of leftist militants captured in the participating countries.
It was "a dirty war from both sides,
and the left also acted internationally," argued the colonel,
who headed the National Information Service from 1975 to 1980 in the
Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, which borders Argentina and Uruguay.
But collaboration between military forces
occurred even before Operation Condor was established.In 1969, the
Brazilian army provided training to military personnel from
throughout the Southern Cone to combat urban guerrilla movements,
testified Marival Chaves, a former member of the army's information
and political repression services.
Brazilians who were exiled in Chile and able
to escape repression under the Pinochet dictatorship report that
agents of Brazil's dictatorship participated in the torture of
political prisoners in Santiago, primarily at the national football
stadium, which was converted into a massive prison.
In contrast to the close ties between the
military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, international cooperation in
investigating and clarifying the assassinations and human rights
violations of that era had advanced very little.
That is, until Spanish judge Baltasar
Garzón attempted to bring Pinochet to trial in Spain in 1998.
The ensuing year-long international legal battle, and its effect on
national human rights laws, has dramatically changed the prospects
for international cooperation in investigating human rights crimes
and bringing those responsible to justice.
This week, for example, Uruguay's Celiberti
provided testimony before a court in Rome, leading to its decision to
open investigations into the deaths of Italian citizens who are
believed to have been victims of Operation Condor as they had been
detained in Brazil in 1978 and later transferred to Uruguay.
Meanwhile, La Nación newspaper in
Santiago published the testimony of U.S. citizen Michael Townley
about the participation of Chile's National Intelligence Directorate
(DINA) in the Buenos Aires assassination of Chilean general Carlos
Prats, who had served as commander of the army and interior minister
under Allende's socialist administration.
Townley, a former agent of the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), said he participated in the assassination
of yet another former Chilean minister, Orlando Letelier, in 1976 in
Washington. He confessed as much in his statements before Argentine
judge María Servini, who was in the United States to pursue
her investigations of the Prats murder.
The Buenos Aires assassination of the exiled
Chilean general and his wife, Sofía Cubert, took place in
1974, when Isabel Perón, a constitutionally elected president,
still governed Argentina.
The replacement of Prats by Pinochet as
commander of the Chilean army paved the way for the overthrow and
death of president Allende in September 1973. Two years later, also
in Argentina, former Bolivian president Juan José Torres was
assassinated.He was deposed by the military in August 1971 after
governing the country for one year with the support of the political left.
END
top of page
Brazil
Ranchers' Caucus Cuts Protection Laws to Speed Amazon Destruction.
Rewrite of Forestry Code Would up Yearly Forest Destruction 25%
Nilo
Sergio Melo Diniz ~ May 10
The Joint Congressional Comission on
Provisional Decree 1,956 of the Brazilian Congress voted today to
roll back forest protection requirements in the Forestry Code so that
mega-landowners can legally cut and burn the Amazon rainforest
faster. The rewrite, authored by Moacir Micheletto (PMDB - Parana ),
if approved by the Congress, would imply a 25% increase in Amazon
forest destruction, about 4,500 square kilometers a year at 1998
rates, according to an Environment Ministry study. Behind the
proposed changes is the ranchers' caucus (bancada ruralista) which
includes the congressional representatives of the approximately 1% of
Brazil's landowners that occupy half of Brazil's agricultural land
(while half of the landowners have some 3% of the land).
Landownerns in pristine Amazon rainforest
areas are currently required to keep 80% of their holdings forested,
while onwers in the highly endangered tropical savanna regions must
keep half. Under the new law, ranchers could cut up to half of their
forests and 80% of the savanna areas.
Changing the Forestry Code, which inlcudes
the protection requirements, became a priority for the large
landowners' group in 1998, when legislation ws passed giving Brazil's
environmental agency, IBAMA, statutory authority to levy fines and
enforce environmental law for the first time in a decade. President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso is said to have promised the latifundistas
groups a free hand in rewriting the Forestry Code as part of a deal
to allow the 98 law, the Environmental Crimes Act, to come to the
House floor for a vote. The current slash-and-burn proposal summarily
overrides ammendents to Code negotiated between federal and state
governments, small famers organizations, scientists,
environmentalists -- and the large ranchers' national association --
over the last five months.
The Ranchers' Caucus had planned to hold a
vote on the minimum wage hostage to prior passage of the
deforestation act today, after committee approval. The ranchers'
group, composed largely of members of the coalition of parties in the
government, is notorious for similar maneuvers to force the
cancellation of tens of billions of dollars of debts for taxpayer
funded agriculture credit, principally for the very largest debtors.
The group draws much of its strength from the overrepresentation of
the Amazon and other backwards areas in the Congress, established by
the military dictatorship to ensure Congressional majorities. By law,
many fewer votes are required to elect a representative in states
such as Roraima or Amazonas, where backwoods barons buy elections at
will, than in more modern, urbanized sates such as São Paulo.
Since the new law would increase land prices
in government land auqistions under emminent domain and for land
reform, the measures could cost Brazil's taxpayers more tens of billions.
Senator Marina Silva, (Workers' Party -
Acre), said, " Instead of fashioning new legislation, adequate
to the challenges of the twenty-first century, we have allowed the
most retrograde elements of our semi-feudal rural oligarchy to worsen
the social and environemental abuses of our past."
"The environmental movement holds the
government responsible for this debacle," said Adriana Ramos of
the Instituto Socioambiental. " The government has not lifted a
finger to persuade its members of Congress to protect the agreement
it negotiated and approved in the National Environment Council."
Nilo
Sergio Melo Diniz
Environment and Development Coordenation of Senator
Marina Silva Office (PT-Workers Party/Acre State)
Address: Senado Federal - Anexo II, Gabinete
8 - Ala Teotonio Vilela, CEP-70165-900 - Brasília - DF -
Brazil. Tel. 5561-3112185/2182 - Fax: 5561-3234969
Nilo
Sergio Melo Diniz
END
top of page
Protests
Expand Land and Wage Demands
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 10
Federal government employees in Brazil began
a strike today to demand pay raises after five years of frozen wages,
an event that coincided with the annual day of protest by the
nation's rural workers and underscored the widespread social tensions
here. Today's demonstrations were concentrated in Brasilia, where the
National Congress debated the minimum wage -- set by the government
at 151 reals ($83) per month -- under pressure from unionists,
government employees and peasants who demand an increase.
The governing party accepted the risk that a
vote on the wage bill could fall on May 10, the day of "The Call
for Land," a protest led each year by the National Confederation
of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) and other organizations that favor
agrarian reform and improved social conditions for rural workers and
family farmers.
An estimated 10,000 people from throughout
the country were mobilized for the protest organized by CONTAG,
adding their voice to demands for a decent minimum wage. Most
formally employed rural workers and retired farmers earn only the
legal minimum salary. The strike, which did not shut down public
services but slowed or paralyzed some sectors -- primarily
universities -- involves approximately 450,000 government employees
who are demanding a 64 percent raise, which reflects the inflation
rate of the last five years. They are also demanding a 29 percent
benefit that was granted only to military personnel in 1993. Many
employees have already won this claim through the judicial system,
leading the government to propose a five-year payment plan to the
rest, but the majority rejected the offer.
A strike at the Rio de Janeiro-based Oswaldo
Cruz Foundation, however, is especially worrisome. The research
center, which employs 3,000 people, produces and distributes vaccines
and medications for treating epidemics such as yellow fever, malaria,
tuberculosis and AIDS. Teachers' strikes are also widespread at the
state level. In Sao Paulo, professors and administrators at the three
state universities have been on strike for the last two weeks, and
the movement has expanded to include the area's primary schools.
The fight to increase the country's minimum
wage -- which is one of the lowest in the world -- has become an
annual event, but this year is even stronger due to the participation
of governing party leaders, including Senate President Antonio Carlos
Magalhaes, who has led a campaign for a minimum monthly wage of at
least $100.
The fact that the congressional debate fell
on the same day as "The Call for Land" allowed CONTAG and
the Union Central of Workers to join forces in Brasilia to demand
agrarian reform and higher salaries at the same time.
At a meeting prior to today's
demonstrations, Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso promised CONTAG
President Manoel dos Santos that the government would expand low
interest loans for family farmers and create a fund to support them
in the case of crop failures resulting from circumstances beyond
their control, such as extreme weather. Interest rates on farm loans
would be reduced from 5.75 to 3 percent, with the principal adjusted
according to the evolution of crop prices. In addition, existing
debts would be refinanced at lower interest rates and more favorable
payment terms, announced Raul Jungmann, minister of agrarian development.
Dos Santos called the announced measures a
"partial victory." He maintained they would "strengthen
family farming," but he asserted the movement would continue
because the government has yet to respond to its fundamental claims
for broad agrarian reforms and higher rural wages.Dos Santos also
pointed out that the government promised to increase family farming
resources by just 30.8 percent, far below the 162 percent hike
demanded by the rural workers.
CONTAG, which formally represents the
nation's 17 million rural workers, including formal employees and
family farmers, rivals the Landless Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra
-- MST) for leadership in the fight to obtain better social
conditions for the rural population.
In the past, CONTAG at times allied itself
with the government, winning little popular support with its
conventional tactics. As a result, a more dynamic agrarian reform
movement developed in the early 1980s, ultimately leading to the
creation of MST in 1985. Lately, however, CONTAG has begun to adopt
the aggressive -- and successful -- strategies of its rival,
including squatting on unproductive rural land, street marches,
protests in Brazil's major cities (such as "The Cry for
Land") and even takeovers of government buildings.
University studies show that most of the
government's land settlements carried out under agrarian reform
programs in the last 15 years, benefiting some 400,000 families, were
the result of pressure from landless peasant movements. The MST
invasion of a dozen government ministries on May 2 met with harsh
police repression, ordered by the government, which imposed a set of
measures to punish such protests.
CONTAG calls for the repeal of some of the
government's rural policies, such as the four-year ban on
expropriating rural lands for settlement if the peasant movement has
occupied them illegally, even when the land is out of production. The
Brazilian Constitution establishes that rural property must perform a
social function, that is, it must be productive. If not, the land may
be expropriated for agrarian reform purposes.
The rural union organization calls for the
settlement of a minimum of 250,000 peasant families each year. The
government did not set a goal for this year, but Minister Jungmann
said the agrarian reform program could benefit as many as 85,000
families annually, a target CONTAG and MST say is unfeasible given
the government-imposed budget cuts.
END
top of page
Broad
Opposition To Govt't Crackdown On Landless
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 8
Although public support for Brazil's
increasingly radical landless movement (MST) has been waning, there
is also widespread opposition to the government's decision to expand
the National Security Law, a symbol of the 1964-85 military
dictatorship, to crack down on the movement. More than 40 MST
activists were arrested for taking part in attempts to occupy public
buildings in 19 Brazilian cities on May 2. In some cases, the
occupations of offices included threats against officials and damage
to public property.
Two of the detainees have already been
prosecuted under the National Security Law, which dates back to the
de facto military regime.
Reginaldo de Castro, the head of Brazil's
bar association, and Mario Covas, governor of the state of Sao Paulo,
where police are holding 14 MST activists, joined opposition parties
in criticizing the use of what they described as
"authoritarian" legislation. Even the minister of Agrarian
Development, Raul Jungmann, and Gen. Alberto Cardoso, the head of the
president's Institutional Security Cabinet, came out against the measure.
The MST offensive mounted on May 2 was aimed
at forcing the government to speed up its land reform program and
increase the availability of soft credits to families who have
already been settled on plots of land. The MST protesters were also
demanding direct negotiations with Pres. Fernando Henrique Cardoso or
one of the ministers on his economic team.
The government responded by invoking the
National Security Law to order the federal police, working in
conjunction with the local police in each state, to crack down on the
activists. The federal government also announced sanctions to be
applied against invasions of unproductive land -- another MST tactic
-- while decentralizing the agrarian reform process, authorizing
local officials to distribute land and set up new settlements in
their states.
Cardoso accused the MST of "deviating
from democracy" and trying to "seize power." He
threatened to send in military troops to dislodge the activists
occupying the 14 public buildings since May 2. Advised to do so by
leftist parties, the MST leadership gave the order to pull out of the
buildings on May 5.
