More recently, the struggle for workers' rights has involved fighting against the construction of a 24-foot wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, along the Rio Grande River. Communities on both sides oppose the wall, saying it wil further separate families and communities.
On November 9 - the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - agricultural workers and other immigrants began a long march to protest the construction of the border wall. To read Carlos Marentes' article on the subject, click here.
]]>In a conversation with Diamantino Nhampossa, leader of the National Union Framers Union of Mozambique (UNAC), our host in Mozambique, I was told that not only is Guebuza supporting the jatropha plantation but he is also ceding government owned land to South African and other transnational corporations that plan to expand large scale industrial mono-culture plantations for agrofuels production. These plans fit right into the proposed "green revolution for Africa" but meet with little support from small-scale farmers. Instead, small farmers have a very different proposal for agriculture and food production in Mozambique and elsewhere in Africa. To learn more, read John Peck's article below describing how jatropha fits with the plans developed at the Global Food Crisis Summit held in Rome this past summer. As John notes, "The world will not be able to escape the food versus fuel debate as long as governments continue to subsidize agrofuels to the detriment of sustainable agriculture as practiced by millions of peasant farmers."
]]>I have had the privilege of accompanying some of the largest and most dynamic social movements in Latin America over the course of my work at Grassroots International. In early 2001, we struggled with how to share the news of the agrarian reform and land rights struggles of our partners in Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries in ways that would resonate with folks here in the United States. What we came up with back then was to connect land rights with food rights.
More recently the right to food has been the daily bread of the news media as the sharp increase in food prices have resulted in food riots in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In the US, the working poor are suffering hunger in silent resignation.
]]>I have had the privilege of accompanying some of the largest and most dynamic social movements in Latin America over the course of my work at Grassroots International. In early 2001, we struggled with how to share the news of the agrarian reform and land rights struggles of our partners in Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries in ways that would resonate with folks here in the United States. What we came up with back then was to connect land rights with food rights.
More recently the right to food has been the daily bread of the news media as the sharp increase in food prices have resulted in food riots in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In the US, the working poor are suffering hunger in silent resignation.
The director of the World Food Program (WFP) has said that high food prices are creating a "silent tsunami" threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.
Our friend and colleague, Raj Patel, aptly pointed out "Indeed, it'd be far more convenient for the governments and aid agencies involved if the catastrophe of hunger and poverty were silent, and especially if the hungry didn't keep piping up with their own ideas about what they'd like to see happen. But they do, and their ideas are often at odds with those proposed by the development industry."
Not only are our farmer colleagues piping up, but so are many of our friends in the progressive faith community who have begun a 3-day fast to honor the 3 billion people who are going hungry. When asked why the fast they say "Our souls are angry. So much injustice and avoidable suffering pains us, harms our collective dignity. The few in positions of power have cast a deaf ear for too long to the people of the land; the people of the streets, a few have fattened their hearts in a time of slaughter... (James 5: 5)"
See the attached Word document for the full statement announcing the fast, or visit Agricultural Missions for additional details.
Some of our friends from Agricultural Missions who are going to be fasting in New York City also went to support our friends from the Rainforest Action Network outside the stockholders' meeting of the transnational agribusiness giant, the Bunge Corporation. This action is aimed at exposing Bunge for "disregarding human rights and the environment and charged that Bunge - whose profits reached a record high last quarter - is benefiting from the global food crisis, the use of slave labor in Brazil, and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the adjacent Cerrado."
Grassroots International has posted on our website the full statement of Judson Barros , representative of Brazilian organization, FUNAGUAS, that successfully sued Bunge in Brazil, who spoke out at the shareholders' meeting in New York this past week.
Finally, a broad international alliance of social movements of farmers, fisherpeople, consumers, environmentalists, women's organizations and others from across the globe have declared a People's State of Emergency, and have issued a declaration entitled "No more Failures as Usual" in which the blame for the current food crisis is put squarely at the feet of governments and international institutions. Copies of the full statement are available in English, French and Spanish at www.nyeleni.eu/foodemergency
I am proud that Grassroots International has signed this declaration that will be presented to governments at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Crisis Summit in Rome June 2nd through 5th, 2008. Grassroots has endorsed the 3-day fast called for by the faith community and we invite our supporters to consider joining, in part or in whole, the 3-day fast from June 3rd through 5th, 2008 to support the People's Declaration of a State of Emergency and the recipe for change presented by the social movements and civil society groups.
