Message-ID: <19970328170706214.AAA191@smtp.persocom.com.br> Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 17:07:07 +0000 From: Joaquim Moura <mailto:joaquim.moura@PERSOCOM.COM.BR> Subject: Supporting poor tillers in Brazil To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Dennis Shaw asked me about what kind of help he/you could bring to better develop the contacts I am doing, on microcredit, toward effective accomplishments...But, first, let me tell you about the latest contact, Wednesday past... This meeting, with the local leaders of a really national grassroots NGO, formed by the landless that are receiving their lands from the government, and which aims to support the development of these new settlements. The objective of the meeting was to confirm the possibility of Beth Outterson, a community health specialist (and a volunteer with the Partners of the Americas - Washington DC) to come to present a workshop on this issue at one of the settlements in the Distrito Federal region.
So, Wednesday morning, at 10 o'clock, I went to the office of ANCA: the National Association of Agriculture Cooperation, an organization created to support the small tillers who receive their plots from the increasing program of Agrarian Reform conducted by the government (and pushed by the Movimento dos Sem Terra - Landless Movement - MST). According the landless, leaded by the MST, get their lands from the governmental program conducted by INCRA (the official agency National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform), they join ANCA, from which they receive minimal organizational and survival support. The landless people are very very poor. The government just tells them that it was started a process that will support them to develop their plots, but this is just a promise, with very weak concrete results.
Here, a delicate point. Agrarian Reform in Brazil is the main social problem, since many centuries ago... The land concentration in Brazil is a world record... If you travel through the country you will see endless empty lands, increasingly deforested and eroded, extensive pasturages, no people, no rural life... A the same time, in the cities, multitudes of hopeless people just survive in the slums, their youngsters learning to how to make their short living from violence and crime.
Since two years ago, the MST is increasing its presence in the Brazilian socio- economic political- cultural scene. They are really organized, and supported by many small local rural NGOs, by the Catholic Church relief agency, the Comissao Pastoral da Terra (Land Pastoral Commission), and by international mainly European agencies. Recently one of their leaders won an important award from Belgium, what caused a small diplomatic noise... Another diplomatic noise was when the Pope asked President Fernando Henrique Cardoso for accelerate the Agrarian Reform process, when this visited the Vatican, some months ago. But the President is a sociologist and he knows very well that Brazil needs to be open to its population, and he knows that this will not come without pressure. Last week he recognizes that he needs this organized pressure to be moved toward the reforms and against the old interests that insist to keep the world's hugest harvest lands in their few and lazy hands. The President knows that only agriculture and the endless rural Brazil could absorb the multitudes of unemployed people who crowds the cities, coming from the countryside in the latest two decades... Only agriculture can provide so much labor and income, since they organize themselves in a sustainable and environmentally sound way. And who are all those poor miserable people? They are the descendants of the greatest slave nation of the world: Brazil (ten times more slaves than in the USA: 5,000,000 versus 500,000). A hundred years ago (1888) they became "free" from slavery, but nobody provided them another option to develop their lives. To help these people is to help the bottom line of Brazilian nationality. Would you help?
As I told you, ANCA just works with the already settled groups, after solved the initial confrontation by the government dealing with the local latifundium owner. The MST researches the rural lands looking for nonproductive forsaken lands with high agricultural potential, which usually are not legally owned by their landlords (many were occupied illegally, by violence or bribes). So when the MST promotes an occupation, they know they have a good chance of be settled there definitively by the government. Then comes the time to ANCA help these new landwith ones to organize their association, their participatory planning, needs assessment, structural facilities, access to seeds, fertilizers and to market their products... When a settlement succeeds to give their tillers a higher life standard and a better education for their children, every Brazilian poor has empowered the self-esteem and hope for happier days in the future.
In the Federal District, ANCA is supporting 3 settlements, and more 10 in the counties of two other states that limit with the Federal District (we call them the Entorno region). All these settlements gather more than 1,500 families, about 10,000 people. They are very needed but they are quite organized, and eager to have success in this first concrete opportunity they ever had in their life. Another interesting point: the leaders who I met, were all from rural origin and in their 20s... Very young rural people but already very responsible and active, helping to organize their rural communities. Very different from the young urban people, who usually are very distant from any deeper community concerning. But soon we will make them progressively awake for their socio-environmental responsibilities.
Beside Beth's visit, our group plans to give ANCA a whole support on community development, bringing fundamental information and resources tapped through Internet. Would you like to join us? Thanks, J.
_____________________________________________________________ Joaquim Moura
Companheiros das Americas / Partners of the Americas Comite Brasilia - Washington D.C. / Committee Comissao de Desenvolvimento da Juventude e da Cidadania / Youth and Citizenship Development Commission ** todas as opinioes controversas sao apenas pessoais ** ** all the controversial opinions are just personal **
WWW site: http://www.partners-bsbdc.org