Even the National Federation of Federal
Police, the union representing 12,000 agents who answer to the
justice ministry, recommended that its members reject the use of the
National Security Law to crack down on landless activists. De Castro
said the measures adopted and the government's threats were more
"typical of military governments." He said it was an error
to resurrect a law decreed by a de facto government. De Castro, Gov.
Covas -- a member of Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democracy Party --
and opposition leaders concur that the government is mistaken in
addressing a "social question," the struggle for more equal
distribution of land, with police or even military tactics.
But Cardoso's cabinet maintained that tough
measures were needed to tackle a "threat" to democracy, and
warned that military troops would be employed to dislodge the
activists occupying the public offices, in case the governors refused
to call out the state police for the task. But lawyer Miguel Reale, a
professor at the University of Sao Paulo who has turned down several
offers to head the justice ministry in the past, said "that is
an exaggeration," because there was and is no risk to Brazil's
democratic stability.
The government-based its decisions on
opinion polls indicating a plunge in public support for the MST
caused by the occupations of public offices and the holding of
officials as "hostages." Independent polls have shown that
public sympathy for the movement advocating faster, broader land
reform has been gradually declining over the past four years, from a
peak of over 80 percent of Brazilians.
While the public widely supports the MST's
occupations of land left idle by large landowners, it is opposed to
the movement's more radical and violent actions. Agrarian reform,
however, is still seen by a broad majority of Brazilians as a
solution to the heavy concentration of land in a few hands, high
unemployment and the rural exodus by landless peasants, who swell the
shantytowns surrounding Brazil's big cities.
The MST was forced to suspend its offensive
last week due to the government's harsh reaction and the distancing
of the movement's leftist allies, especially the Workers Party, whose
leaders have been working to reestablish negotiations between the
landless movement and government officials. But the government
measures, which put many in mind of the repression of political
opponents during the military dictatorship, could offer the MST a
chance to shore up its waning support and alliances.
The National Confederation of Agricultural
Workers, a trade union that links rural wage-earners and small
farmers, has called a demonstration on May 10 in Brasilia demanding
broader land reform. Organizers hope to draw at least 10,000
protesters. The Confederation, more moderate than the MST, also
condemned the government decision "to criminalize actions by a
social movement."
The MST now has a new martyr, peasant farmer
Antonio Tavares Pereira, a 38-year-old father of five who was killed
by police during the May 2 demonstrations in the southern state of
Paraná. The movement's leaders also reported that four
demonstrators have gone missing, while witnesses said they had seen
another protester with a bullet wound to the head after the police crackdown.
The violent repression could also boost the
MST's support abroad, with demonstrations of solidarity for the
imprisoned activists, who the movement considers "political
prisoners." The MST won strong domestic and international
support when 19 of its members were killed during an April 1996
protest march in the northern state of Pará. None of the 155
military police who opened fire on the peaceful demonstration have
been brought to justice, despite the fact that the bloody incident
was filmed and broadcast all over the world.
The MST, founded 15 years ago, has become
the opposition group capable of mobilizing the greatest number of
demonstrators in Brazil. The movement estimates the number of
landless rural families living in camps set up throughout the country
while they wait for a plot of land at more than 100,000. The MST also
has the support of most of the 400,000 families -- according to
government figures -- settled as part of the land reform process
since the 1980s.
END
top of page
Civil
Society Takes The Initiative
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 7
Some 2,000 organizations of civil society
drew up an "alternative report" assessing Brazil's
compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to fill the vacuum left by the government.
Within two years after ratifying the covenant, signatory states were
to draft reports on the targets set and assess compliance with the
commitments assumed in terms of enforcing respect for economic,
social and cultural rights.
But given the government's failure to do so
eight years after Brazil ratified the treaty in 1992, civil society
has taken the initiative, and a delegation of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and other institutions submitted its own
follow-up report to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights in Geneva.
Romeu Olmar Klich, secretary of the National
Human Rights Movement, an umbrella linking more than 300 Brazilian
NGOs, said the chair of the U.N. committee, Virginia Bonoan-Dandan,
had pledged to accept the "alternative report" as the
official document if the government had not submitted its own by the
committee's next session in September.
"This was a participatory process, in
which around 2,000 organizations discussed the report in18 public
hearings throughout the country," said Klich, a Presbyterian minister.
He added that society had got the jump on
the government, unprecedented in the U.N. committee, which saw the
decision by Brazil's NGOs as an example to be followed by civil
society in other countries that have failed to live up to the
commitments assumed in the ICESCR.
NGOs usually set forth their position in a
"counter-report" that criticizes or corroborates the
official document submitted to the U.N. committee. But this year
civil society in Brazil decided on a novel route. Parliamentary
deputy Nilmario Miranda, who up to last year presided over the Human
Rights Commission of Brazil's lower house of Congress, and who
participated in the civil society delegation that visited Geneva last
week, said he believed the government would submit a report this year
given the growing domestic and international pressure.
Brazil has a notorious human rights record,
blemished by frequent complaints of police brutality and periodic
massacres of landless and indigenous activists and prisoners. It is
also one of the countries with the most unequal distribution of
income in Latin America, the region with the greatest gap between
rich and poor.
The document drawn up by the NGOs, with the
participation of lawmakers and public prosecutors --"members of
the state, but who are independent and answer to society," Klich
pointed out - lists violations of economic, social and cultural
rights in Brazil.
The "alternative report" mentions
the extreme poverty and hunger suffered by at least 26 million in a
total population of over 161 million; the dangerous or otherwise
inappropriate work to which 2.5 million children are subjected; and
the disadvantages of Blacks and women in terms of income, wages,
educational levels and power. It points out, for example, that women
account for just six percent of the members of the national Congress,
10 percent of the members of state legislatures, only one of the
country's 27 state governors, and just 302 of a total of 5,506 mayors.
The government budget for assistance to
indigenous communities shrank by more than 50 percent from 1995 to
1998, the document adds. It also maintains that the land expropriated
for redistribution to landless rural workers and the funds invested
to help them settle on their new farms are insufficient, and that
more needs to be done to resolve the problem of the heavy
concentration of land in relatively few hands.
At the fourth National Human Rights
Conference, held in May 1999, the government of Fernando Henrique
Cardoso announced that it would expand its human rights program to
encompass economic and social rights, but no concrete steps have been
taken, said Deputy Miranda.
Social inequity has compounded the neglect
of those rights by the government, he added.
The problem, said Miranda, was based on the
division of human rights into civil and political rights on one hand
and economic, social and cultural rights on the other, which occurred
when the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
and the ICESCR were adopted by the U.N. in 1966. That division was a
result of the Cold War, the lawmaker said. But today those rights are
increasingly recognized as "indissoluble and universal,"
especially since the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna
in 1993, he added.
The movement demanding that the various
categories of human rights be considered inseparable should give rise
to instruments similar to the International Criminal Court that will
try violations of civil and political rights, which is in the process
of creation.
In the future, said Miranda, a prominent
figure in Brazil's human rights movement, there will also be courts
to try violations of economic, social and cultural rights, and
institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) will have to
take such rights into account. The movement advocating respect for
those rights is "powerful and unassailable," because it is
based on ethics, does not respond to special interests, and defends
principles which are enshrined in the constitutions of most
countries, like that of Brazil, he maintained.
END
top of page
Show
Highlights Artists Excluded For 500 Years
by Mario Osava (IPS) ~ May 6
The "Show of the Rediscovery: Brazil +
500" underway in Sao Paulo has placed thousands of works on
display in a broad historical overview of Brazil's visual arts,
without the exclusion and violence that marked the recent official
celebration of the 500 years since the Portuguese conquerors arrived
in Brazil. Indigenous peoples, Afro-Brazilians, craftworkers and even
the inmates of mental institutions are included in the largest art
show ever held in this country, portions of which will travel to 11
state capitals and at least 17 major museums in Argentina, France,
Britain, Portugal, the United States and Spain from the end of this
year until 2002.
Indigenous peoples, excluded from the
quincentennial festivities and brutally attacked by police forces,
April 22, in Bahia state when they tried to protest the genocide they
and their ancestors suffered, are represented here in one of the 13
sections that make up the show.
There are 600 indigenous works in this
section, some brought from European museums. One of the most
important, for example, is a shawl of red feathers that belongs to
the National Museum of Denmark, originally taken from Brazil by the
Dutch who occupied the Brazilian northeast in the seventeenth century.
This set of artworks is an attempt to show
that indigenous art is not all just one genre. There are more than
200 native groups in Brazil, each with their own art and identity,
which evolved over the last five centuries of contact with Europeans
and their technology. But they each maintain their own styles, said
archaeologist Lucia Van Velthem, the division's curator.
They are artistic works, though most were
made for use in daily life, unlike the European or Western ideal,
which generally de-links art from practical uses, explained Van
Velthem, who has closely studied the Uiana peoples of northern
Brazil, near the Suriname border.
Indigenous peoples are also represented in a
section of the show on art created before the arrival of the
Portuguese in 1500, which reveals "a stylistic
sophistication" that belies prejudices about the
"crudeness" of the native groups, according to curator
María Cristina Scatamachia. Two other sections --
Afro-Brazilian Art and Black Body and Soul -- display the art of
Africans brought to Brazil as slaves, some of it created in their homelands.
The art is primarily masks, sculptures and
paintings by Afro-Brazilians, but the section also includes works by
white artists from various countries expressing their vision of
people of African origin in Brazil.
The "Show of the Rediscovery: Brazil +
500" dedicates one section to "Images of the
Unconscious," a collection of 300 paintings, sculptures, rugs
and other objects created by people living in psychiatric hospitals.
This section is a tribute to Nise da
Silveira, a psychiatrist who died last year after revolutionizing the
treatment of the mentally ill through art. He began using the
technique more than 60 years ago and later established the Museum of
Images of the Unconscious in Rio de Janeiro, which houses more than
300,000 of his patients' drawings and paintings.
Arthur Bispo do Rosario is the best known of
De Silveira's patients. His art achieved international acclaim, and
he is present in this historic show through his weavings, robes and
paintings. The artistic "Rediscovery" of Brazil occupies
50,000 square meters in four buildings of Sao Paulo's Ibirapuera
Park. More than 1.5 million visitors are expected to pass through its
doors by the show's closing day, September 7. The gigantic
exhibition, with its price tag of $40 million, was organized by the
Brazil 500 Year Association, a private initiative that began its work
in 1997.
Financial support from 40 companies
permitted the organizers to borrow many expensive works from museums
in several countries, primarily in Europe, and from private collections.
To see the show, visitors pay seven to 15
reais ($3.90 to $8.40), with the higher prices charged for access to
all sections of the exhibition and for weekends or holidays. The
ticket prices were much criticized as being out of reach for most
people. In Brazil, the minimum monthly wage is just $84.
The goal of such a broad exhibition is to
show the cultural richness and diversity of which Brazilians
themselves are generally unaware, said Edemar Cid Ferreira, president
of the organizing association. And it will show foreigners that
Brazil is much more than the stereotypes that appear on the news, he added.
A show with such a broad overview is just
what the country needed, according to Nelson Aguilar, the exhibit's
general curator, who also selected the works from the 20th century
included in the show. He believes something like this should be a
regular occurrence, and not limited to special occasions like
Brazil's 500th anniversary.
The "Rediscovery" does not include
previously unknown works because its objective is to reveal the
country's history, not its novelties, explained Aguilar. Each section
is set up with a great deal of stage scenary -- exaggeratedly so, say
critics who believe the art does not need such contrived devices.
But Aguilar explains that the scenery is an
attempt to attract an audience that may be unfamiliar with visual
arts, which is the primary goal of such a large show. Conventional
plastic arts are organized chronologically, with sections dedicated
to art from the
17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, modern and
contemporary art. "Popular Art," the largest section of the
show with 2,000 items, is primarily craftworks such as ceramics,
traditional costumes, dolls, masks, flags and religious figurines.
END
top of page
Brazilian
Truck Strike Continues Despite Gov’t Concessions
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 4
The Brazilian government made good on some
of its promises to truckers, which should have put an end to their
strike -- now in its fourth day -- but the concessions only seem to
underscore the power of the truckers' movement, even when its
leadership is divided. Five government ministers met with union
leaders in Brasilia, where they formalized the government's proposal
to make costly highway tolls the responsibility of the companies
whose goods the truckers are hauling.