]]>Once outside the congestion of Port au Prince, you begin the ascent into the southern mountains. The air begins to clear. The ride is lovely as we wind past towns and villages where efforts at reforestation are clearly visible. The southern mountains are far greener than the larger central mountain range on the way to the central plateau.
We are on our way to Jacmel to meet with Gerald Mathurin of KROS (Kordinasyon Rejyonal Oganysasyon Sides). KROS is one of the organizations that are working together to build a national coalition of peasant organizations. The idea is similar to the National Family Farm Coalition, which brings together small farmer organizations into an advocacy coalition, although this is a world away from the U.S. reality.
We arrive at the KROS office which is a large training center outside the city of Jacmel. The complex is shared by local cooperatives - KROS member organizations - that produce honey, coffee, natural fertilizers, and products based on sugar cane, among other things.
KROS is knitting together local community associations - peasants, fisherfolk, women and youth - across the three arrondissements or counties of the Dept. of the Southeast. "Our goal is to create regional representative bodies that can actively negotiate and determine the shape of development projects across Haiti's southeast," Mathurin says. "We also hope to create a regional development bank overseen by representatives of the local associations." As a first step, KROS is linking community revolving loan associations and credit societies in a regional network.
Gerald also tells us about KROS' "model schools" program. KROS builds schools and develops curriculum in key areas, not only in response to community demands but as a way to show the government what can be done - and should be done -- by the government, since public education is badly lacking in Haiti.
"Perhaps the most important thing we're trying to do," Mathurin observes, is "citizenship for the peasants." What he means is not specific citizenship rights for the Haitian rural majority in and of itself, but rebuilding the image of peasants in the national consciousness as a valued and productive sector of society.
]]>In 2004, I arrived just two months after a band of armed men, led by a former military man named Guy Philippe, crossed the border from the Dominican Republic and marched across the country to Port au Prince, intending to oust then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide. This was a tense period when the island was embroiled in political turmoil. U.S. troops along with those of France and Canada were visible everywhere, and a multi-national United Nations peacekeeping mission known by its French acronym MINUSTAH was about to be established. Nerves were frayed and volatile emotions were barely kept below the surface of everyday life. How are things different now? And how are things the same?
What seems different is that there is more openness and less tension as I walk through the streets of Port au Prince. Despite ongoing concerns about violent crime and insecurity in the city, Haitian people seem more relaxed.
After four years, the blue-helmeted United Nations (U.N.) troops are still here. But their role is not clear. The mandate of the U.N. mission does not allow the multi-national troops to do much more than deter violence through their presence. International donor governments have determined that it is worth several million dollars per month to keep these troops here. But in Haiti there is much controversy about the U.N. Mission.
Most Haitians with whom I have spoken over the past few days have told me they would like to know what the actual cost of the U.N. Mission is per month, because the benefits and impacts seem unclear to them. Rico Jeanne-Pierre from the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) made clear that in such a poor country with such enormous need for roads, sanitation, sewer and water systems, and for services such as health care, education and environmental protection, the huge investment in maintaining an international military force flies in the face of the most urgent needs of the Haitian people. In Port au Prince, with about 4 million people, it is estimated that only about 10 to 15% of people have access to running water or sewage systems. Each blue helmet is a visible reminder of an unmet need.
Despite all this, Haitians seem to be going about the business of their lives. People in Port au Prince as well as the countryside are in constant motion - coming and going to and from markets and work. The many brightly colored tap taps - dramatically hand-painted and exorbitantly decorated mini-vans and buses - are full to over-flowing with people. The streets, especially near markets, are teeming with goods.
