Reclaiming the Promised Land 

A.W. WOODALL / Street Spirit v.9, n.3, Mar03

The film City of God, pierces Brazil's tropical facade to show us the other side of this land known for samba and Carnival. In this other Brazil, desperately poor and brutally violent slums coexist outside the six-foot security walls of rich Brazilians, where their security guards shelter them from the reality of the streets.

The MST, Brazil's landless movement, 
trains the poorest Brazilians to seize, 
occupy and farm unused land.
Peter Rosset photo

The name of the film comes from a housing project in Rio de Janeiro meant to offer better conditions than the diseased, crumbling shantytowns where many of the city's poorest live. The housing project's disintegration into a nightmare of urban crime and misery mirrored Brazil's own breakdown.

Things have not improved. Brazil is a deeply divided land where the have-nots outnumber the wealthy, yet live on the scraps of Brazil's abundant natural and commercial wealth. Urban crime, desperation, and political corruption wrap their tentacles around the lives of poor Brazilians, who are left with few alternatives other than to fight or be consumed.

But some of Brazil's poor are breaking the shackles of poverty by refusing to accept the inequality that has reigned for so long in the world's third-largest democracy.

Brazil has one of the most unequal distributions of land in the world, but now some of the four million landless are claiming what they say is legitimately theirs: and to farm. They are led by the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Movement of Rural Landless Workers, or MST) and their slogan is "Occupy, Resist, Produce!"

The idea is for landless peasants to occupy unused land, resist attempts to remove them, and immediately begin producing food. It is a long, arduous journey from destitution to self-sufficiency, but the brave men and women willing to try have no other options and nothing to lose.

The ranks of the MST are full of rural day laborers, urban homeless people, substance abusers, domestic violence victims, unemployed rural slum dwellers, and peasant farmers who have lost their land.

They are the most marginalized of all Brazilians, said Peter Rosset of Food First, who has worked with MST.

So far, MST claims it has settled one million people an 20 million acres, with another 61,000 families in preparation settlements. The process of settling land is not for the uninspired, however. as Rosset explained.

The settlers put in countless hours of hard work and live with the bare minimum in conveniences for years before anything resembling a traditional farm emerges. Those who want to be part of a settlement must first save money for basic necessities. But, for such destitute people, the cost of something as basic as the plastic sheeting that will be their roof is steep.

After they have managed to scrape together what they need, they move to temporary settlements with only the bare bones of amenities for six months to two years, to learn skills such as literacy, first aid, and violence prevention. They learn how to set up clinics, schools, and how to farm.

Meanwhile, MST scouts an idle and fecund parcel of land that is owned by an absentee owner. When the time is right, the group will occupy the land under the cover of darkness. By the time the sun rises, or when the legal owners have responded, crops are already planted.

A reaction is usually not far behind the sunrise. Things have become ugly an more than one occasion: over 14 years, 1,158 MST and other rural activists were assassinated, and there are perpetual threats and attempts, according to Jeffrey Frank in a Z Magazine article. Few people were ever arrested or convicted for the crimes.

With rampant corruption among local and state officers, the settlers have little protection except self-defense; and they have cultivated a militant stance that is often misunderstood by Brazil's mainstream media, according to Dawn Plummer, coordinator for Friends of MST.

PROMISED LAND

The law is an MST's side - sort of. If land is not "fulfilling its social function," states Article 184 of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution (enacted after a two-decade-long military dictatorship), "It is the task of the Federation to expropriate, an social grounds, for the purposes of agrarian reform," the unproductive land.

Where the MST and Brazilian law collide is at Article 5, which guarantees private property. MST charges that the government represents the wealthy elite and has no real interest in ensuring equitable distribution of land. The federal government does not enforce Article 184, but local and state officials intervene an behalf of private landowners to enforce Article 5, sometimes ruthlessly. Although their method may not be strictly legal, MST argues, if people are starving the method is legitimate.

In a country as large as the continental United States, hunger and landlessness prevail, while only two percent of rural landowners hold 56 percent of all the land - more than half of which is idle, according to O Estado de Sao Paulo, a Brazilian daily comparable to the New York Times. Land that is cultivated may be heavily used for growing export or feed crops, such as soybeans, instead of food for the people.

