Posted on 04/24/2004 3:22:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
MANGARATIBA, Brazil -- At dawn on March 20, more than 200 rural workers gathered outside a banana plantation near this verdant, oceanside village. Machetes and hoes in hand, they cut the lock on the gate, stormed the plantation driveway, and cleared the brambly undergrowth to make way for makeshift bamboo cabins.
Five weeks later they are still there. Their goal: to persuade the government to take the land from its owners and give it to them instead.
''We have no other choice," said Simon Silva Vargas, 70, a day laborer who participated in the raid 62 miles south of Rio de Janeiro. Standing in the shade of a mango tree, he pointed to the earth and talked of his Kayapo Indian ancestry. ''Brazil's land is in my veins, but none of it is mine."
The raid is one of more than 100 land ''occupations" orchestrated recently by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement. Seeking to redress one of the world's most inequitable land distributions, the movement, known by its Portuguese acronym, MST, organizes peasants and leads them in rallies and land seizures throughout this vast country, where less than 3 percent of the people controls more than half the arable soil.
The largest social movement in Latin America, the MST is waging one of the biggest land grabs in its 20-year history. And its increasingly aggressive tactics are troubling to more than rich landowners. Brazil's leftist government, once sympathetic to the movement's struggle, now finds itself torn between a pledge to fight for social equality and the need to protect an agriculture sector that fuels the nation's economy. ''There is a desire to help the poor, but there is also pressure to protect agricultural growth," says Luciano Dias, political analyst with Goes & Consultores, a consultancy in the capital, Brasilia.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Quite a disparity.
I sit here in Hawaii where land is scarce and ofttimes wonder if non-Americans should own land. I tend to lean towards No.
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