What has not changed is the dramatic evidence of the continued social and political exclusion of the painfully poor Haitians who still live predominantly in the countryside. Rural Haiti has been exploited and neglected under international domination, as well as by national governments, for centuries. Today only 1.25 % of the original forest or ground cover remains. The effects of over-exploitation of the natural environment - such as unmitigated deforestation - have created what is today an environmental crisis of disastrous proportions.
Despite the best efforts of numerous peasant associations to engage in home-grown reforestation, the problem is of such large proportions that only a nationally-coordinated, publicly-funded reforestation program could begin to make a real difference. But many Haitians with whom I have spoken bemoan the weakness of the Haitian government. As Camille Chalmers of PAPDA notes, the government is obligated by the international community and financial institutions like the IMF to prioritize debt repayment over human or environmental services such as reforestation.
What is encouraging, however, is that all of the major regional peasant organizations are aware of the gravity of the situation in the countryside, and are working to build a national coalition to protect the land and rural residents. Representatives of peasant organizations such as the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) and the Regional Coordination of Southeast Organizations (KROS) tell me their first priority is to hammer out a national program for improvements in the countryside. They know that a united platform will help them more effectively negotiate with the national government and international donor governments for a national program of rural development that will stop the bleeding of the land and support the self-sufficiency of rural communities.
That's all for now. Next blog installments will focus on current activities of peasant groups and their suggestions for future actions in the countryside. Please stay tuned!
]]>Take a look and let us know what you think.
]]>Take a look and let us know what you think.
]]>Dear Grassroots International,
Thank you all very much for your concern for the situation that we are facing, and the difficulties that the Haitian people are living with as a result of the recent floods and Hurricane Noel. Thank you also for your deep understanding of the root causes of the situation. The priorities of the neoliberal economic model put the entire planet at risk. But the small nations on the peripheries of the great economic powers, such as ours, are greatly more vulnerable than most. Also, in Haiti, the elites who have maintained power since independence [in 1804] have failed.
Today the environmental situation is alarming and very dangerous. The entire country was affected by the recent floods - which in fact should not have caused so much devastation. Hurricane Noel did not hit Haiti as hard as it did some neighboring countries but the devastation in its wake in Haiti has been enormous in all of the ten departments. This is the first time that a hurricane, whose force was in fact fairly light, hit the entire country. Framers and rural communities have lost almost all of their crops and have lost many animals as well to the floods. This is a very grave situation - because even before - national agricultural production was only able to meet about one third of the food security needs of the nation.
The measures taken by the government to date have not given us much hope. What can one million Haitian gourdes (which are about U$ 28,000.00) do to meet the emergency needs of an entire department? And the worst thing is that often times those who are most in need often receive no emergency support.
We need to immediately reactivate agricultural production while at the same time protecting the watersheds and continuing reforestation work. But these activities do not figure into the priorities of the state - the national government. Many sectors of civil society are pressuring to make the environment a pressing national priority.
Meanwhile the government is planning for the production of agrofuels for export to the United States in the place of agricultural production for food. This is a battle that the peasant organizations have to wage to change the government's policy orientation.
It is important to find ways to support rehabilitation and reconstruction in rural communities -because of course it is most important to reactivate agricultural production and the protection of the environment. The traditional international NGOs are working in collaboration with the government to give out emergency food aide and clothing in the cities and the zones that are nearest the larger cities. None of those efforts support reactivation of production or reconstruction in the countryside were support is most needed.
Cordially,
Chavannes Jean Baptiste, Executive Secretary, Mouvmann Peyizan Papay
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Via Campesina women protest against a Cargill ethanol plant in São Paulo
This morning, more than 900 women from Via Campesina occupied the Cevasa sugarmill in the region of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo state. Cevasa is the largest sugarcane company in Brazil, and was recently sold to Cargill, one of the largest agricultural transnational corporations in the world. The protest is part of a national "week of struggle", under the slogan "Women in defense of food sovereignty".
The Ribeirão Preto region concentrates the largest sugarcane industries in the country, which are known for labor violations (including slave labor). Since 2004, 17 rural workers have died in the region due to excessive work. The industry is also responsible for environmental destruction.