Nelio Botelho, president of the Brazil
Truckers Union Movement (MUBC), declared today, however, that the
strike would continue and would grow stronger until the sector's
problems are definitively resolved. He denied the authority of the
leaders from the state truckers' federations -- who had accepted the
government's proposals and called for an end to the strike -- and
asserted that he is the voice of Brazil's truckers. The meeting with
the ministers was "a coup, a government trick" to divide
the movement and impose its "unsatisfactory" measures on
the truckers, charged Botelho.
The president of the National Transport
Confederation, Clesio Andrade, who accepted the government's
concessions, said the strike is at its end, though he acknowledged
that truckers continue to protest in the nation's south and
southeast. Truckers continued to block roads in Rio de Janeiro and
Minas Gerais, and police arrested 13 protesters who had set up a
highway blockade in Rio Grande do Sul. In the Brazilian north and
west, however, the strike had all but ended by Thursday afternoon.
The "toll-voucher" system the
government proposed is to go into effect May 11, but until the
measure is implemented, the transport vehicles do not have to pay
tolls on federal highways, which are under the jurisdiction of the
central government. Transportation minister Eliseu Padilha must now
negotiate with the private companies that manage the highways, as
they face revenue losses during the next week as truckers are exempt
from paying the tolls.
Toll costs, the main thorn of discontent
among Brazil's 1.2 million truckers, escalated when management of the
nation's highways was transferred to private hands. Prior to
privatization, tolls were nearly non-existent, but now average three
Brazilian 'reais' (1.65 dollars) per axle, taking a bite out of the
profits for drivers of multi-axle trucks.
Cutting tolls by one 'real' (0.55 dollars)
per axle, ridding the police and truck inspector ranks of corruption,
and other measures to facilitate the job were the truckers' principal
demands during a strike last July. That strike lasted for more than a
week and Brazil's larger cities felt the effects as food and fuel
supplies dwindled. The government promised at the time to meet
several of the demands, but did not change its stance on central
issues, such as the toll costs, arguing it could do nothing about the
concession contracts truckers had signed with private companies.
In response to the government's refusal to
act on the toll issue, the MUBC, which also led last year's strike,
gave two weeks notice for this strike, which began Monday. The
Fernando Henrique Cardoso government waited until the strike was in
its third day before agreeing to negotiations with the movement's leaders.
The system of truckers' unions is
complicated because there are numerous autonomous truckers who own
the vehicles they drive, others are direct employees of trucking
companies, and some are self-employed, contracting out their services
to private firms.
In addition, there are those who work in
specialized transportation operations for large companies, such as in
the petroleum and automobile industries.
The truckers' traditional unions, state
federations and the national confederation -- customarily tied to
employers' interests -- lost their representational status, allowing
a surge in the truckers' movement and the rise of Botelho, whose
ability to mobilize the drivers caught the country and the government
by surprise last year.
But this time, the government attempted to
play down the importance of the protest, calling it a
"failure" on May 1. Though its assessment was somewhat
distorted by the fact that Monday was also the celebration of
International Labor Day. Transportation minister Padilha said only
5,000 truckers had stopped work on Tuesday, though the fact that the
government called an emergency meeting Wednesday seems to contradict
his statement.
The National Confederation of Transport
estimated that 500,000 truckers were participating in the strike --
nearly half the Brazilian fleet normally in operation. Botelho,
meanwhile, maintains that participation is still increasing on the
fourth day of the strike, contrary to the assessments made by the
government and by trucking companies.
Rio de Janeiro is the city most threatened
by fuel shortages as a result of the strike, say gasoline
distribution companies. Truckers strategically blocked a highway to
prevent tanker trucks from leaving the Duque de Caxias refinery near
Rio Wednesday.
But Botelho met with police officials
Thursday and agreed to allow the refinery's tanker trucks to leave
the plant and distribute fuel. He emphasized that the strike
continues in full force despite this concession.
Perishable foods are likely to disappear
from store shelves in the big cities, as they depend on supplies from
other regions. Even agricultural states, such as Mato Grosso do Sul,
are dependent on other regions because most of their own production
is for export.
The threat of shortages prompted crowds at
the gasoline service stations in Rio de Janeiro, where the queues to
fill fuel tanks have been steady since Tuesday.
Truckers are now fully aware of their power
- and they are using it. In a country with few railroads and limited
river barge systems, truckers haul 70 percent of all shipments,
making them indispensable for all sectors of Brazil's economy. And it
takes just a few days of a trucking strike to prove it.
The process of privatizing Brazil's highways
did not take into account its impact on transportation costs. Tolls
are much more expensive for trucks than for individual cars, and are
ultimately a tax on economically productive activity. The government
is now trying to pass these costs on to private companies but
attempting to prevent the burden from reaching the final consumer.
Increasing violence and police corruption make the truckers' jobs
more and more difficult. Highway attacks on truckers are on the rise.
The results of such problems can be seen in the power of the strikes,
which have now become a major concern of the Brazilian people.
END
top of page
Brazilian
Peasant’s Death Heightens Tensions
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 3
The death of a Brazilian protester after
police used force to contain peasant demonstrations in Paraná
state has intensified the confrontational climate between the
government and the Landless Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra -- MST).
Antonio Tavares Pereira, 38, a peasant and
father of five, was shot in his abdomen yesterday morning when
approximately 1,000 military police pushed back some 1,300 MST
protesters on a road outside Paraná's capital, Curitiba.
Tavares Pereira was immediately
hospitalized, but died late last night.
The state Secretary of Public Safety,
José Tavares, played down the role of the police in the
tragedy, arguing that the wounded man had been taken to the hospital
at 9:09 local time, more than an hour before the major confrontations
began, and that he had been injured on another road where there were
no such conflicts.
But Roberto Baggio, an MST coordinator in
Paraná, accused the state official of lying. He pointed out
that police began to use force against the protesters trying to enter
Curitiba around 8:15, and that several witnesses had seen Tavares
Pereira in a group that was "brutally attacked."
There are probably "other deaths
covered up by the police," who fired on the protesters and then
violently hunted them down, asserted Baggio. He estimated there were
300 people wounded in the tumult, as well as several "disappearances."
The secretary of public safety assured that
the police had fired only rubber bullets, not lethal ammunition, in
the operation. But the Legal Medical Institute confirmed that the
peasant protester had died from a wound caused by a lead bullet.
The victim's wife, Maria Sebastiana Pereira,
said she was sure her husband, an MST member for the last six years,
was killed when the police attacked the peasants after forcing them
to get off the buses carrying them into the city.
The Pastoral Commission of the Earth, an
agency of the Roman Catholic Church, released a letter in which it
"vehemently rejects" the version told by secretary Tavares
and accuses Paraná governor Jaime Lerner of implementing a
policy of "violent repression" against peasants.
"During his term in office, 15 rural workers have been
assassinated, many of them by the military police," says the
letter, which emphasizes that these crimes all remain unpunished.
Secretary Tavares said the police operation
yesterday was necessary because the MST demonstrators tried "to
invade public offices in Curitiba," just as their counterparts
successfully did in 12 other state capitals throughout Brazil Tuesday morning.
He also justified the police use of force
saying the peasants were "heavily armed" with machetes and
scythes, and reported that 200 such items and a pistol had been
seized by the security forces. "They are tools for work and
symbols of the movement, not weapons," countered Baggio, who was
held by the police for several hours yesterday.
The goal was to mount a "peaceful
demonstration" as a call for agrarian reform to benefit the
landless and for more farm credits for the peasants who have land, he added.
The state MST leader maintained that the
police use of force was "illegal and not protected by the
Constitution" because it was not based on any judicial order.
Governor Lerner "uses the police to
kill and massacre, and identifies the MST as the enemy," stated Baggio.
Fellow MST leader Gilmar Mauro announced in
Brasilia that the movement would relinquish control over the
government offices it had occupied in a dozen cities, but he stressed
that the landless peasants would remain camped outside.
On the "day of struggle" initiated
yesterday with occupations and demonstrations in 19 state capitals,
the MST primarily targeted offices of the Finance Ministry, not the
National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, an agency of
the Agrarian Development Ministry, which is entrusted with responding
to their claims.
Agrarian reform is dependent on resources
that only president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Finance minister
Pedro Malán can release, while the head of the Agrarian
Development Ministry, Raul Jungmann, "has no power," argued
Mauro. The MST, therefore, will end its protests if its leaders are
allowed to meet with Cardoso, Malán or at least the head of
the presidential cabinet, Pedro Parente, who is part of the
government's economic team, he said.
Leftist opposition legislators criticised
the radicalization of the MST and are trying to negotiate for
dialogue between the landless peasants and the government in order to
contain the escalation of violence on both sides. But the authorities
see the conflict as a police issue.
President Cardoso accused the movement of
"deviating from the democratic order" as he justified the
force implemented by state governments through their police since
mid-April. The government has a peasant settlement program, but the
MST does not see it as agrarian reform.
The Agrarian Development Ministry has
settled more than 300,000 families since Cardoso took office in 1995,
"more than the combined total of all previous governments,"
said minister Jungmann. In that period, the government expropriated
unused land from major landowners totalling an area larger than
Belgium, Jungmann added.
But the MST says it is still not enough to
solve the problem of large landholdings in Brazil, where one percent
of landowners hold 44 percent of the nation's territory, while five
million families do not have land to farm.
The peasant movement coordinates encampments
throughout Brazil, where some 100,000 families wait for land to be distributed.
According to official data, current
government policies have forced some 400,000 families to leave rural
areas in just two years. That is more than the total number of
families the government has settled in five years, point out the MST leaders.
END
top of page
Brazilian
Truckers And Landless Launch Protests
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ May 2
Activists from the Landless Movement
(Movimento dos Sem Terra -- MST) took over several government
buildings today while truckers continued their strike, setting Brazil
on edge just days after a relatively calm Labor Day. Though protests
over the low minimum wage and high unemployment on May 1 were mostly
peaceful, a violent confrontation today between approximately 1,300
MST peasants and police officers left at least 30 people injured near
Curitiba, capital of Paraná state. Some 400 people were
arrested, according to authorities. Police used rubber bullets and
tear gas against peasants who had arrived in Curitiba's outskirts
aboard dozens of buses coming from the state's interior.
The MST protesters tried to take over the
city's public buildings, as their counterparts did in other state
capitals, but the military police were given the order to prevent
their entry, said Paraná's Secretary of Public Safety,
José Tavares. But Roberto Baggio, MST coordinator in
Paraná and one of those arrested, said they had intended to
stage a peaceful demonstration. Movement representatives say there
were seven cases of serious injuries and that children and pregnant
women had suffered wounds.
The MST had called for May 2 to be a
National Day of Struggle in response to "the lack of a policy
for agrarian reform." The movement calls for more farming
credits and permanent settlements for the approximately 100,000
families living in camps on occupied lands or rural roadways.
The National Institute of Colonization and
Agrarian Reform (INCRA, the executive branch of the Ministry of
Agrarian Development) saw its offices in Brasilia occupied by
approximately 300 rural workers today.
In other parts of the country, the primary
target was the Ministry of Finance, whose policies the MST says
obstruct agrarian reform and agricultural development.
In Sao Paulo, some 500 landless
demonstrators clashed with police in their attempt to take over the
Ministry of Finance's headquarters. Fifteen were arrested, including
one MST leader, and the police took another 200 to a holding area
owned by the state government.
But protesters were successful in 17 other
state capitals throughout Brazil, where thousands of peasants were
able to take over or close down government buildings. In Rio de
Janeiro, the demonstrators targeted the central offices of the
National Bank of Economic and Social Development, a government-run
development organization.
In Recife, in the northeast, and
Cuiabá, in the west, tensions rose quickly as more than a
thousand people were involved in the takeovers and police surrounded
the buildings the protesters occupied.
The MST launched this offensive just one day
after independent truckers stopped all activity to protest the high
tolls they are forced to pay on privatized highways and to denounce
other difficulties they face.
