[10/04/05] Interview with João Pedro Stédile from e-journal Montblaat

João Pedro Stédile on promises from the government to MST: “Little or nothing has been done.‿

Montbläat: Considering that the right to property is one of the pillars of the capitalist system, how can a movement that proposes to expand this right be qualified as communist? What is the concept of unproductive land that justifies the occupation and later expropriations to bring about agrarian reform? What is the real extent of this problem?

João Pedro Stédile: Brazilian society faces fundamental problems in the rural environment. There is a huge inequality between the one percent of wealthy people and the millions of Brazilians living in poverty. The root of these issues is the concentration of ownership of the land, that one percent of the owners controls almost half of the country’s land that should serve as a gift from nature to resolve the people’s problems. Because of this concentration, 4.5 million working families do not own land. What can the MST do? The work of the MST is to raise their consciousness and organize these families to fight for their rights. What rights? The land naturally should resolve the problem of the people and not aggravate it. This is in the Constitution, the Big Document of Brazil, that the State should expropriate unproductive land that is over 1000 acres or that is producing less than its potential or big parts of land that don’t serve a social function, which is being wasted. Also in the Constitution, lands on which the labor or environmental laws are being disrespected should also be expropriated. For these reasons, our movement is a republican movement. To guarantee that all Brazilians that live in the rural areas have guaranteed rights.

Montbläat: Has the government carried out promises that progress agrarian reform? How many families were settled by Lula’s Government? More or less than the governments before? What was spent on the settlements and the assistance to those in settlements? What assistance is demanded and what is given?

João Pedro Stédile: The law establishes that the government has to make a national plan of agrarian reform to establish goals, funds, etc. We are pressuring Lula’s government to make a plan. He had one year to carry it out. And we are seeing that there is a dispute in the government. The MDA wants a plan that will help one million families, the economic area for only 80 thousand families in four years. And still the president stays in the middle; he fought to place 430 thousand families in four years. We agreed. The time has passed and nothing. Until now around 117 thousand families were settled, in almost three years. There is a lot missing. So we held a national protest in May of 2005. The government signed six agreements with us, to summarize: it promised to settle 430 thousand families, prioritizing a solution for 140 thousand families that are camped, and who are encountering all types of difficulties. To reform INCRA, hiring people for agrarian reform, and to guarantee these basic rights. Little or nothing of this was done. That is why we mobilized last month. But unfortunately, the press tried to hide it.

Montbläat: The last report from the Pastoral Commission on Land shows that violence in the countryside remains high and recently Colonel Pantoja, responsible for the massacre of Eldorado dos Carajas was freed, being able to remain free until the last appeal (which could take years). Does the impunity continue?

João Pedro Stédile: The rural parts of Brazil are full of poverty and inequality. The violence that occurs represents the lack of jobs and food, and poverty. Is there a greater violence than the fact that almost sixty percent of the adults in the rural parts of the Northeast don’t know how to read? And there is physical violence in prisons, torture and even assassinations enacted by the political and economic power of the landowners that has destroyed more than 1, 700 lives of farm leaders in these twenty years of the struggle for agrarian reform. And the state is in the middle of all this. Impotent and conniving. Of the 1700 cases only 80 have been through the judicial process, of these only twenty were condemned and of these fewer than ten were imprisoned. What’s more, it continued in the barracks of Abrantes. For this reason colonel Pantoja was condemned by the popular court to 228 years of prison as he is responsible for the massacre of 21 farmers in Carajas, after he spent three years in the barracks of the PM of Belem, and now is liberated by the STJ, and continues in his suite in his house. He revealed recently to the Liberal newspaper that he doesn’t have any remorse.

Montbläat: What is the MST’s opinion about the referendum on disarmament? Are the landowners and their hired gunmen being disarmed?

João Pedro Stédile: The MST and all of its members of the Via Campesina Brazil are already engaged in this campaign to outlaw commercial arms and ammunition in Brazil. This referendum is very important. First because it gets the Brazilian people used to exercising their democratic right, without intermediaries. We hope to arrive at the day in which there will be a referendum for the people to decide about the fundamental issues of society. Second, because this law is going to prevent deaths for futile motives and accidents that are almost 80% of the 40 thousand deaths a year. For this reason this is a civil campaign, so that the poor don’t kill other poor people for stupid reasons. Now, the problems of the social margins, of political violence, etc. – these can only be resolved with other means that are not being discussed in the Referendum.

Evidently the right, the fascists, the UDR, and the landowners want to cultivate in Brazilian society an ideology of violence, of weapons, of the right to take life from others in defense of property. These idiots and ignorant people, small-time capitalists, have a philosophy that material goods are more important than the right to life. For this they believe they have the right to kill someone in defense of their cow, their land….poor things!

Montbläat: What will be the MST’s line of action from here until the end of the current government?

João Pedro Stédile: We are going to continue with the same line as always. We are an autonomous organization in relation to the state, governments, churches, religions, soccer teams, samba schools. We are a social movement whose goal is to organize the poor from the country to fight for their rights. This is our mission whether the government changes or the national soccer champion changes. It’s clear that we had an expectation like all the Brazilian people that with Lula, elected for change, that agrarian reform would be much easier. But this didn’t happen. The settlement goals of Lula's government is at the same level as the prior government. The current government continues, unfortunately prioritizing support for agribusiness, for the land owners allied with the agricultural multinationals that transformed our country into the old colonial model; agro-exporter. But one day they will learn that the Brazilian people will change the economic and agricultural model of this country.
on promises from the government to MST: “Little or nothing has been done.‿

Montbläat: Considering that the right to property is one of the pillars of the capitalist system, how can a movement that proposes to expand this right be qualified as communist? What is the concept of unproductive land that justifies the occupation and later expropriations to bring about agrarian reform? What is the real extent of this problem?

