Brazil & Southern Cone - April 2006 (ISSN 1741-4431)

The Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST), Brazil's largest landless movement, has commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Carajás massacre with more of its notorious - yet increasingly usual - assaults on farms. President Lula da Silva has been noticeably quiet about these actions, which according to opinion polls are opposed by the majority of the Brazilian population. For the rightwing press, these actions are criminal and Lula's failure to criticise the MST is a clear affront to the very notion of state. 

The number of farms squatted by the MST and other peasant groups has shot up in the first three months of the year to a six-year high. The farms considered productive according to the agricultural ministry's standards are now being targeted. Two Eucalyptus plantations, one owned by Aracruz Cellulose in Rio Grande do Sul and another by Suzano Papel e Celulose in Bahia, have been vandalised causing an estimate US$700,000 in damage costs. In the case of Aracruz, years of genetic research have also been lost after peasants destroyed the farm's laboratory. 

On 17 April the MST commemorated the tenth anniversary of the massacre of 19 peasants by the police in the town of Carajás, on the borders of the Amazon rainforest, by squatting more farms, blocking roads and fomenting looting across the country. The leaders of the movement considered the actions "a protest against impunity". Indeed, so far none of accused of committing the massacre have gone to jail. Two officers are waiting in freedom while their sentences are revised, while all the 142 police involved in the Carajás operation have been found not guilty of the crime. The government's response to the MST's actions has been dissonant to say the least. During the official ceremony to remember the dead, the government's representative, the human rights minister, Paulo Vannuchi, declared that the MST is misunderstood by some commentators. For Vannuchi, the movement "avoids the occurrence of a civil war" in Brazil. The juridical representative of the agrarian development ministry, Gercino da Silva Filho, went further saying that "protests for access to land are welcomed". 

The minister for institutional relations, Tarso Genro, on the other hand, believes that farm-squatting and other actions perpetrated by the MST should be treated "in accordance with the law". The agriculture minister, Roberto Rodrigues, was more emphatic when he classified the invasions of the Aracruz and Suzano's farms as "acts of vandalism". Rodrigues said that the MST was misinformed and that the invasions were about ideological questions and not about the protection of the environment. 

Rightwing backlash 

Creating further doubts about the government's position, President Lula da Silva has kept notably quiet about the MST's recent actions. A few days after the 17 April celebrations, however, Lula finally opened his mouth and criticised big farmers whom he accused of not paying back their debts with the government. The issue is highly contentious: development-minded politicians take the side of big farmers whose intensive farming methods kick-started the recent economic recovery. The socially-oriented side with landless groups which complain the government does not support their cooperatives. 

To make matters worse, Lula seemed to have incited more protests from "social movements". According to Lula, they should "enjoy and make demands to this government, because if he does not deliver now, no other government ever will". As expected Lula's comments instigated a rightwing backlash. The rightwing magazine Veja, for instance, deemed this "one of Lula's most shameful moments", stating that the president should be demanding respect for the country's law and order.

Furthermore, according to Veja the government is to blame for the increasingly chaotic situation in the countryside. The publication linked the federal government's donations to landless groups with the number of invasions of farms, showing in a pictorial graphic that the more the government gives money to peasants, bigger is the number of invasions. In 2004 the number of farms squatted tripled in relation to 2002, the last year of President Cardoso's administration, despite the government's transfers to the MST having increased almost fivefold in the period. 

As agreed by the government's own financial overseeing agency, the right says that the money given by the government to the MST and other landless groups is badly spent. An official report published at the beginning of the year found several irregularities in MST projects which are financed by the government, such as schooling and assistance to small farmers. The report concludes by recommending the government initiate court proceedings to retrieve R$15m (US$6.97m) given to the MST from public coffers. 

The MST's aspirations and the legal side of things

The right have also started to question what are the MST's real aspirations. Many commentators doubt that landless protests have anything to do with justice and are instead part of a much bigger - and sinister - objective. For instance, the right says, if the MST was really concerned about justice for the victims of Carajás, it should also respect the law. The right argues that MST leaders do not care about impunity because their criminal actions are not punished by the Brazilian justice system either. 

That is not exactly true since the main MST leaders, José Rainha, Pedro Stedile, Clédison Mendes and Jaime Amorim, currently answer to forty judicial processes between them, ranging from robbery to incitation to violence and trespassing. Things turned nastier after Stedile, together with 36 other people, was charged with money laundering on 24 April after the police discovered US$10,000 in the MST office in Porto Alegre. Public prosecutor Daniel Indrusiak, who is leading investigations, requested the court's permission to scrutinise the MST accounts to find out where the money came from.

The main difficulty for jurists to examine the MST lies in the fact that the movement is not legally registered as an entity. Because of that, they cannot stop invasions as they have no entity to prosecute. Yet due to its exceptional legal circumstances, the MST is also not legally allowed to receive donations apart from governmental assistance to finance social projects carried out in partnership with official agencies. This might be the breakthrough waited for by MST's enemies who are now pressuring for official investigations to be carried out to establish how the movement is really financed. 

Brazilian society's inability to discuss the land issue earnestly contributed for the polarisation of opinions. For rightwing commentators the MST's objectives - and its associates - have already been established. For them, the MST is really engaged on a "socialist revolution" against the Brazilian state with the support of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez , who publicly declared his support for Lula during an event promoted by the MST on 26 April. 

On the other end of the spectrum, MST leaders have also started to step up their ideological discourse. The MST wants to act in urban centres to unite "all Brazilian workers against the elites that concentrate wealth and power". The new movement will also bring together non-engaged or not-yet-organised associations, such as small farmers and favelados (inhabitants of Brazilian shanty-towns) with the aim of bringing about "a social revolution" in Brazil.