The Brazilian Truckers' Union Movement,
which called the strike, promised it would not repeat the highway
blockades that occurred in July, but some strikers tried to set up
the roadblocks in several parts of the country anyway, sparking
conflicts with local police.
Eliseu Padilha, Minister of Transportation,
criticised the truckers for not keeping their promise, but by today
said the status of the nation's highway system was back to normal.
If the strike continues, it could affect the
supply of goods to the larger cities, especially fuel. Rio de Janeiro
is most at risk because its residents completely depend on food
shipped in from other regions of the country.
The trucking strike did not have much of a
following, according to authorities. But the movement's leaders say
they achieved almost a total shutdown of transportation in several
states. Trucks carry nearly 70 percent of Brazil's internal shipments.
In an interview last week with the Jornal do
Brasil newspaper, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso warned that
increased violence in rural areas would endanger the nation's
democratic institutions. Landowners organized under the Democratic
Ruralist Union had announced they would respond to the invasion of
their property with weapons if necessary.
But the government has also shown greater
willingness to use force, especially since April 22, when police
violently attacked indigenous groups who tried to express their
rejection of the official celebrations of the 500 years since
Brazil's "discovery" by Portuguese Conquistadors. The
police used force to prevent the indigenous protesters from entering
Porto Seguro, the site in Bahía state where the Portuguese
landed in the year 1500.
Some days prior to the event, Cardoso had
characterized the Landless Movement as "fascist." MST
activists tried to take part in the Porto Seguro protests to decry
the "exclusive" celebrations and the slowness of agrarian
reform. But a strong police mobilization turned them away.
The MST had stepped up its takeovers of
unused rural lands on April 18, with the consequent reaction of the
landowners. According to the movement's representatives, MST peasants
carried out more than 140 different land occupations. This week,
however, the landless set their sights on government offices and
announced they want to discuss their demands directly with the
president, since dialogue with Minister of Agrarian Development Raul
Jungmann failed.
END
top of page
Brazilian
MPs Attack Landless March, Killing One and Injuring Dozens in
Paraná State
On May 2, close to 1,000 military police
intercepted 50 buses carrying roughly 500 sem terra (landless
laborers) on highway BR 277 about three miles from Curitiba, the
capital of southern Paraná state. Before the landless had
exited the buses, police began throwing tear gas canisters and firing
rubber bullets (and some real bullets) at them. One of the
landless, Antonio Tavares Pereira, 30, the
father of five children, was shot in the chest and later died.
Another man was seen by witnesses after having been shot in the head.
He has not been seen since, however. Other landless are reported
missing. Local groups continue to investigate their whereabouts.
In addition to the death of Antonio Tavares
Pereira, and the possible disappearances, the results of the violent
action were at least 60 injured (and treated at local hospitals). The
landless believe that number to be above 150, given that most of the
injured did nor receive any treatment and thus were not registered as
such. We request that you please forward this information to relevant
E-mail lists and write to the relevant Brazilian authorities,
expressing concern:
Governador
Jaime Lerner: Praça N.S. da Salete, s/n Curitiba, PR -
Brasil, Fax: 55-41-254-7345 Telephone: 55-41-350-2400
President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso Praça dos Três Poderes
Palácio do Planalto, 3° andar 70.150-900 Brasília
DF, Fax: 55-61 322-2314, Telephone: 55-61-411-1169
END
top of page
Brazilian
Catholic Church Apologizes to Indians And Blacks
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ April 26
The president of Brazil's National
Conference of Bishops, Jayme Chemello, apologized today to Indians
and Blacks for the Church's role in slavery and racial massacres of
the past, at a ceremony commemorating the 500th anniversary of the
first Catholic mass held in Brazil. The mass, presided over by
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, was held on the
same site as the first mass: the Coroa Vermelha beach in the
municipality of Santa Cruz de Cabralia in the eastern state of Bahia.
The Church's apology "for the sins
committed against our brothers and sisters, particularly indigenous
peoples," was especially poignant after the brutal police
crackdown in Cabralia on April 23 against demonstrators protesting
the official celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of
the Portuguese.
The rights of indigenous people and "the
dignity of our Black brothers and sisters were not always
respected" during centuries in which the Catholic Church was on
the side of the Portuguese colonizers and later of the Brazilian
state, which continued practices of slavery and discrimination
against those groups, the Episcopal Conference acknowledged.
The expressions of protest blocked at the
ceremony held by Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and
Jorge Sampaio of Portugal on April 23 were allowed at today's mass.
Mtalaué, a Pataxó Indian, said "this earth is ours
and you do not know how to respect that. Our people were decimated as
the 'pajés' (indigenous spiritual leaders) predicted. The past
500 years has been a time of prejudice, extermination and violence."
The Pataxó, who live in the region
where the first Portuguese landed on April 22, 1500, are still
fighting today to win back the land taken from them by large
landowners in the southern part of the state of Bahia. Conflicts over
the land issue have become even more heated since late last year.
On April 4, the ethnic group was the target
of police brutality which heightened the tension already surrounding
the controversial celebrations of the anniversary of the so-called
"discovery" of Brazil.
That day, police destroyed a monument that
the Pataxó were building in homage to indigenous resistance to
the "invasion" of their territory by Europeans.
The Pataxó -- an example of the
continuing conflicts precisely in the spot where the Portuguese
disembarked in 1500 -- hosted the Conference of Indigenous Peoples of
Brazil, which drew more than 2,000 representatives from all over the
country last week to discuss the problems shared by Brazil's Indians
and submit a document to the government setting forth 18 demands.
Mtalaué pointed out that his
community was attacked by police using tear gas, rubber bullets and
batons as they prepared to protest the five centuries in which the
total number of Indians in Brazil shrank from five million in 1500 to
350,000 today.
The harsh police repression of the protests
was condemned by the Catholic Church, which demanded that police
allow anyone who wished to participate in the commemorative mass.
"We reject the violent action against
indigenous and Black groups who were seeking to demonstrate in a
democratic manner," said the secretary-general of the Episcopal
Conference, Raymundo Damasceno.
Some 2,000 priests attended today's mass,
including 300 bishops from Brazil and abroad, like Ximenes Belo of
East Timor, a 1996 Nobel Peace Prize-winner. But notably absent was
Bishop Franco Masserdotti, the president of the Indigenist Missionary
Council, whose leaders refused to participate in a mass held on the
spot where indigenous people suffered "violence and humiliation."
Masserdotti and 30 of his missionaries were
victims of the police brutality in Cabralia over the weekend, and
spent several hours in police custody, along with more than 100
protesters. Brazil's bishops wanted to issue a broader critique of
past and present social inequities in this country of 161 million.
But the most strongly worded clauses of the declaration were vetoed
by Cardinal Sodano, the second-highest authority in the Vatican,
according to the daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. Sodano basically
eliminated references to present-day injustices, which would have
given today's mass a more political character.
The mass also inaugurated the 38th general
assembly of the Brazilian Episcopal Conference, which will run
through May 2 under the theme "500 Years of Evangelism in Brazil."
The apology for the errors committed by the
Catholic Church in Brazil is to be drawn up in more detail at the
conference, which is expected to approve a message admitting the
Church's guilt, complicity and failure to act with respect to the
genocide and slavery involving indigenous and Blacks.
The draft document drawn up for the
conference states that in the past 500 years, actions were carried
out that "objectively" violated the gospel as well as the
dignity of indigenous peoples, who were deprived of "land, life
and even a reason to live."
END
top of page
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWS FROM BRAZIL
Supplied by SEJUP (Servico
Brasileiro de Justica e Paz)Number 397, April 28, 2000.----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Government Spends More on Celebration of
500th Anniversary Than on Indigenous
The amount of money the government has and
will spend on activities commemorating the 500th anniversary of the
Europeans' arrival to the country is more than 11 times what it
budgets for Funai ( the National Indian Foundation), the organ
responsible for indigenous services and policies. The budget for
official celebrations for this year is $R66.7 million whereas the
budget for Funai is R$5.8 million. And most of Funai's budget is
spent maintaining its bureaucratic machinery. "After 500 years
of massacre and extermination, the investments Funai makes are
insufficient to rescue the indigenous culture in Brazil. The
government prefers to spend more on parties for the
"Discovery" [of Brazil] than on the country's indigenous
population," said Agnelo Queiroz, a member of Congress.
Official Commemoration of 500th Anniversary
Marked by Conflict
The official commemoration on Saturday,
April 22, of the 500th anniversary of the Europeans' arrival to
Brazil was marked by various conflicts. The first conflict happened
at 9 a.m. when the Bahian military police prevented nearly 1,000
people connected to the "Brazil: Other 500 Years" from
entering the city of Porto Seguro where festivities were being
held.Police threw tear gas and shot rubber bullets to break up the
group. This happened about 10 kilometers outside of the city. Two
hours later, there was a second conflict on the same highway
involving 4,000 protestors who had been participating in an
indigenous conference. This group was stopped about 8 kilometers
outside of the city, and the police did the same thing.
In total, 141 people were arrested, and one
person has been disappeared--the police are claiming they have no
record of arresting a Edmilton Siqueira, a member of the Brazil:
Other 500 Years movement.
Included among those arrested was a
photographer for the Folha de Sao Paulo. The police did not allow the
press to cover the repression going on.
President of Funai Resigns and Critique's
Government's Repression of Demonstrations
The president of Funai (National Indian
Foundation), Carlos Frederico Mares de Souza Filho, announced that he
was resigning after witnessing the repressive acts of the Bahian
military police against protestors, most of whom were indigenous
people (see story above). "I can't remain in a government which
performs acts of aggression against its indigenous people," said
Mares. Mares considered the conflict between the police and the
indigenous to be an act of violence comparable to the military
repression of the 60's (during the dictatorship). He went on to tell
the press that after long negotiations with the military police, he
had gainedauthorization for 2,000 indigenous to march and deliver a
letter to President Cardoso who was attending the festivities.
However, shortly after the march began, the group was halted by the
police who began to disperse the crowd with tear gas. Mares was there
at the moment and tried to negotiate again with the police, but was
met with aggression.
Celebration of the 500th Anniversary of the
First Mass in Brazil Marked by Protest
Source: Folha de Sao Paulo ~ April 22-27, 2000
A mass which commemorated the first mass
celebrated on Brazilian soil, April 26, 1500, included a spontaneous
protest by a group of indigenous. The CNBB (The Brazilian Catholic
Bishops' Conference) had asked groups not to protest during the
liturgical celebration. Further, the Vatican itself asked the CNBB to
modify some texts and songs the planning committee had chosen for the
celebration. These texts and songs came from the moreprogressive line
of the Brazilian Catholic Church, and the Vatican wanted the mass to
be less political in nature, especially since an official from Rome,
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, would be celebrating the mass.However,
shortly after the penitential rite, in which representatives of the
Church asked pardon of blacks and indigenous for the way the Church
has treated them in these 500 years, a group of 40 indigenous
approached the altar carry a black banner, representing the struggle
in which the indigenous have been involved for the past 500 years. A
spokesperson for the group, Matalaue of the Pataxo tribe, took the
microphone and spoke for about five minutes. "Five hundred years
of suffering, of massacre, of exclusion, of prejudice, extermination
of our relatives, rape of our women, devastation of our lands that
you took from us with your invasion. Today, we want to denounce at
whatever cost the lies of the "Discovery." We have been
fighting. For how long must we do so?" declared Matalaue.
Organizers of the event were taken by
surprise. They had talked with the group thenight before the mass,
and had mutually agreed to let the indigenous groupprotest after the
mass. The indigenous wanted to do a protest in response to how they
had been treated the previous Saturday (see story above). "They
did not come up at the agreed upon time. It was spontaneous and
unexpected, but the CNBB did not view this an affront," said
Bishop Geraldo Lyrio Rocha.
Study Gives Official Recognition to a "Quilombo"
Source: Folha de Sao Paulo ~ April 22-27, 2000
A study authorized by the state of Sao Paulo
gave official recognition to a "quilombo" community,
Cacandoca, located on the northern coast of the state.
"Quilombos" were communities made up of runaway slaves.
