Brazil

Backgrounders and Monitoring papers on land reform in Brazil.

Brazil Backgrounder in PDF (44 pages)

The WTO and the Devastating Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry in Brazil
Maria Luisa Mendonça
February 13, 2006 - Brazil is the world's largest exporter of sugar. In 2004, the country exported 15.7 million tons of the product. According to estimates by the exporters, the demand will likely grow by 3 million tons per year. The sugarcane industry was the largest growing sector of agribusiness in 2005. In comparison to the production of soy (one of the principal agricultural products exported by Brazil), which grew 1.3%, the production of derivatives of sugarcane grew 26.7% this year. This tendency of growth will most likely continue, starting with the Brazilian government's negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Broadening the Discourse of “Negotiated Land Reform”: A Comparison Between Land Reform Projects in South Africa and Brazil
Isabella Kenfield, ICARRD
February 13, 2006 - Mainstream agrarian reform policymakers construct discourse of “negotiated land reform” to describe market-led agrarian reform (MLAR). This discourse constrains the terms of negotiation over land reform to a purely market-oriented lexicon. MLAR proponents believe the purpose of land reform is to boost agricultural efficiency in order to promote economic equity. Through MLAR’s adherence to the willing-seller, willing-buyer principle, the terms of negotiation over the mechanism for land reform are limited to private land transactions. MLAR’s reference point of the market for its definition of “negotiation” relegates the tactics practiced by rural social movements such as the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), in particular the occupation of unproductive land, as non-negotiated land reform. This paper will critique MLAR’s discourse of “negotiation” to highlight its limitations, and argues that the MST is creating and participating in a genuine negotiated agrarian reform. Through a comparison of research and experiences from agrarian reform projects in South Africa and Brazil, this paper will describe the negative impacts of MLAR’s limited scope of negotiation, and will highlight how the MST’s broadening of the terms of negotiation of agrarian reform, in relation to both purpose and mechanism, is resulting in successful land reform. This paper calls for an expanded margin of discourse of land reform negotiation in order to create successful agrarian reform policies, and social and economic justice for the rural poor.

Violence in the Countryside and Land Reform
Maria Luisa Mendonça and Roberto Rainha
September 20, 2005 - This article analyzes violence in the countryside and land reform during 2003 and part of 2004. In 2003, the inauguration of the Lula government created great expectations. According to the Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), “The year 2003 began with the euphoria of hope that can overcome fear. The rural workers believed that the time had come for a profound change, that Land Reform would finally happen.”

Land For Those Who Work It: Can committing a crime be the only way to uphold the constitution?
Pauline Bartolone, Clamor Magazine
September 05, 2005 - "On the news they say, 'we invaded.' The word invade is theirs. The land is everybody's. So there's no such thing as invading land that is everybody's." Hilario is part of Brazil's landless workers movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra, MST) . The backbone of their movement is land occupation. Today, 47 percent of Brazil's land is owned by just 1 percent of the population, making the country's land distribution the second most unequal in the world. As a result, a class of four and a half million people are left on the verge of starvation, without land of their own.

Landless Peasants March in Brazil, Build a new Road by Walking
Deborah James, Common Dreams News Center
July 20, 2005 - On May 17th, Brazilian news media reported that 50 people were injured as landless peasants clashed with police. Like our corporate media in the U.S., this focus overshadowed the real story; that 12,000 poor landless peasants had recently completed a Herculean 150 mile, 17 day-long march across the country to raise awareness about the crucial need for land reform in Brazil.

Water and Human Rights
Roberto Malvezzi
July 12, 2005 - While 20% of the Brazilian population (about 37 million people) lacks access to potable water, in rural areas the portion rises to 90% without proper sanitation, including access to clean drinking water. The crisis reaches into the periphery of the cities. Basically, it is the poor who go thirsty.

Violence and Aggression against Human Rights in the Wake of Agribusiness
Antônio Canuto, Secretary of the National Pastoral Commission on Land (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT)
July 12, 2005 - The agribusiness sector concentrates land, water, and income. Its production is mainly for export, creating profits for a privileged elite at a very high socio-environmental cost. The irrigation of monoculture consumes 70% of the country’s water. Its machines are substituted for manual labor in the countryside, in a country whose greatest problem is unemployment. In the states where agribusiness has expanded, privately-sponsored violence is growing, along with repression through the power of the Judiciary.

The Counter-Agrarian Reform of the World Bank
Marcelo Resende and Maria Luisa Mendonça, Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos)
July 12, 2005 - From January 2003 to July 2004, Brazil received $3.2 billion in loans from the World Bank and from the Inter-American Development Bank. During this same period, Brazilian public institutions paid $6.9 billion to these banks. In other words, Brazil sent abroad $3.7 billion more than it received.

GMOs AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
João Pedro Stedile, National Board of the MST (Landless Workers Movement) member; Via Campesina member
July 12, 2005 - The refusal to perform research on GMO products creates great doubts about their safety. Besides, what would be the problem in labelling such products? Those who defend the release of GMO products do not have the courage to state that they are in fact defending the monopoly of ten transnational corporations that control all GMO seeds in the world. What is at stake is whether our country will be able to guarantee food security for its people.

Backgrounder Part II-The World Bank and Land Reform in Brazil
Sérgio Sauer, National Forum on Agrarian Reform and Rural Justice
November 06, 2003 - The second of a three part report on the history and status of land reform in Brazil. In this section of the report Sérgio Sauer focuses on the role of the World Bank in shaping land reform policy at the national level and its emphasis on the establishment of land markets.

Backgrounder Part III-Learning to participate, the MST experience
Mônica Dias Martins, University of Ceará
November 06, 2003 - In the third and final part of this report on land reform in Brazil, Monica Martins explores the impact of World Bank land policies on peasants and the landless. Focusing on the struggles of the MST, Martins provides a brief history of political and economic forces that have mobilized the MST and continue to shape their stuggle for land.

Backgrounder Part I: Land Reform in Brazil
Manuel Domingos, Federal University of Ceara
February 03, 2003 - In January of 2001, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced that land concentration in Brazil had diminished and that a truly democratic, peaceful, and productive revolution had begun in the countryside. Even if the President’s statistics were correct, the number of settlers is less than the number of workers that abandoned their plots in search of better living conditions.