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6 August 1998 Edition

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Stealing land from Brazil's poor

By Dara MacNeil

Brazil is a fabulously wealthy country, with both the reserves and potential to become even wealthier. By the turn of the century it is estimated that the country's annual GNP will be in excess of $1 trillion.

However, Brazil is also amongst the most inequitable societies in the world.

Thus, less than 1% of the population owns close to 50% of the country's arable land. Successive Brazilian governments have appeared less concerned with reversing this process of dispossession, than with removing whatever impediments stand in the way.

According to Irish aid agency Trocaire, official Brazilian statistics from 1997 show that land distribution today is at a lower level than 50 years ago.

Hardly surprising then, to discover that in excess of 200,000 people are forced off the land each year. Most end up in the squalid shanty towns that hug the tattered edges of Brazil's major cities. Removed from the land, they are effectively shorn of the capacity to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families. They become wholly dependent on the `market', its whims deciding if they eat or starve.

However, there is no immutable law of nature that says such events are inevitable and unchangeable, no supernatural deity who can decree that it must be so.

This at least is the conclusion that has been reached by the many thousands of Brazilian rural workers and landless labourers who form the backbone of potent mass organisations such as the Movimiento de los Sin Tierra (MST) - the Movement of the Landless, and the Rural Workers Union.

It is also the conclusion that has been reached by the people of Campos Lindos, in the Brazilian state of Tocantins.

Last year, the state authorities in Tocantins appropriated 105,590 hectares of land (approximately 42,000 acres). They proposed to use the land for a huge project devoted to the growth of soya beans. The project is to be run in conjunction with Japanese business interests.

The state authorities paid over compensation to 27 individuals registered as the title-holders of the land. Indeed the whole transaction was completed in what can only be seen as a suspiciously short timeframe. There is clear, compelling evidence that the land had been fraudulently acquired by the titled holders, with the aid of corrupt state officials and political figures.

Many of the supposed owners had never even visited the region. Still, they

received compensation for their `loss'.

However there were other people affected by the state action: the 80 families that live there. Many have been there for generations. On average, each family has lived and worked on this land for forty years. Under Brazilian law, a person who lives and works land unchallenged for a year and a day acquires sqautters' rights. After five years they are entitled to go to court and claim ownership of the land.

Yet the official compulsory purchase decree failed to even mention the people of Campos Lindos, the very people who work the land.

Earlier this year, it appeared as if the families would be summarily evicted. Promise after promise had been broken and the authorities were busy peddling a false version of events to the media.

However, the settlers mobilised and organised. With the help of rural and religious organisations, they publicised their case and pressured the authorities.

There was opposition to the massive soya bean project. Massive quantities of chemicals and fertilisers would be used on land cleared of tree cover.

As a result these toxins would invariably poison local rivers. In addition, such intensive farming is not sustainable in the longer-term. Experts estimate that the soya bean project would have a life of less than ten years, before the intensive cultivation utterly exhausted the land. No doubt, the investors would have harvested their profits by then and moved on. The local people, however, would be forced to live with the consequences.

Nonetheless, the settlers also argued that if the project is to proceed and they are unable to prevent its implementation, the very least they were entitled to is compensation for the loss of homes and crops, and legal title to land nearby.

According to the most recent reports from Campos Lindos, the settlers appear to have achieved at least a partial victory. Pressure in the form of protests and publicity forced the state authorities to at least acknowledge the existence and presence of the 80 families. They have since been meeting with local officials in an effort to resolve the matter.

However, official promises to issue title to new land have not been met. The state authorities had set June as the deadline for the issue of the titles, but have so far failed to honour that commitment. The settlers meanwhile continue with their campaign for justice. Already they have forced the state authorities into one climbdown. It is not inconcievable that they could do so again.

•The Brazilian Embassy in Dublin is located at: Europa House, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2.

The address of the Japanese Embassy Office is: Merrion Center, Nutley Lane, Dublin 4. Why not drop them a line...


The globalisation myth



While well-paid corporate mouthpieces assure us that globalisation is the anwer to all humanity's prayers, the reality is strikingly different.

Globalisation is not a strategy that sprung fully-formed from the collective social conscience of the world's `leaders'. Its roots are more base than that.

Between 1913 and 1990, the wealth of the richest 20% of the global community increased from 70% to 85%.

Meanwhile, the poorest 20% saw their `take' fall from 2.3% to 1.4%.

In addition, the last fifty years has seen world income increase sevenfold.

Yet, per capita income has increased a mere threefold. It doesn't take a genius to work out where all that missing money has gone. Progress indeed.

Today, an estimated 1,300 million human beings live in absolute poverty: that is, one in four of the world population.

In excess of 80 million children have no access to formal education of even the most rudimentary variety. Some 900 milion adults the world over cannot read and write.

More fundamentally, over 300 million people have no access to clean drinking water.

In addition, the belief that globalisation somehow contributes to developing poorer economies by spreading available global capital more evenly than before, is nothing more than a myth.

Thus, for every $1 invested, global corporations effectively steal back $15 of valuable natural resources, usually from the poorer countries.

Today, the debt of the Southern Hemisphere now stands in excess of $2 trillion. These, the poorest of the world's countries, repay $250,000 to the rich North, every minute of the day.

And as for the myth of globalisation as an employment creation process....the top 200 transnational corporations control almost a quarter of all global economic activity. Yet they employ less than 1% of the world's economically active population.

An Phoblacht
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Ireland