Today, descendants of these slaves still live on lands occupied by
their ancestors. By the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, any community
which is recognized by the state as being an authentic quilombo
community gains title to the property. The problem with the Cacandoca
community, and many other quilombo communities, is that others have
invaded their lands over the years (especially during the 1970's in
this particular case) and now claim legitimate ownership. But having
this first step of recognition is an important step in the process.
Government to Publish Yearly Publication on Women
Source: Inesc ~ March 18-30, 2000
The government is now obligated to publish a
yearbook which keeps track of statistics on women. Maternal mortality
rates, pregnancy among adolescents, participation in the work place,
salaries, levels of study, records of violence: these are all areas
to be covered in the publication.
The author of the bill, Luiza Erundina,
states that the publication is essential in order to monitor public
policies which affect the role of women in society. Erundina also
proposed that this information be centralized in the National Council
on Women's Rights.
Tension Rising Between Police, Landless Workers
Stephen Buckley, Washington Post ~ Tuesday,
April 4, 2000
Guairaca, Brazil -- Military police
officers, masked and silent, crowded the edges of the 1,500-acre
Figueira Ranch, where about 400 landless peasants had been squatting
for four months. The officers carried truncheons, semiautomatic
weapons, pistols and tear-gas canisters.
By 9 o'clock that February morning, scores
of peasants had emerged from shacks to confront the 650 police
officers with axes, machetes, Molotov cocktails and homemade bombs,
but they were no match for the police.
After scattering hundreds of people by
firing into the air, the officers sprayed the crowd with
rubber-coated bullets, injuring 10 people, including six children.
Tear gas enveloped the ranch. Officers snagged many of those who
tried to run, witnesses said, then stuffed their faces into the dirt
and shouted: "You want land? Here's your land!''
But if police officials thought that would
deter members of Movimento dos Sem Terra, or the Landless Workers
Movement, they were wrong. Five days later, the peasants returned.
"In the past, some people would just
give up,'' said Delfino Becker, 36, a leader of the land rights
movement here in the southern state of Parana. "What has changed
is that, even though the police have become tougher over the years,
90 percent of the places that are occupied now were vacated and are
occupied again.''
Tensions are nothing new between authorities
and the 20-year- old movement, whose aim is to pressure the
government into providing more land for rural workers in this country
of 167 million, Latin America's most populous. Currently, 3 percent
of the population -- many of them descendants and beneficiaries of an
entrenched rural oligarchy -- owns 66 percent ofBrazil's arable land.
But in the past year, confrontations between
police and landless workers have become more frequent and more
violent, as authorities have grown more aggressive about removing
protesters from properties, and the protesters in turn have become
more stubborn about staying.
Last week, in the latest standoff, nearly
500 peasants in the northern state of Para seized the offices of a
land reform agency, taking its director hostage and insisting that
the government act on their demands for land.
Police raids have proved particularly tough
on land reform protesters in the states of Parana and Para. In 1998,
police in the two states forcibly removed 211 landless families from
other people's property; last year, that number surged to 853.
Throughout Parana's northwest region, with
its graceful fields of orange trees, coffee plants and swaying sugar
cane, some 1,300 families have swarmed onto the area's sprawling
ranches. Police have raided 35 landless workers' squatter camps since
early last year, according to the Pastoral Land Commission, a
Catholic organization that tracks the movement. Those sweeps have led
to more than 180 arrests; from 1994 to 1998, police inParana arrested
102 protesters.
Four hundred protesters at the 1,500-acre
Figueira Ranch in Guairaca marched onto the property last October.
They included Salete Pelizzari, 31, whose eyes hold a hard,
beaten-down quality that make her appear older. Pelizzari, whose five
children range in age from 4 to 15, lived in Paraguay for several
years before returning to Brazil in 1998.
When police rushed the Figueira Ranch in
February, she and her husband scooped the smaller children into their
arms and took off. Rubber- coated bullets and tear gas left one
daughter, 7, with stomach and eye injuries. Another daughter, 4,
spent more than two weeks in a hospital for treatment of burns. At
least 14 rubber-coated bullets struck her husband, Darci DeConto, 47.
Yet, less than a week after the raid, the family came back.
"We have to keep fighting; we have to
keep trying,'' Pelizzari said. "If they want to hurt us again,
they can. We're not running anymore.''
The military police commander for Parana's
northwest region said such resistance has become commonplace in
recent months. But ``the more resistance we face, the more force we
have to use,'' Maj. Jose Rigoni Filho said.
"Land reform is back on the
international and national agendas,'' wrote Jim Riddell, an expert on
land issues at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. One prime
reason, he noted, is that "rural populations are participating
in the stream of world information and development discussions in
ways that were impossible a decade ago.''
Over the past two decades, the Landless
Workers Movement in Brazil has grown into one of the world's most
powerful land rights campaigns, with an estimated 5 million families
involved in its struggle. Typically, hundreds of workers and their
families set up camps on land that the government has deemed
unproductive, or on plots where ownership is in doubt.
The tactics have worked slowly in this vast
country. The government has parceled out land to 476,000 families
since 1979, including more than 299,000 families in the past five
years. Yet the quickened pace of land distribution has failed to
quell tensions. One source of rancor is a recent spate of court
rulings that have marked some lands as productive after the
government had decided otherwise. Another source is the powerful
Democratic Union of Landowners, which is accused by land rights
activists of paying off police and henchmen to rid disputed lands of
protesters. The group denies the allegations.
GLOBAL CONFLICTS
The United Nations says hostilities between
landowners and landless people are rattling numerous developing countries.
According to U.N. officials, at least 22
nations -- from El Salvador to Ivory Coast to the Philippines -- are
struggling with major land conflicts, many of which have intensified
recently as poor and lower-income citizens grow impatient with
hurdles that historically have kept land beyond their reach. Such
obstacles include official corruption, byzantine land-purchasing laws
and murky or nonexistent title regulations.
In addition, land rights movements are
receiving unprecedented support from nongovernmental organizations
and are taking advantage of new tools, such as the Internet. A number
of land rights campaigns, including the Landless
Workers Movement now have web sites.Washington Post
_____________________________________________________________The
reproduction of this material is permitted as long as the source is
cited. If you wish to contact us or receive NEWS FROM BRAZIL free of
charge by e-mail send a message to sejup1@
ax.apc.org ______________________________________________________________
END
top of page
Urgent
Action Appeal
SEJUP (Servico
Brasileiro de Justica e Paz)
Landless Workers In Danger in The State of Para
The military police are about to expel 800
families from a MST community called Acampamento 26 de Marco, in the
state of Para. This community is located in the same region where the
massacre of Eldorado dos Carajas happened four years ago, when 19
landless workers were killed. The 800 families have occupied the land
for over a year. The land which was previously unproductive now has
rice, corn, beans, squash, mandioc, and is capable of sustaining
nearly 7,000 persons. The encampment is named after the date when two
leaders of the area were assassinated by the owners of the land, who
still remain unpunished for their crime.
We are asking our international friends to
organize letter campaigns in defense of the landless workers
movement, in order to prevent more human rights abuses in the region.
Please write to:
Dr.
Almir José de Oliveira Gabriel, Governador do Estado do
Pará, Palácio dos Despachos, Rodovia Augusto Montenegro
Km. 9, 66.823-010 Belem PA, Brazil. Fax 91 248-0133
Murderer of Expedito Ribeiro de Souza
Escapes From Prison
José Serafim Sales, known as
"Barrerito," who was sentenced to twenty-five years in
prison in 1995 for the murder of Expedito Ribeiro de Souza, president
o the Union of Rural Workers of Rio Maria, escaped from prison in
Marabá on Tuesday, March 14. A few days earlier, on March 10,
twelve people had escaped from the same prison. Nothing was done
about it, and so four days later Barrerito escaped as well.
José Serafim Sales is an extremely dangerous gunman. In
addition to murdering Expedito he was also convicted this month of
another murder in Rio Maria that he committed around the same time
that he killed Expedito. He is charged with a third murder in Rio
Maria. It is a sign of the irresponsibility of the authorities that
he was transferred last year from the prison in Belém to the
much less secure one in Marabá.
The Pastoral Land Commission and the Rio
Maria Committee has denounced, once again, the negligence and
complicity of the state government of Pará with regard to the
escapes of assassins of union leaders and rural workers in the south
of the state. Let us recall that from 1999 Jerônimo Alves de
Amorim, the rancher charged with having ordered the assassination of
Expedito Ribeiro de Souza and with having hired Barreirito, was a
fugitive from justice. Despite two orders for his arrest, he
practically walked around freely in the states of Goiás and
Pará, without the police even seeming to care to arrest him.
He was finally captured this past November in Mexico and delivered to
the Federal Police. He was imprisoned in the Marituba penitenciary in
Belém, but, for some strange reason, he is presently in
another prison that is much easier to escape.
The escape of Barreirito poses a danger to
several witnesses and to all those who have been struggling for the
past nine years in the south of Pará to have the murderers of
Expedito and other union leaders in Rio Maria captured, tried, and
sentenced. The Pastoral Land Commission and the Rio Maria Committee
is demanding the state and federal governments take all measures
necessary for the capture of José Serafim Sales and the
transfer of Jerônimo Alves de Amorim back to the penitentiary
in Belém, so that he will not escape.
You can also help, by writing to:
Dr.
Almir José de Oliveira Gabriel, Governador do Estado do
Pará, Palácio dos Despachos, Rodovia Augusto Montenegro
Km. 9, 66.823-010 Belem PA, Brazil. Fax 91 248-0133
Thank you very much for your support.
Sincerely,
Pastoral Land Commission of Marabá
and Xinguara Xinguar ~ March 15, 2000
Request For Solidarity in The Trial of Jose Rainha
Dear friends in the struggle for land reform,
You have probably heard about the unfair
judgment rendered to MST (Movement of rural workers Without Land)
Jose Rainha Jr, accused and condemned in his first trial to 26 years
in prison without having any concrete evidence against him. On April
3, 2000, beginning at 8:00 a.m., a new trial will be held in Vitoria,
Espiritu Santo. For each of the segments of the trial, we are
counting on the participation and presence of hundreds of
sympathizers, whether it be through cards, faxes, email, physical
presence, articles, protests, petitions, etc. These forms of protest
demonstrate a search for justice for landless Brazilian workers.
It is especially important right now when
the Brazilian government is stepping up its repression against
workers that we can count on your support or even presence in
Vitoria. We hope to see our friends and supporters in Vitoria and we
would like to thank you again for the support you have given us in
our struggle for dignity, land, work and justice.
In solidarity,
Joao Pedro Stedile, National Coordinator of
the MST
You may send messages asking a fair trial to:
- Judge Ronaldo Gonçalves de Souza:
fax 00 55 27 222 38 52
- President of the Justice Court of
Espírito, Santo Judge Wellington
da Costa Citi
- Governor of Espírito Santo, José
Ignácio Ferreira
- Minister of Justice, José
Carlos Dias: fax 00 55 61 321 15 65
- President of the Republic, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso: fax 00 55 61 322 23 14
- MST -
Landless Workers Movement
END
top of page
IDB Called
to Defend Clean Energy in Brazil
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ April 24
Latin American environmentalists are calling
on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to change its energy
policy for the region, saying it must finance clean sources of energy
that benefit the poor instead of funding harmful mega-projects. Glenn
Switkes, the Latin American program director for the International
Rivers Network (IRN), said it is disturbing that the IDB will likely
finance the Cana Brava hydroelectric plant in Brazil, a project of
the Belgian firm, Tractebel.
Cana Brava is one of eight plants included
in the Brazilian energy plan for the next eight years on the
Tocantins River, which originates at the country's geographical
center, near Brasilia, and runs north, crossing the eastern Amazon region.
The river, already affected by the building
of two enormous dams, the Tucurui and the Serra da Mesa, "has
become a hydro 'staircase'," without any environmental impact
statement done on the potential effects of the 10 hydroelectric
plants, Switkes pointed out.
There are also two plants planned for the
Araguaia River, the largest branch of the Tocantins. Officials plan
to construct a waterway with the two rivers in order to transport
soya produced in the nation's central region to a port on Brazil's
northern Atlantic coast -- another project environmentalists condemn.
Tucurui would be Brazil's second largest
hydroelectric dam and, in its second phase of construction -- ending
December 2002 -- would flood part of the Amazon forest.