The women want to contradict the false idea that the production of ethanol can benefit small farmers and protect the environment. They dennounce air, soil and water pollution, and respiratory deseases caused by the sugarcane monoculture. Also, the expansion of this industry cretates greater land concentration, increases poverty and other social problems.
In addition, the protest is against the proposal by the United States government to benefit large ethanol companies in Brazil, which is not in the interest of the majority of the Brazilian population.
Via Campesina women defend another agriculture policy, which gives priority to small farmers, who are responsible for 70% of food production in the country. Also, they defend a broad agrarian reform to deal with the serious problem of land concentration.
In order to guarantee food sovereignty, rural workers protest against the visit of president Bush, and against his proposal to use of country´s resources to deal with the United States energy problems.
Backgroud
In Brasil, beginning in the 1970s, during the so-called world oil "crisis", the sugarcane industry began to produce fuel, which justified its maintenance and expansion. The same was repeated in 2004, with the new Pro-Alcohol program, which principally serves to benefit agribusiness. The Brasilian government began to stimulate the production of biodiesel as well, principally to guarantee the survival and expansion of large extensions of soy monoculture.
To legitimate this policy and camouflage its destructive effects, the government stimulated the diversified production of biodiesel by small producers, with the objective of creating a "social certificate". The monocultures have expanded into indigenous areas and other territories of native peoples.
In February of 2007, the United States government announced its interest in establishing a partnership with Brasil in the production of biofuels, characterized as the principal "symbolic axis" in the relation between the two countries. This is clearly a phase of a geopolitical strategy of the United States to weaken the influence of countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia in the region. It also justifies the expansion of monocultures of sugarcane, soy, and african palm in all Latin American territories.
For more information, please contact:Igor Felippe - 55-11-3361-3866
imprensa@mst.org.br
www.mst.org.br
We, representatives of organizations and social movements of Brasil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, gathered at a forum on the expansion of the sugarcane industry in Latin America, declare that:
The current model of production of bioenergy is sustained by the same elements that have always caused the oppression of our peoples: appropriation of territory, of natural resources, and the labor force.
Historically the sugar industry served as an instrument to maintain colonialism in our countries and the creation of dominant classes that have controlled, through today, large extensions of land, the industrial process, and commercialization. This sector is based on latifundio ownership, on the overexploitation of labor (including slave labor) and the appropriation of public resources. This sector was created upon intensive and extensive monocropping, provoking concentration of land, profit, and wealth.
The sugarcane industry was one of the main agricultural activities developed in the colonies. It allowed sectors that controlled production and commercialization to continue accumulating capital and with this contribute to the development of capitalism in Europe. In Latin America, the creation and control of the State, beginning in the 19th century, continued to service the colonial interests. Currently, control of the State by this sector is characterized by so-called "bureaucratic capitalism". The sugar industry defined the political structures of national States and of Latin American economies.
In Brasil, beginning in the 1970s, during the so-called world oil "crisis", the sugarcane industry began to produce fuel, which justified its maintenance and expansion. The same was repeated in 2004, with the new Pro-Alcohol program, which principally serves to benefit agribusiness. The Brasilian government began to stimulate the production of biodiesel as well, principally to guarantee the survival and expansion of large extensions of soy monoculture. To legitimate this policy and camouflage its destructive effects, the government stimulated the diversified production of biodiesel by small producers, with the objective of creating a "social seal". The monocultures have expanded into indigenous areas and other territories of native peoples.
In February of 2007, the United States government announced its interest in establishing a partnership with Brasil in the production of biofuels, characterized as the principal "symbolic axis" in the relation between the two countries. This is clearly a phase of a geopolitical strategy of the United States to weaken the influence of countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia in the region. It also justifies the expansion of monocultures of sugarcane, soy, and African palm in all Latin American territories.
Taking advantage of the legitimate concern of international public opinion on global warming, large agricultural companies, biotechnology companies, oil companies, and auto companies now perceive that biofuels represent an important source for the accumulation of capital.