In contrast, although life an the settlements is tough and requires a lot of hard work, "None of Brazil's 50 million people who go to bed hungry are settlers," said Sherry Keith of San Francisco State University, who recently led a study, tour of Brazil's social and cultural movements, including the landless movement.

MST settlers not only have land to grow food on, but they have a right to be there, she added. Conditions improve for the settlers because it becomes a community that can organize to provide adequate health care, schooling, and basic needs.

Keith pointed out that poor Brazilians occupy land that does not belong to them to create urban shantytowns, called favelas, whereas the American government steadfastly refuses any homeless settlements.

Some Brazilians living in the urban slums still have a connection to farming, and see a relationship between land and a better life, said Rosset. They can perhaps remember a rural childhood or stories their parents and grandparents told about life an the land.

For others, there is also an urban counterpart to agrarian reform called the Unemployed Workers Movement (originally the Roofless People's Movement). The idea is to occupy abandoned buildings and urban land where families can supplement wages with the food grown collectively an small plots.

Rosset warned about importing MST's solutions to the United States. The principles of MST are transportable but the recipes are not, he said.

The MST took those people who a society wished would simply disappear, who had no other options left, and by working collectively transformed them into a viable political force.

The MST "puts other twelve-step programs to shame by mobilizing people in mass and transforming their lives," added Rosset, who suggested representatives of homeless groups here could visit MST settlements to learn lessons they could use in their own communities.

In the United States the issue is not farmland, but the poor here share what Plummer describes as poor Brazilians' desire to build a truly sustainable community that is vibrant and connected.

THE FUTURE

MST's ultimate goal is social and economic change. They want Brazilians to have a chance at living as decent a life as farming can give them. They want to make agrarian reform a reality by compelling the government to enforce Article 184 and make land distribution more equal.

Of the 175 million people in Brazil, a third (44 million) live at or below the poverty line, according to the New York Times. Depending an estimates, hunger pursues from 15 to 50 million Brazilians, as much as 30 percent of the country.

Yet, Brazil is one of the most industrialized and commercially developed countries in the world. Some may chalk poverty up to characteristics of the poor: lazy, dishonest, stupid. Others attribute this paradox to a deep-seated corruption that permeates all branches of the government and society, and has its roots in the country's history of colonialism and oppression.

And still others see the source of Brazil's present condition in a history of free market economics imposed by international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and enforced by the government. Those institutions and Brazilians attempting to change their country by electing a president who has promised to feed the poor are presently creating a lot of friction.

On one side are the throngs of the poor and working class who are euphoric at President Lula da Silva's election that carried such promise to change what is so badly broken in the economic and social systems. Even some of Brazil's wealthier citizens are optimistic, even though they stand to lose privileges guaranteed them by virtue of an entrenched system.

On the other side, all the people and institutions whose interests are threatened are lining up to block reforms, or may even try to topple Lula's presidency if they feel threatened enough. Most notably, this includes the United States, whose president is pushing hard for Brazil's cooperation in the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (described alternatively as NAFTA an steroids, or as the key to prosperity); organizations such as the World Bank, whose agrarian reform ideas are sharply different from MST and are blamed for some of the problems Brazil is experiencing; and the wealthy Brazilians who prefer to preserve their wealth and privileges.

As it turns out, it is a historic moment for MST, too, for whom there has never been such promise of achievement. The Workers Party, of which Lula is the leader, is aligned with MST; but as Lula's cabinet and he himself balance an the tightrope between hope and obstruction, the MST must make sure they are not forgotten. As hard as one side pushes Lula, they must push back with just as much force. The biggest challenge MST faces right now, said Plummer, is readying the group for that struggle.

The direction Brazil takes now, while Lula is at the helm, will determine whether the City of God becomes more than a cruel joke an a deeply religious people - a slum whose people have rarely seen mercy, divine or otherwise. MST, with their plows, hoes, and shovels, are clearing a path in the direction of the promised land.