May 14, 2005

Protest in Brazil

Many times, when we go to churches, people ask us about the political climate in Brazil, and how they feel about America.

Note in reading the article the involvement of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, in this movement. Nobody in Latin America worries me more than he.

SBS - The World News

THOUSANDS PROTEST IN BRAZIL

Thousands of landless Brazilian peasants have marched on the capital to protest against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's slow land reforms and US plans for Americas-wide free trade.

The 12,000 Landless Workers Movement (MST) activists have occupied eight ranches on their 14-day trek from the city of Goiania.

Protesters will target the US embassy, Brazil's central bank and finance ministry on Tuesday in a call for "social revolution" against Lula's market-driven economic policies and "US imperialism," leaders said.

The MST is among the populist Latin American movements backing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's alternative trade plans that counter the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas.

"We want to send a message to Bush," said Gilmar Mauro, an MST national leader who met with Chavez two weeks ago in Havana. "Get your hands off Iraq, respect Venezuela, Cuba and Brazil."

Protest leaders are calling on unions, students and political parties to join the demonstration, which is expected to be the biggest ever outside the US Embassy. The embassy said it would increase security on Tuesday.

The last time the MST tried to gather Brazil's left-wing movements was in a 1997 demonstration that drew an estimated 100,000 people. It is unlikely to get that number again.

Back then, Lula's Workers Party was the MST's biggest political backer. The party subsequently shifted to the political centre to help Lula win the presidency in 2002.

Lula promised to settle 430,000 landless peasant families by 2006 to combat Brazil's chronic land inequality in which one per cent of the population controls 45 per cent of farmland.

As few as 160,000 families will have plots by the end of this year, according to the land reform agency.

There was talk among marchers the MST could eventually break with Lula, who faces re-election in 2006, if it finds new backers like Chavez. Leaders said they remained loyal.

"We are not against the Lula government, but its economic policies," said Mr Mauro, adding the MST was sharing farm technology with Venezuela and had "no direct link" with its government.

"They know the limits of this relation and when it starts infringing on Brazilian internal policy," said lower house deputy Maria Jose Maninha of the ruling Workers Party.

Lula has put land reform on the backburner after Finance Minister Antonio Palocci convinced him to cut costs and reassure investors he will not spend his way to a debt default.

Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues urged Lula to focus on big agricultural producers, rather than peasant farmers, to generate economic growth needed to shrink Brazil's wealth inequalities, which are the worst in Latin America.

"The MST's flawed model of farming doesn't generate enough for families to subsist. Brazil doesn't have the luxury to invest in it any more," said Joao Sampaio, head of the Brazilian Rural Society which represents big farmers.

Posted by Andrew on May 14, 2005 9:07 AM.