João Pedro Stédile: Brazilian society faces fundamental problems in the rural environment. There is a huge inequality between the one percent of wealthy people and the millions of Brazilians living in poverty. The root of these issues is the concentration of ownership of the land, that one percent of the owners controls almost half of the country’s land that should serve as a gift from nature to resolve the people’s problems. Because of this concentration, 4.5 million working families do not own land. What can the MST do? The work of the MST is to raise their consciousness and organize these families to fight for their rights. What rights? The land naturally should resolve the problem of the people and not aggravate it. This is in the Constitution, the Big Document of Brazil, that the State should expropriate unproductive land that is over 1000 acres or that is producing less than its potential or big parts of land that don’t serve a social function, which is being wasted. Also in the Constitution, lands on which the labor or environmental laws are being disrespected should also be expropriated. For these reasons, our movement is a republican movement. To guarantee that all Brazilians that live in the rural areas have guaranteed rights.

Montbläat: Has the government carried out promises that progress agrarian reform? How many families were settled by Lula’s Government? More or less than the governments before? What was spent on the settlements and the assistance to those in settlements? What assistance is demanded and what is given?

João Pedro Stédile: The law establishes that the government has to make a national plan of agrarian reform to establish goals, funds, etc. We are pressuring Lula’s government to make a plan. He had one year to carry it out. And we are seeing that there is a dispute in the government. The MDA wants a plan that will help one million families, the economic area for only 80 thousand families in four years. And still the president stays in the middle; he fought to place 430 thousand families in four years. We agreed. The time has passed and nothing. Until now around 117 thousand families were settled, in almost three years. There is a lot missing. So we held a national protest in May of 2005. The government signed six agreements with us, to summarize: it promised to settle 430 thousand families, prioritizing a solution for 140 thousand families that are camped, and who are encountering all types of difficulties. To reform INCRA, hiring people for agrarian reform, and to guarantee these basic rights. Little or nothing of this was done. That is why we mobilized last month. But unfortunately, the press tried to hide it.

Montbläat: The last report from the Pastoral Commission on Land shows that violence in the countryside remains high and recently Colonel Pantoja, responsible for the massacre of Eldorado dos Carajas was freed, being able to remain free until the last appeal (which could take years). Does the impunity continue?

João Pedro Stédile: The rural parts of Brazil are full of poverty and inequality. The violence that occurs represents the lack of jobs and food, and poverty. Is there a greater violence than the fact that almost sixty percent of the adults in the rural parts of the Northeast don’t know how to read? And there is physical violence in prisons, torture and even assassinations enacted by the political and economic power of the landowners that has destroyed more than 1, 700 lives of farm leaders in these twenty years of the struggle for agrarian reform. And the state is in the middle of all this. Impotent and conniving. Of the 1700 cases only 80 have been through the judicial process, of these only twenty were condemned and of these fewer than ten were imprisoned. What’s more, it continued in the barracks of Abrantes. For this reason colonel Pantoja was condemned by the popular court to 228 years of prison as he is responsible for the massacre of 21 farmers in Carajas, after he spent three years in the barracks of the PM of Belem, and now is liberated by the STJ, and continues in his suite in his house. He revealed recently to the Liberal newspaper that he doesn’t have any remorse.

Montbläat: What is the MST’s opinion about the referendum on disarmament? Are the landowners and their hired gunmen being disarmed?

João Pedro Stédile: The MST and all of its members of the Via Campesina Brazil are already engaged in this campaign to outlaw commercial arms and ammunition in Brazil. This referendum is very important. First because it gets the Brazilian people used to exercising their democratic right, without intermediaries. We hope to arrive at the day in which there will be a referendum for the people to decide about the fundamental issues of society. Second, because this law is going to prevent deaths for futile motives and accidents that are almost 80% of the 40 thousand deaths a year. For this reason this is a civil campaign, so that the poor don’t kill other poor people for stupid reasons. Now, the problems of the social margins, of political violence, etc. – these can only be resolved with other means that are not being discussed in the Referendum.

Evidently the right, the fascists, the UDR, and the landowners want to cultivate in Brazilian society an ideology of violence, of weapons, of the right to take life from others in defense of property. These idiots and ignorant people, small-time capitalists, have a philosophy that material goods are more important than the right to life. For this they believe they have the right to kill someone in defense of their cow, their land….poor things!

Montbläat: What will be the MST’s line of action from here until the end of the current government?

João Pedro Stédile: We are going to continue with the same line as always. We are an autonomous organization in relation to the state, governments, churches, religions, soccer teams, samba schools. We are a social movement whose goal is to organize the poor from the country to fight for their rights. This is our mission whether the government changes or the national soccer champion changes. It’s clear that we had an expectation like all the Brazilian people that with Lula, elected for change, that agrarian reform would be much easier. But this didn’t happen. The settlement goals of Lula's government is at the same level as the prior government. The current government continues, unfortunately prioritizing support for agribusiness, for the land owners allied with the agricultural multinationals that transformed our country into the old colonial model; agro-exporter. But one day they will learn that the Brazilian people will change the economic and agricultural model of this country.
Translated by Friends of the MST volunteer Sarah Weidman