Cana Brava, to be completed in July 2002,
would intensify the damage caused by the nearby Serra da Mesa dam,
which flooded 1,784 square km of the Brazilian savannah, and 10
percent of the territory reserved for the Ava-canoeiro, a small
indigenous group.
Environmentalists suspect that work on the
Cana Brava dam, which wil be 30 percent larger than the Itaipu, the
gigantic hydro-electric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay, may have
also triggered an outbreak of yellow fever, a disease that has caused
several deaths recently in the outskirts of Brasilia.
The dam would mean further damage to the
Ava-canoeiro reservation, changing the levels of its rivers, observed
Laudovina Aparecida Pereira, local coordinator of the Indigenous
Missionary Council, an agency of Brazil's Catholic Church.
Other hydroelectric plants, such as Serra
Quebrada and Lageado, will affect the Apinaje and Xerente indigenous
peoples, who live on reserves along the Tocantins River, she added.
A group of Latin American non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) has applied pressure on the IDB to suspend funds
for this type of project in the region, sending delegates, like
Switkes, to the bank's annual meeting in New Orleans in late March.
The bank "continues to reinforce the conventional energy model
and the interests of the region's elites," by backing down on
the commitments it made in 1994 for sustainable development and
social equality, according to a report presented at the IDB meeting,
authored by the National Health, Environment and Labor Center Agua
Viva, a Colombian NGO.
From 1995 to 1998, the IDB spent just 1.5
percent of its money on promoting alternative energy sources that are
more efficient and environmentally healthy, while 83 percent of the
funds went to projects that involve fossil fuels, argued
environmentalists in New Orleans.
A large portion of the remaining money went
to hydroelectric production, which is a renewable resource but often
harms the environment by flooding forests and displacing people from
their lands.
IDB funds are not used for reducing poverty,
according to the NGOs. Latin America still has 75 million people who
lack access to electricity and they are not included as a priority in
related projects, especially those funded by private firms.
Increasing energy resources that are
"truly sustainable" and giving the communities affected by
the projects a voice throughout the process were among the demands
the NGOs made on the multilateral bank.
In a letter to IDB president Enrique
Iglesias, Switkes asked the bank to review its intent to lend $150
million for the construction of the Cana Brava plant because it
belongs to Tractebel, which "would be able to obtain these
resources on the international financial market."
The IDB is already greatly responsible for
the negative impacts of the "cascade" of energy plants on
the Tocantins because it approved a loan for setting up transmission
lines that run the length of the river to carry the generated
electricity to the heavily industrialized and densely populated areas
of south-central Brazil. The argument that Cana Brava electricity
will serve the local population makes no sense because it will
principally supply distant, wealthier cities, Switkes pointed out.
The environmentalist also condemned other
"omissions and errors" in the bank's assessment, which
ignored the major impacts of the project on biodiversity, the
environment and the people.
The "cerrados" or Brazilian
savannahs are among the ecosystems with greatest biodiversity in the
world, and are some of the most threatened, according to
environmentalists and the Brazilian authorities themselves,
emphasized the IRN leader, who charged that the IDB report's
statement that there are no species threatened by the project is misleading.
Ignoring the indigenous people affected,
just because they are few in number, contradicts the IDB's own
policy, he said. In addition, the bank denigrates the population by
displacing 110 families and is not taking into account the local
"quilombola" population, black descendants of slaves whose
rights are protected under the Brazilian Constitution.
The battle for the rivers also includes the
Araguaia-Tocantins Waterway, one of the mega-projects included on the
Brazilian government's list of priorities. It would mean the dredging
of the river bottom in several areas in order to permit access for
bigger barges.
A lawsuit by the Social-Environmental
Institute (ISA), an NGO, filed on behalf of the Xavante Indians, put
a stop to the project last October.
A judge ruled in favor of the Xavantes
because the Impact Statement, a legal requirement for beginning major
works, was false in that it omitted the assessments made by
anthropologists entrusted with studying the project's social effects.
Because research, presentation of evidence and other procedures are
required, waterway construction will be held up for "at least
six months," estimated Fernando Batista, an ISA attorney.
END
top of page
Greenpeace
and Deni Indians Demand Removal of Logging From Indigenous Lands
Greenpeace ~ April 19
Greenpeace today announced a joint project
to assist the Deni Indian communities of the Brazilian Amazon on
self-demarcation of their traditional lands. The Deni land has been
under threat from the Malaysian company, WTK, since 1995 when the
multi-national logging giant first started negotiations which ended
in their purchase of over 313,000 hectares of forest from a Brazilian
businessman. Approximately half of the WTK land overlaps Deni Indian territories.
Land demarcation is the legal instrument by
which the Brazilian government recognises indigenous rights to their
traditional territories. The Deni land stretches over 1,600,000
hectares of Amazon rainforest .
The meeting to announce the demarcation
effort was attended by 12 Patarahus (Chiefs) from the four Deni
villages of the Cuniua River. Also attending was Brazilian government
official Artur Ribeiro Mendes, Co-ordinator of PPTAL (Program for
Indigenous Lands Demarcation of the Legal Amazon) and representative
of FUNAI (The National Foundation of the Indian).
The Greenpeace activists and members of the
Deni communities also joined together in a symbolic demonstration on
the banks of the remote Cuniua River, some 1,000 kilometres from the
Amazonas State capitol of Manaus, and called for WTK to leave the
Deni lands.
"Demarcation of their territory is
crucial to guarantee the physical and cultural survival of the
remaining 800 members of the Deni," said Greenpeace Amazon
campaigner Paulo Adario. "The opening of a new logging centre in
an untouched forest area in the heart of the Amazon is in itself
unacceptable, and could also encourage expansion of the illegal
logging frontier deeper into the region."
"We are demanding that demarcation
starts immediately, under the direct and consistent supervision of
the Deni," added Adario.
Greenpeace has joined together in
partnership with two indigenous peoples' organisations, CIMI and
OPAN, to meet the Deni's request for assistance with the demarcation.
The groups first visited the Deni communities in May 1999. "The
Deni want their land demarcated because they know this to be the
first step in keeping their traditional way of life," said CIMI
representative Miguel Aparicio.
The partnership's main objectives are to map
the social, economic and health status of the Deni and to train them
in the handling of technical equipment necessary to the demarcation
process. "The project is planned to last about six months and
will include training in the use of GPS's (satellite location
devices), so they can themselves define the boundaries of their
territory", said Nilo D'Avila, Greenpeace's co-ordinator for the project.
This joint announcement with the Deni people
is the most recent activity of the MV Amazon Guardian tour that
started in Manaus on March 23. The Amazon Guardian will travel
throughout the Brazilian Amazon until July, highlighting the problems
of illegal logging and promoting sustainable alternatives for the region.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Gina Sanchez, Forest Campaign Media
Co-ordinator in Amsterdam, +31 20 5249 547
- Rebeca Lerer, Amazon Press Officer in
Amazon, +874 323 200371 (Imarsat)
Video and stills available from GPI: +31 20
5249 547
Notes:
(1) The Deni live in the western part of
Amazonas State in Brazil, on the Cuniua river (a tributary of the
Purus River) and the Xerua River (a tributary of the Jurua River).
The communities are approximately 1,000 air kilometres from Manaus,
the State capitol, and are accessible only by boat or float plane.
(2) The rights of indigenous people are
protected under the constitution of Brazil. The Brazilian Federal
Constitution of 1988 states that the indigenous right over the land
is an original right, i.e. that rights to their traditional lands
belong to the Indians. The demarcation process formally recognises
the territorial domains of each indigenous nation. Demarcation is a
lengthy legal and physical process that includes mechanical and
social surveys to confirm the range of traditional lands and, when
complete, prohibits all forms of industrial development.
(3) The Brazilian government itself admits
that 80% of the Amazon logging is illegal. One of the current
industrial practices in the region is to use government-approved
forest management plans to "launder" illegally harvested
timber. If a commercial logging enterprise were to start working in
this remote area, it would be almost impossible, under the current
inspection regime, to determine if logs coming from the region were
cut legally or illegally.
(4) CIMI (Missionary Indigenous Council) is
a non-profit organisation that has been promoting the autonomy of the
indigenous people of the Purus River basin for over 25 years. OPAN
(Native Amazon Operation) was founded 31 years ago and has extensive
experience with self-demarcation processes as a result of their work
with the indigenous Kulina nation.
END
top of page
Police
Action Stops Brazil’s 500th Anniversary Protests
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ April 22
Police used force and blockaded roadways
today in Brazil's northeastern state of Bahia to contain protests
during the official commemoration of the 500th anniversary of
Portugal's arrival here, led by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
and his Portuguese counterpart, Jorge Sampaio. The ceremony was held
in the city of Porto Seguro, where the Portuguese conquistadors
landed on Apr. 22, 1500. Nearly 5,000 police officers surrounded the
city, preventing access to the site, even for tourists.
Some 1,000 indigenous peoples, students,
peasants and Afro-Brazilian activists who gathered in Santa Cruz de
Cabralia, 23 km from Porto Seguro, were attacked in the morning hours
by police who fired rubber bullets, sprayed tear gas and beat
demonstrators with their batons.
The police action resulted in at least six
people injured and the arrests of 141 more, who authorities then
encircled in a town plaza as they stood in the rain. Helicopters with
armed personnel aboard served as backup for the operation.
Carlos Frederico Mares, president of the
government's National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), was also beaten
by the police as he tried to prevent the attacks, as was a
photographer for Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
Later, some 3,000 people, including
opposition parliamentarians who met in Cabralia, found the road to
Porto Seguro blocked. They had intended to go there to protest the
official ceremonies celebrating the 500-year anniversary because all
social movement groups had been excluded.
More than 2,000 of the protesters had
participated in the National Conference of Indigenous Peoples and
Organizations of Brazil, held Apr. 18-21 at Coroa Vermelha, a beach
community near Cabralia and Porto Seguro.
The police actions prevented a delegation of
23 indigenous leaders from reaching Porto Seguro, where they had
hoped to present Cardoso with the declaration approved at last week's conference.
The resolutions contained in the document
include 20 demands for implementing the native people's rights
recognized in Brazil's Constitution, such as the demarcation and
protection of their lands.
The Landless Movement (Movimento dos Sem
Terra -- MST), which had at least 2,000 activists on another road
leading into Porto Seguro, were not able to reach the historic city
either. The MST protesters could not get past the six roadblocks the
police had set up, which also prevented tourists from getting to the site.
Cardoso, who the night before had referred
to the MST as " fascist" because it had threatened to
disrupt the official celebrations, acknowledged in his speech Apr. 22
that "social wounds form part of the heritage of these 500 years."
The president also recognized the legitimacy
of the protests and demands of indigenous peoples, blacks and
landless peasants, saying that Brazil's oligarchic and slave past had
made the nation's social structure "one of the most unjust in
the world." He promised the indigenous peoples the government
would continue with projects to demarcate their land -- a belated
compensation for the painful birth of the Brazilian nation, making
reference to the massacres that reduced the native population from
approximately five million in 1500 to just 350,000 today.
For the peasants, he pointed to the advances
already made in agrarian reform, though the MST says it is not
enough. Cardoso admitted that "the concentration of land
ownership continues to exclude millions of Brazilians from the
benefits of development. "Democracy," said Cardoso, is
"the road that will lead to the universality of rights and of
the concrete conditions for the full exercise of citizenship."
He said the time has come for Brazil to put
an end to social exclusion, given the level of development the nation
has achieved. "Poverty is no longer a justification for the
misery of its people."
Portugal's President Sampaio stated he was
honored to take part in the festivities and expressed the willingness
of his country to develop closer ties with Brazil and to help build
tighter relations between the European Union and the Southern Common
Market (Mercosur), of which Brazil is the largest member.
"We are responsible for the present,
not the past," stated Sampaio, in response to potential
criticisms of the Portuguese colonization, the major factor in the
plight of Brazil's indigenous peoples, who were nearly exterminated.
The Portuguese president emphasized the
enormous possibilities for a future of cooperation between the two countries.
Meanwhile, with the city surrounded by
police and the heightened tension as they faced the risk of mass
protests, the official celebration of Brazil's quincentennial was
limited to officials and special guests, without grassroots participation.
