Rural workers in Brazil press fight for land

*Rural workers in Brazil
press fight for land
*Land takeovers, public employee strikes
worry Wall Street
*
BY MICHAEL ITALIE *
The Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Brazil has launched some
120 land occupations this year and is demanding the government step up
land distribution to the dispossessed, while the owners of vast
latifundia are adamant in their calls for the administration to clamp
down on those who challenge their hold on property.

The new administration of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in the nation of 165
million people-Latin America’s most populous- initiated proposals for
cuts in pensions recently. In response, thousands of public employees
walked out for several days in early July to oppose these cuts-the most
prominent strikes since da Silva took office six months earlier.

These developments reflect a growing self-confidence among Brazil’s
toilers in fighting to defend their livelihoods. They increasingly worry
Wall Street, especially since Brazil has a ballooning foreign debt to
imperialist financial institutions of $260 billion.

The sharpening struggle over land ownership and use has brought the new
social-democratic administration into conflict with landless rural
workers. Capitalist landowners, some of whom own tracts of territory as
large as some European countries, are also dissatisfied with how the
government is handling the crisis.

Leaders of the big landowners’ organizations are taking the new
government to task for "not applying the law" to protect their wealth,
while others have organized private militias to do the job themselves.

While the polarization in the countryside deepens, da Silva appears to
have weathered the strike by government workers as he presses ahead with
a pension "reform" plan that will cut benefits, raise the retirement
age, and make pensions taxable.

Presented in the mid-1990s as a model of capitalist development in the
semicolonial world, Brazil’s economy entered a tailspin in 1998 when the
country’s gross domestic product contracted and unemployment soared. The
downward spiral continued into 2002, with the real, Brazil’s currency,
declining 35 percent, and inflation reaching double digits. The previous
government of Fernando Enrique Cardoso received a $41.5 billion "rescue"
loan from the International Monetary Fund in exchange for cuts in social
security and tax increases that reduced the take-home pay of most
working people.

Da Silva took office January 1 after a landslide victory in last
October’s presidential ballot as the candidate of the Workers Party
(PT). His election, like that of Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador and Néstor
Kirchner in Argentina, registered the rising expectations among working
people in these countries, who have been devastated by the effects of
economic depression and attacks by the outgoing regimes on basic social
programs.

*Rise in land seizures *
The number of land occupations has reached its highest point since
March, when the MST ended its two-month moratorium on the actions,
initiated as a good-faith gesture to the new president. Confrontations
with landlords have been sharpest in the western state of Sao Paolo,
where large-scale agricultural production is centered, but have also
occurred in at least 20 of the nation’s 26 states.

In Presidente Epitacio, 3,500 families have set up a camp to demand land
and resources. When the number of families reaches 5,000-about half the
population of the city-the MST plans to march into the nearby city of
Presidente Prudente, where some of the ranchers live, to press the
demands of the landless. The mayor said he’ll block the entrance to the
city.

"Nobody wants to do anything illegal," Antonio Santos, 38, told the
/Wall Street Journal/ in a July 10 dispatch, "but we’ll do what we must
to survive." Santos and his family moved to the camp in June after he
lost his job in a nearby slaughterhouse.

Government statistics indicate that the number of land seizures has
increased by 62 percent in the first half of 2003 in comparison with the
same period last year.

Agricultural exports have played a key role in the recovery in profits
for Brazilian capitalists since Lula’ election, accounting for a
projected $23 billion trade surplus this year. The real’s precipitous
devaluation has given such exports a big boost. Today Brazil is the
world’s largest exporter of raw sugar, second-largest exporter of
soybeans, and third-largest exporter of beef.

The distribution of land in Brazil is among the most unequal in the
world. Nearly half of the arable territory in the country is owned by a
mere 3 percent of the population, while the poorest 40 percent own just
1 percent of the land. The MST is demanding land for 1 million families
by 2006 as a first step in addressing the gross disparity in land
ownership.

Lula is trying to bring the MST actions to a halt by seeking to assure
the rural population that such actions are not needed, while
demagogically identifying with the need for agrarian reform. "I do not
imagine that in a country of this size, with the amount of land that it
has, a violent occupation is necessary," he said in June.

At a press conference that followed a meeting with MST leaders at one of
the group’s camps in July, Lula put on an MST cap. One MST
representative said that "the government plays on our team." Business
leaders, meanwhile, were outraged by the act and bitterly complained
that the da Silva administration has not cracked down on the "illegal"
land seizures.

"It is totally unacceptable that the government opened its doors to a
violent guerrilla group like the MST," said Humberto Sa of the Movement
of anti-MST Rural Producers.

Sa is the owner of 1,200 acres in the state of Parana, and is one of
many ranchers who have formed militias to put a stop to the occupations
by landless workers. "The constitution of the country gives us that
right," he stated.

While it is not new for big landlords in Brazil to organize armed thugs,
"The militia movement is growing stronger because there is the feeling
that the government has strong links with the landless movement and
ranchers know they must protect themselves," said one leader of the
Democratic Ruralist Union.

The Brazilian government has acknowledged the killing of 13 landless
workers this year. MST leaders put the figure much higher, charging that
1,500 of their members have been killed in the fight for land in the
last four years.

MST leader Jose Rainha was arrested July 11 in Teodoro Sampaio, Sao
Paolo state, on charges related to a land occupation three years
earlier. In 2000 Rainha defeated an 11-year government campaign to frame
him up on murder charges arising from the struggle for land.

*Pension ’reform’ *
In the face of public employees’ strikes against pension "reform," a key
goal of his administration, da Silva made modest changes to the plan
when he presented it to Congress July 17. Press reports indicated that
40-50 percent of government workers joined the walkouts that began July
6. The strikes involved a wide range of public employees-from hospital
workers and university professors, to customs officials and tax
collectors. They ended when Lula promised to make small concessions. The
largest trade union federation, the Unified Confederation of Workers,
which is tied to the governing PT, didn’t join in the strike.

The new legislation projects the elimination of some $17 billion from
pensions over the next 20 years, making the funds available for payment
on Brazil’s $260 billion foreign debt. The government had initially
proposed cuts 3 percent higher than this amount. The estimated 4 million
government workers will see a reduction in their pensions and an
additional bite in the form of a new 11 percent tax on their retirement
pay. The plan projects a ceiling of $828 per month on state and private
pensions. Furthermore, employees will now be required to have worked 35
years, at least 20 of them as a civil servant. The minimum retirement
age is to be raised by seven years for both men and women, to 60 and 55,
respectively.

"We were betrayed," said one retiree of Lula’s role in steering the
attack on pensions. "Be sure that this will have a political cost for
the government. People are angry."