Free Republic

Over the last few weeks, Brazil suffered two institutional crises with far reaching consequences. They were sparked by statements and attitudes of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose image was inevitably damaged. Political analysts point out Lula’s growing messianic and populist tone. He has now shed his moderate image adopted during his election campaign and first few months in power. They also note a growing climate of intolerance and confrontation in Brazil. The first crisis was unleashed by a speech in which Lula confronted both the Judiciary Branch and Congress, breaking the most basic rules of any democratic state....

Activists want land redistributed to the poor Police in Brazil have arrested a leader of the country's landless movement. Jose Rainha Junior, 42, one of the top leaders of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), was detained on Friday in Teodoro Sampaio, Sao Paulo state, where he was testifying in a court hearing. "Rainha was arrested for organising the 2000 occupation of a ranch in which several landless farmers stole cattle and destroyed crops," police inspector Agenor de Oliveira told the Associated Press news agency. Mr Rainha was taken to a high security prison in the town of Presidente Venceslau, his...

Does anyone remember the 1970s, when you could be labeled an 'imperialist pig' for denouncing Cuba as the financier of the so-called 'revolutionary movements' in Brazil? The connections between Cuba and the Brazilian left—not only Cuba, by the way, but also Moscow, Beijing, Algiers and Prague—were obvious, but one was doomed and immediately blacklisted by the Left for daring to state the obvious. If you wrote for a living, publishing houses suddenly vanished. If you were a journalist, newspapers disappeared. A literary genre was actually born at the time—Cuban travel journals. Bookstores built special shelves to welcome it. The vein...

A festering situation that so far seems not to have attracted attention internationally is that of "land reform." Clashes between the landless people and proprietors of farms and ranches that are being invaded are bound to happen. ................................................................................................ The most organized group, the Cuban-tutored MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra—Landless Rural Workers' Movement) has invaded privately owned productive property in parts of São Paulo State, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Pernambuco. A giant tent city with over a thousand families has sprung up on a state highway right of way in the western part of São...

TRES MARIAS RANCH, Brazil - On May 12, Gabriel Maciel and more than 1,000 other landless farmers knocked down the barbed-wire fences surrounding the Tres Marias ranch in southern Brazil, evicted its owner and claimed the land for themselves. "This is our land now and no one will take it away from us," he says a few weeks later, as his wife, Remy, cooks rice and beans over a fire by their hut of bamboo stakes and black plastic sheeting. Less than 50 miles away, gunmen in masks patrol the perimeter of another ranch whose owner vows to fight back...

Implementing an agrarian land reform in Brazil is a major goal of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration. To do this, the President chose Trotskyite-leaning Miguel Rossetto, the most radical member in his cabinet, as Land Reform Minister. This issue of Lulawatch will deal with the present status of land reform in Brazil. 1. Brazilian land reform before 2003 The left has always been obsessed with land reform. They cannot conceive a platform without a land reform plank which would deeply undermine and eventually destroy rural private property. French sociologist Alain Touraine, a well-known Brazilianist, says “the ideological share...