Other commemorative acts, as well as
protests, took place in several cities throughout the nation,
including concerts and the planting of 200,000 palo-brasil trees at
schools in all municipalities. The tree is a national symbol and gave
the inspiration for the country's name.
In Porto Alegre in the south, protesters
destroyed an outdoor clock, a symbol of the controversial celebration
because it had indicated the days left before April 22. For the
indigenous peoples from all Brazilian regions who met in Coroa
Vermelha, the 500 years constitute "a history of infamy and
humiliation," of invasions of their lands, slavery and death.
Their principal demands, including the legal
demarcation of their territories by the end of this year, the
recovery of lands occupied by invading migrants and the halting of
mega-projects -- such as hydroelectric dams -- that affect their
regions, are based on articles of the Constitution, say indigenous leaders.
They want the Statute of Indigenous Peoples
to be approved, a measure that recognizes their rights as a distinct
society. It has been held up in Brazil's Congress since 1991. The
leaders also demand that justice be served on those responsible for
the ongoing violent crimes against their peoples.
The declaration also calls for an indigenous
educational system, one that uses their native languages and
transmits their cultures, as well as the creation of an assistance
organization linked to the nation s Executive branch that includes
the participation of leaders elected by the native peoples
themselves. The document addressed to the president pays homage to
the native peoples who resisted white domination throughout the last
500 years and proclaims the commitment to continue fighting so that
future indigenous generations are free in a free country.
END
top of page
Activists
Denounce 500 Years of Destruction in Brazil
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ April 21
For environmentalists and indigenous peoples
the 500 years that have passed since the arrival of the Portuguese
conquistadors in Brazil -- an event the government plans to celebrate
tomorrow -- are five centuries of devastation, pollution and extermination.
The name of the country itself is symbolic
of the destruction. It comes from the "palo-brasil," a tree
species that thrived in forests along the Atlantic coast in 1500,
but, because it was an excellent source of red ink, it became the
first victim of colonial exploitation. Some 70 million palo-brasil
trees were cut down and taken to Portugal over four centuries,
experts estimate.
Added to this was the demographic,
agricultural and industrial expansion concentrated along the shores
of the Atlantic, which threatened the tree species with extinction as
well as the entire forest system that makes up the Mata Atlantica.
Of these forests that covered 1.2 million
square km in the coastal areas 500 years ago, from the extreme south
to the northeast of Brazil, just 7.3 percent remains, according to
the non-governmental organization SOS Mata Atlantica.
In response to this situation, the Brazilian
government announced a program for planting 200,000 palo-brasil trees
this Saturday at the 170,000 schools throughout the country's 5,500
municipalities as part of the fifth centennial festivities
celebrating the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese.
The event has its symbolic side, but it is
also an attempt to renew this tree species in Brazil. But botanists
do not think the measure will be very effective. The tree plantings
are widespread, in inappropriate climates, soils and ecosystems,
outside the species' natural medium.
The palo-brasil will not be able to grow and
survive alone, outside its natural environment, says Tania Sampaio, a
researcher at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens, which maintains a
small recovered forest of the Mata Atlantica in a nearby community
where there are many of these trees.
The Mata Atlantica was the major victim
among Brazil's forested areas that have been over-exploited, as it
has lost 93 percent of its original area, stressed a report by the
Brazilian office of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the
environmental status of the nation as it reaches its 500th
anniversary. There are some forests, such as the Araucaria, in the
south, that have been reduced to just two percent of their original areas.
The destruction has now displaced other
large ecosystems. The cerrados, or Brazilian savannah, also lost half
of their forest cover, followed by the Amazon, which has seen 15
percent destruction in the last 25 years.
The WWF study, which emphasizes the alarming
nature of environmental damage done in the last five centuries,
proposes lessons for the future, now that technology permits faster
destruction, said Garo Batmanian, the organization's secretary
general in Brazil.
Logging of the Mata Atlantica intensified
during the second half of the 19th century, when the Portuguese ended
their palo-brasil tree extraction, but sugar cane and coffee
plantations began to replace the forests. The development of other
crops and the growth of industry, as well as the expansion of cities
along the coast, only increased the pressures on the forest ecosystems.
The Atlantic forests are one of the world's
25 most environmentally threatened areas, alongside the cerrados, on
the list drawn up by the US-based Conservation International, a
non-governmental organization.
The cerrados and the Amazon remained
relatively unharmed until the mid-20th century, but destruction in
those areas, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively, only
continues to accelerate, according to studies by the WWF. The primary
villains in these regions are logging activities and the expansion of
soya farming.
In addition to the near extinction of the
palo-brasil, the destruction of the Atlantic region's native forests
harms the numerous rivers that supply Brazil's most populated areas
with water. Water shortages are already occurring in Sao Paulo and
many large cities of the south and northeast.
Environmental degradation, however, pales in
comparison to the extermination of indigenous peoples over the last
five centuries. Brazil's native population is estimated to have been
five million in 1500, when the Portuguese numbered just two million.
The number of Brazilian indigenous people
had fallen to 600,000 at the time of the nation's independence in
1822, and to little more than 100,000 in 1970, according to experts estimates.
In the last several decades, when a native
protection policy was developed, Brazil's indigenous population grew
to nearly 350,000, divided among 220 groups and 180 languages. But
some 800 native communities disappeared over the last 500 years and
indigenous peoples became the invisible side of the Brazilian
population, lamented Marcos Terena, a spokesman for his community and
current coordinator of Indigenous Rights at the government's National
Indian Foundation (FUNAI).
The term "peoples" is the correct
word for indigenous groups as Brazil's 1988 Constitution recognizes
the right of these ethnicities to survive and live as indigenous
peoples, with their own cultures, customs and traditions, explained
Carlos Frederico Mare, president of FUNAI.
Though he is a high-ranking government
official, Mare will not participate in Saturday's official
festivities of the 500-year anniversary of the arrival of the
Portuguese in Brazil.
Like the indigenous peoples and
environmentalists, he does not think there is much to celebrate.
END
top of page
500th
Anniversary Fiesta Already a Flop in Brazil
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ April 20
Festivities planned for the 500th
anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese have turned into a
headache for the Brazilian government, with the prospect of thousands
of the country's indigenous, black and landless groups planning to
protest the government-sponsored event. The celebrations are
scheduled to take place in Porto Seguro in the northeastern state of
Bahia, where the colonists first landed on April 22, 1500.
Protests by indigenous groups and landless
activists, who have flocked to the area from across the country, led
authorities to post troops throughout Bahia and to sharply limit the
programmed visits to the area by Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso
of Brazil and Jorge Sampaio of Portugal.
More than 6,000 military police and soldiers
will be mobilized to protect the presidents and provide security at
the official ceremonies, with participation by the public tightly
restricted in order to avoid the physical barriers that irritate
Cardoso when he makes public appearances.
The event has already attracted some 350
journalists, many of them foreign correspondents, drawn by recent
clashes between protesters and security forces and the possibility of
further incidents.
The government has blamed the high level of
tension and violent incidents in the area on the Landless Movement
(MST). Cardoso, who vowed that the powerful national movement would
not derail the government's celebrations, described the activists as
"agitators" who have "deviated from democratic legality."
The main protest, however, is being staged
by the more than 2,000 participants of the Conference of Indigenous
Peoples and Organizations of Brazil, which began on April 18 in Playa
Coroa Vermelha, 15 kms from Porto Seguro.
On April 22, the indigenous delegates will
join MST activists, representatives of the Black Power movement,
trade unionists and students in the "Other 500" protest,
which organizers hope will draw 40,000 demonstrators. As the
participants arrive, mainly by bus, they will face police roadblocks,
and observers warn of the risk of violent clashes.
The Bahia military police announced they
would crack down on counter-demonstrations opposed to the official
celebrations -- demonstrating their intent by blocking access to the
region by MST members and by destroying, on April 4, a monument being
built by a local indigenous community in homage to ancestors who fell
victim to Portuguese colonization.
Anger at the police action forced the
government to back off and allow the monument to be rebuilt. But the
incident heightened the tension, and gave the indigenous conference
-- which several pragmatic leaders intended as a forum to seek
solutions for the future -- an even more marked oppositional
overtone. This came on top of errors committed by the government in
the preparations for the celebration, which led many to warn that it
would be a fiasco.
The commemoration of the so-called
"discovery" of what is today Brazil is "a disgrace, a
bunch of nonsense, like making copies of the caravels," the
ships in which the Portuguese arrived in 1500, said Black historian
Joel Rufino dos Santos, who has held important cultural positions in
the government. The historian criticized the government's failure to
include indigenous people and Blacks, who were essential to the
formation of Brazil, in the events surrounding the 500th anniversary.
According to Rufino dos Santos, the errors
began with the make-up of the inter-ministerial commission created to
organize the "Brazil 500 Years" events, which was dominated
by conservative authorities, including senior military officers.
The "colonialist" character of
what was basically organized as a "frivolous" party even
drew the criticism of the Portuguese delegates sitting on the
organizing commission, he added. For example, the commemorations are
being organized in southern Bahia, where the Pataxo Indians live in
appalling conditions and are struggling to recuperate land
appropriated by local landowners in a fight that has involved violent
incidents and has even cost lives. The tension has been particularly
high since late last year.
The date itself is seen as a provocation.
Yesterday was Brazil's National Day of Indigenous Peoples, and
tomorrow is the third anniversary of the death of Pataxo leader
Galdino Jesus dos Santos, who was burnt alive in Brasilia by youths
who took him for a homeless person as he dozed at a bus stop with
nowhere to stay, on a visit to the capital to discuss the problems
plaguing his people.
This is also a time of protest for the MST,
because on April 17, 1996, 19 landless activists were killed in the
northern state of Para, and the military police who committed the
massacre have gone unpunished. The movement -- which is fighting for
faster, more effective land reform -- has announced that it will
occupy 500 plots of land left idle, and claimed to have carried out
over 100 occupations by noon yesterday.
Minister of Agrarian Development Raul
Jungmann refused to dialogue with the MST because a group of landless
activists has occupied the headquarters of the ministry's Institute
of Agrarian Colonization and Reform in Salvador, the capital of
Bahia, since April 17.
The minister announced this week that rural
settlements comprised of peasant farmers awarded plots of land would
be put under the responsibility of landowners and agribusiness
companies -- a measure opposed by the MST, which complains that it
would mean the privatization and essential derailing of the agrarian
reform process.
Another problem is the supposed
"privatization" of the 500th anniversary celebrations.
Publicity for the celebrations was monopolized by the Globo TV
network, which built clocks in the main cities of Brazil to tick off
the countdown to April 22.
A week ago, indigenous protesters shot
arrows at the clock in Brasilia, seen as a symbol of appropriation of
the national date by the private economic group that dominates TV
broadcasting in Brazil. Later, students and trade unionists tried to
destroy the clocks set up in Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza, the
capital of the northeastern state of Ceara, triggering a harsh police
crackdown which left a number of people injured or arrested.
Against that backdrop, there is little
chance of salvaging the government's big bash on April 22.
Cardoso's advisers even considered
cancelling his visit to Porto Seguro, according to the daily O Estado
de Sao Paulo. But the government cannot simply telephone the guest of
honor, Portuguese President Sampaio, and tell him the whole thing is off.
END
top of page
Indigenous
Groups Protest 500th Anniversary Bash in Brazil
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ April 19
Indigenous delegates from across Brazil are
meeting in the eastern state of Bahia to protest official
commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the so-called
"discovery" of what is today Brazil. Some 1,500
representatives of 170 indigenous groups from various regions, mainly
in the Amazon jungle, began to meet yesterday in Santa Cruz de
Cabralia, near the spot where the Portuguese first came ashore, to
discuss their common problems.
But in the past few weeks, it became clear
that this week's gathering would be even more protest-oriented than
originally envisioned by the organizers. The conference -- titled
"the Other 500" -- will culminate tomorrow in a massive
demonstration in which Black and landless movements will also participate.
On April 4, 200 military police raided the
indigenous area of Cabralia and destroyed a monument that the local
Pataxo Indian community was building in memory of the native
inhabitants massacred during 500 years of "invasion" of
Brazil by Europeans or whites.
