MST Informe
July 25, 2003
MST
Frei Betto
On July 25, we commemorate the Day of the Farmer. �We all eat what he plants. But we don�t always repay him with a good bowl of alphabet soup, as John Steinbeck did in �Grapes of Wrath�; Juan Rulfo did in �A plan�cie em chamas�; Jos� Lins do Rego, in "Fogo Morto"; Graciliano Ramos, in "Vidas Secas", Dion�sio da Silva, in "Os guerreiros do campo". �Life springs from two types of production: the hoe and the arts, material goods and symbolic goods. The first gives sustenance; the second, meaning.
Brazil is fat with land. There are 360 millions of acres that can be cultivated. Astute, Pero Vaz de Caminha soon discovered that here, "by planting, it gives food". But they still did not understand the gift. �They prefer �"by fencing it in, no one gets a bite of food".
There is a lot of land in this country for a few people. It�s enough to point out that 44% belongs to just 1% of rural owners. And there are many people without land.�There are around 15 million people wandering the roads and camps, daring to dream that with so much idle land they may find the piece of earth that may redeem them from poverty and the risk of ending up in a favela in the city.
This country never knew agrarian reform. Disabled, it supports itself in an archaic capitalism, far from modernity. And from the balconies of the islands of opulence, the latif�ndio looks out over the multitude of excluded people.
The patience of the poor cannot be abused, emphasizes the Church�s social doctrine. Here, tired of waiting, they organize themselves in the MST. For their educational work, (around 100,000 children and young people) the movement already received the prize from UNICEF-Ita�. For their activity on behalf of agrarian reform, they received the King Balduino Prize (the highest social distinction in Belgium). For maintaining more than 2500 settlements besides a network of cooperatives, they also won the alternative Nobel, "The Right Livelihood Award".
In slavery, that officially bloodied 350 years of the history of Brazil, it was said that the Blacks were rebels. It was hard for the elite like Nabuco to understand that the problem was not in the Black but in the whip and in the whipping post. With the Peasant Leagues, Francisco Juli�o was demonized. Forty years later, the Northeast is even more barren of water and of justice and a sub-human species is blooming in the shade of the cactus: the flagellant.
Under the military regime, all of us who resisted were treated as terrorists. Today, history recognizes the true villains, those who made the coup d�etat, suppressed democratic order, and installed torture and the disappearance of prisoners, as Vargas had done in the �30s.
Today it is the MST that is the target of those who cannot stand the outcry of the poor and who are silent before the unjust land structure. Where has Justice gone in the face of the 21 who fell under assassins� bullets in Eldorado dos Caraj�s? Impunity throws open the doors to criminality.
July 25 will be a day of many deaths announced as long as there is no agrarian reform and justice that does not step forward for the rights of the poor. Brazil does not deserve to be a country drenched in blood.
*Frei Betto is a writer, author of the novel "Entre todos os homens" (�tica), along with other books.
2) NEWS BRIEFS
JUSTICE SYSTEM IMPRISONS MST MEMBERS
Jos� Rainha and Felinto Proc�pio, better known as Mineirinho, were jailed in the city of Teodoro Sampaio on July 11. The judge of the district, �tis de Ara�jo Oliveira, ruled that Jos� Rainha should be jailed as he was leaving a hearing in which testimony was heard about his alleged participation in demonstrations at the Bank of Brazil and Banespa. Mineirinho was jailed after that, when he was visiting Rainha in the city jail. Since 2002, Judge �tis de Ara�jo has already decreed 29 preventative jail terms for MST members. Of these, 25 were annulled by the Tribunal of Justice and by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.
We ask all to send messages of solidarity, condemning the arbitrary actions of Judge �tis de Araujo Oliveira, requesting that the workers be freed: Exmo. Sr. Dr. Ju�z de Direito �tis de Araujo Oliveira F�rum de Teodoro Sampaio Rua Passeio Curi�, n�4 e 5 � Vila S�o Paulo � Teodoro Sampaio CEP: 19280-000 � FAX: (18) 282-1152
For more information and a sample letter, please see �FREEDOM FOR THE POLITICAL PRISONERS OF THE MST� on our Urgent Action page at: http://www.mstbrazil.org/actions.html
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