Biomass is falsely presented as the new energy matrix, the ideal of which is renewable energy. We know that biomass will not actually be able to substitute fossil fuels, nor is it renewable.
Some characteristics inherent to the sugar industry are the destruction of the environment and the overexploitation of labor. The principal workforce is migrant labor. As a result, processes of migration are stimulated, making workers more vulnerable and attempts at organization more difficult. The rigorous work of cutting sugarcane has caused the death of hundreds of workers.
Female workers who cut sugarcane are exploited even more, as they receive lower salaries or, in some countries such as Costa Rica, do not directly receive salaries. Payment is made to the husband or partner. Child labor is commonly practiced in the industry throughout Latin America, as well as the exploitation of youth as the main labor force in the suffocating process of cutting sugarcane.
Workers do not have any control over the total amount of their production and as a consequence over their salary, as they are paid according to the quantity cut and not for hours worked. This situation has serious implications for the health of workers and has caused the death of workers through fatigue and the excessive labor that requires cutting up to 20 tons per day. The majority of contracts are through third party intermediaries or "gatos". This complicates the possibility of achieving workers' rights, as formal work contracts do not exist. The figure of the employer is hidden in this process, which negates the very existence of labor relations.
The Brasilian State stimulates the use of resettled lands under agrarian reform and lands of small producers, currently responsible for 70% of the production of food, for biofuel crops, compromising food sovereignty.
As a result, we assume the commitment of:
Expanding and strengthening the struggles of social movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, through an articulation among existing workers' organizations and support groups.
Denouncing and combating any agrarian model based on monocultures and concentration of land and profit, destructive of the environment, responsible for slave labor and the overexploitation of the working force. Changing the current agrarian model implies a full realization of a profound Agrarian Reform that eliminates latinfundios.
Strengthening rural workers' organizations, salaried workers, and farmworkers to construct a new model that is closely cemented to farmworker agriculture and agroecology, with diversified production, prioritizing internal consumption. It is important to fight for a policy of subsidies for the production of food. Our principal objective is to guarantee food sovereignty, as the expansion of the production of biofuels aggravates hunger in the world. We cannot maintain our tanks full while stomachs go empty.
São Paulo, February 28, 2007
Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT)Grito dos ExcluídosMovimento Sem Terra (MST)Serviço Pastoral dos Migrantes (SPM)Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos HumanosVia Campesina
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Porto Alegre, March 6th 2007
Via Campesina Brazil occupies large green desert land holdings in Rio Grande do Sul
Approximately 1,300 women from Via Campesina, who are mostly organized by the Landless Movement - MST, held four land occupations in Rio Grande do Sul this morning.
Those actions are part of a series of National Struggles of Via Campesina Women held during the whole week of March 8th. The slogan of these mobilizations is “Peasant Women Struggling for Food Sovereignty against Agribusiness”.
In Rio Grande do Sul, women occupied various areas belonging to the corporations that were used for tree monoculture, to denounce the green desert that is limiting agrarian reform and making peasant agriculture unfeasible.
The occupations were held in Santana do Livramento, an area controlled by Aracruz; Candiota, controlled by Votorantim, São Francisco de Assis (in the border with Manoel Viana) controlled by Stora Enzo and in Eldorado do Sul, Porto Alegre metropolitan area, controlled by Boise.
Together these four companies own more than 200 thousand hectares of land in Rio Grande do Sul, an area which would allow the settlement of 8 thousand families generating work, income and dignity in the countryside.
The Brazilian movements, which are part of the Via Campesina denounce the fact that the green desert is taking over “gaucho” land, assuring profits only for the companies involved. For society the consequences are the increase in drought, environmental losses, unemployment and poverty in the countryside.
Studies prove that wherever green deserts have advanced, peasant agriculture has been destroyed, and women are the first ones to bear the burden since they work mainly in food production and breeding of small animals for family consumption or to supply local markets.
Strengthening agribusiness will increase the social exclusion of women.
Via Campesina women call for agrarian reform, peasant agriculture and Food Sovereignty as an alternative to agribusiness.
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