The "Monument to Resistance"
consisted of a map of Latin America painted on the rocks, with crafts
representing the people who lived what is now Brazil prior to the
arrival of the Portuguese.
The police brutality triggered a national
outcry. No authority has come forward to assume responsibility or
admit to ordering the police raid. Minister of Sports and Tourism
Rafael Greca, the coordinator of the 500th anniversary celebrations,
has caught much of the blame because he urged the Bahia state
government to take "preventive measures" to ensure
"that the intolerance of a few will not keep the nation from
celebrating its 'Brazilianness'." Presidents Fernando Henrique
Cardoso of Brazil and Jorge Sampaio of Portugal will preside over the
central ceremony of the official celebrations tomorrow in Porto
Seguro, just 15 kms from the indigenous conference.
Tomorrow's protest demonstration could draw
as many as 100,000 protesters, among indigenous, Blacks, landless
movement (MST) activists and other "excluded people," said
Jose Adalberto Silva, one of the conference organizers.
In the area around Cabralia, tension has run
high since late last year, when the Pataxo community decided to step
up the fight to recover its land, occupied for decades by local
landowners. Two police officers have been killed in the resulting
conflicts and repression, and a Pataxo leader was thrown in prison
for two weeks.
The tension increased in recent weeks when
the MST, a powerful nationwide movement of landless peasant farmers
demanding faster, more effective land reform, held protests in
several large cities throughout the country and in the region near
Porto Seguro and Cabralia.
Another factor dampening spirits and
conspiring against the government's aim to make the 500th anniversary
a patriotic bash is a coincidence of dates. The so-called
"discovery" of Brazil took place on April 22, 1500. But
April 17 was the fourth anniversary of the "massacre of Eldorado
de Carajas," which sparked a national and international outcry
when 19 rural protesters were killed by the police, and footage of
the incident was broadcast on TV. On April 17, the MST launched a
nationwide offensive to commemorate the massacre, for which no one
has been brought to justice.
The three officers who commanded the
crackdown on the protest by landless protesters in Eldorado de
Carajas were absolved in a trial that was later declared null. After
that, more than a dozen judges refused to preside over legal
proceedings against the 155 military police implicated in the mass killing.
The state of Para, where Eldorado de Carajas
is located, is known for its rural violence and killings of trade
unionists, peasant leaders and lawyers, due to conflicts over land.
Impunity remains the norm for those responsible for the murders and
human rights violations.
A protest by the MST and leftist parties in
Belem, the capital of the state of Para, turned into a street battle
on April 17 after a group of demonstrators threw stones at the police
station and damaged at least 10 vehicles. Some 15 people were injured
and three arrested in the police crackdown on the demonstration.
More than 60 occupations of rural property
were staged on April 17, and an estimated 500 are to be carried out
in the current offensive, according to announcements by MST leaders.
But Minister of Agricultural Development Raul Jungmann said the land
occupations actually staged were far fewer. He condemned the
violence, which he described as "unnecessary," insisting
that agrarian reform was moving along steadily in Brazil.
This week, some 400 peasant farmers occupied
the headquarters of the Institute of Colonization and Agrarian
Reform, the executive organ of the Ministry of Agricultural
Development, in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, retaining four
officials in the building.
The MST protests have increased the risk of
violent clashes in the region of Porto Seguro, where more than 2,000
landless activists have gathered.
In the past few days, the local police made
a fruitless attempt, including one violent incident, to curb the flow
of peasant farmers to the spot where the 500th anniversary is to be commemorated.
Given the rising tension, authorities are
considering a shorter, more contained visit to the area by Cardoso.
The president's planned tour of the area inhabited by the local
indigenous community, where the government built a market for the
Pataxos to sell their crafts, and housing to replace the local
hovels, might be cancelled.
The housing and market project won over one
part of the community, but failed to neutralize the Pataxos' protests
against the official celebrations of "500 years of exclusion."
The Catholic Church, which on April 26 will
mark the first mass ever held in Brazil, plans to issue an apology
for its role in the extermination of indigenous peoples, which
reduced the native population of what is today Brazil from an
estimated five or six million in 1500 to around 350,000 today.
In the past few decades, the Catholic
Church's Indigenist Missionary Council has stood out for its support
for the demands put forth by indigenous communities.
But the government has taken a different
route, drawing criticism from historians as well for its attempt to
organize a "party" around the 500th anniversary of the
arrival of the Portuguese, based on the colonialist concept of
"discovery," while excluding indigenous peoples and leaving
aside any reflection on the significance of the occasion. In
consequence, the whole thing just might turn out to be a flop, warn
activists and historians.
END
top of page
Brazilian
Landless Leader Acquitted of Double Murder
by Mario Osava, (IPS) ~ Apr. 6
A Brazilian court today cleared José
Rainha Junior, a leader of the agrarian reform group Movimento dos
Sem Terra (MST), of charges that he was the "intellectual
author" of a double assassination. The third day of the jury
trial in Vitoria, capital of Espiritu Santo state on Brazil's central
coast, ended with acquittal after Rainha's defense team introduced
evidence that he was nearly 2,000 km from the scene of the crime when
the murders took place on June 5, 1989.
Four defense witnesses testified that Rainha
Junior was in Ceará at the time, a state in the nation's
northeast. In addition, the testimony of the principal prosecution
witness contained inconsistencies which the defense used to its
advantage. The verdict, however, was not unanimous -- four jurors
found Rainha innocent, while three voted for a guilty verdict.
In his first trial in 1997, Rainha was
sentenced to 26 years and six months in prison. But Brazilian law
stipulates that the accused has the right to a new trial if the
prison sentence exceeds 20 years. The first trial was held in Pedro
Canario, a town in Espiritu Santo where the assassination of police
officer Sergio Narciso da Silva and ranch-owner José Machado
Neto occurred during a dispute with local MST activists.
In addition to the anti-MST climate in Pedro
Canario, it was proved that several jurors were biased against
Rainha, and several were said to be friends of the murdered rancher.
Judicial authorities recognized the local ill will toward the accused
and scheduled the new trial to take place in the state's capital,
considered a more neutral location.
Tension had been running high in Vitoria
since the trial began on April 3, with some 3,000 MST activists and
leftist politicians rallying outside the courthouse. International
rights activists were also present, including representatives from
Amnesty International.
Meanwhile, relatives of the two victims and
people opposing the peasant movement joined in demanding a guilty
verdict for Rainha.
MST leaders had threatened to step up their
actions if the court ruled against Rainha. The honorary president of
the Workers Party (PT), Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and several
parliamentarians were present to express their solidarity with Rainha
and to demand that his name be cleared.
Rainha's legal defense was in the hands of
three attorneys, including Evandro Lins y Silva, 88, a legendary
criminal attorney in Brazil. In his statements, Lins y Silva went
beyond simply presenting evidence on the case and spoke about
agrarian reform, social justice and globalization. His performance
drew law students and attorneys to the courtroom.
Raul Jungmann, minister of agrarian affairs,
said in Brasilia that "justice has been done," and
applauded the calm in which the trial took place, in a nation he said
"is no longer dominated by the big landowners."
But the violence sparked by land disputes is
also the subject of other pending trials, such as that of the police
charged with the 1996 massacre in northern Brazil at Eldorado de
Carajás that left 19 peasants dead.
Following his acquittal, Rainha pointed to
the Eldorado de Carajás crime as he stressed thatjustice for
the landless will only be won if those responsible for the rural
massacres are punished and if "agrarian reform, education for
all, citizenship and dignity" are achieved. MST, founded in
1985, put agrarian reform on the national agenda through its intense
peasant mobilizations. Brazil has one of the world's worst land
distribution ratios, with the richest 20 percent owning 90 percent of
the land and the poorest 40 percent owning just one percent. Its
members participate in occupations of rural property they consider to
be non-productive, and of government buildings linked to the agrarian
question in order to pressure authorities to accelerate and expand
the creation of rural settlements.
The organization also carries out frequent
protest marches down the nation's highways, demonstrations in the
cities and mass assemblies. It has organized tens of thousands of
peasant families in camps set up on idle land or highways as they
wait for the government to establish permanent settlements.
Rainha, 39, made his name as a leader of the
movement in the Pontal de Paranapanema region of Sao Paulo state,
following the bloody conflicts between peasants and landowners in
Espiritu Santo. In the 1990s, he led numerous ranch invasions, which
turned him into one of MST's most-recognized leaders, and has escaped
several arrest warrants.
His wife, Diolinda Alves, has also become a
symbol of peasant and women's struggles. She was twice sent to
prison, separated from her children, as she continued to reaffirm her
commitment to fighting for agrarian reform.
END
top of page
POWER LINE
DELAY IN VENEZUELA COULD TARNISH PRESIDENTIAL MEETING
By Luis Córdova
CARACAS, Apr. 5 (IPS) -- Work on an
unfinished power line connecting Venezuela with remote northern
Brazil continues to be delayed by resistance from indigenous groups,
and the issue may be a blot on the April 6 and 7 meeting between
Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Hugo Chávez
of Venezuela.
"We have not yet agreed on anything
concrete," a spokesman for the Indigenous Federation of the
State of Bolivar told IPS today. The group refused to provide further
details, to avoid hampering last minute negotiations with the
Chávez administration.
The government has been trying to get local
indigenous communities to approve the installation of the electricity pylons.
The power line is to run from the powerful
Guri hydropower plant in southeastern Venezuela to the northern
Brazilian city of Boa Vista. The joint venture between the two
nations would supply northern Brazil with 200 megawatts a day.
But work on the project, which was to be
completed by late 1998, ground to a halt in October 1999 after
indigenous groups in southeastern Venezuela sabotaged four of the
pylons to protest the project, which they consider a threat to their communities.
The project has also been opposed by
environmental groups in Venezuela, who warn that the power line will
run through a unique, delicate ecosystem.
The Venezuelan-Brazilian power line project
is a key item on the agenda of Cardoso's two-day visit to Venezuela,
during which he plans to visit the southeastern part of the country.
The local press says that while in that area, the leader plans to
make a public plea for the project to continue.
Relations between Venezuela and Brazil are
currently strong, and there is interest in increasing trade and
investment. Trade between the two countries currently stands at $1.5
billion a year.
Business meetings have been planned in the
context of Cardoso's visit, as well as discussions on how to increase
cooperation in areas like oil -- with joint ventures -- and the
military. A project for a new bridge over the Orinoco River will also
be discussed.
The meeting will be the fifth between
Cardoso and Chávez in the past 15 months.
Chávez, who has repeatedly stressed
the importance of closer ties with Brazil, has also held meetings
with business delegations and authorities from northern Brazil, the
area to be supplied by the new power line.
On March 17, the president visited
indigenous communities in the southeast to try to get the project
back on track. But Indian leaders refused to sign a "Declaration
of Brotherhood" pledging their support for the construction and
development of Venezuela.
"I have been let down," said
Chávez at the time. But the government has continued to
negotiate with the Indigenous Federation of the State of Bolivar.
The president also warned that "I
cannot wait very long before giving our friends in Brazil an answer."
Chávez put great effort into ensuring
the participation of indigenous groups in the process of writing a
new constitution, which was approved by referendum in December.
For the first time in the history of
Venezuela, the constitution includes a chapter especially focusing on
indigenous rights, including their rights over their ancestral
territory and their right to be familiar with and to approve projects
that affect them.
Indigenous groups account for roughly
500,000 of Venezuela's 23 million people.
"We have repeatedly raised our concern
over the possible sociocultural impact" of the power line,
Nicolás Betis, one of the leaders of the Indigenous
Federation, told IPS after the president visited the area last month.
Betis said past experiences with development
projects have been bad, and have hurt the stability of local
indigenous communities. He pointed out that groups in southeastern
Venezuela had negative experiences during the construction of the
road connecting the country with Brazil.
Those opposed to the power line are afraid
that it will lead to the arrival of miners, who are known for causing
great destruction in the Amazon jungle. The Indigenous Federation
says that before it gives its consent to the project, it wants to be
clear on "the kind of development" that the power line will bring.
The Brazilian portion of the power line has
reportedly been completed, and the delay in completing some 400 kms
on the Venezuelan side is costing the government a fine of $5,000 a day.
END
top of page
