Brazil

Brazil’s Landless Workers Persist Through Agroecology

October 1, 2020 Rafael Forsetto, Civil Eats. Create! Agroecology, Brazil, Environment, Food and Agriculture

Just off one of the main highways that crosses the Brazilian state of Paraná, there’s a narrow dirt road that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. The road is bordered on both sides by corn, soy, and wheat. The landscape goes largely unchanged for eight miles until a worn-down sign informs visitors they have arrived in the Contestado Settlement—one of many large farming settlements belonging to the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement—or the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). The settlement is structured like a village; further down the road lies a town square, a farmers’ cooperative, a health clinic, schools, markets, and even a cultural center.

Walking The Tightrope: Latin America’s Pink Tide

August 22, 2020 By: Frederick B. Mills, New Politics. Strategize! Bolivia, Brazil, Latin America, Nicaragua, Socialism, Uruguay, US Imperialism, Venezueala

Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings, edited by economic historian and prominent Latin Americanist Steve Ellner, offers a critical ethical theoretical framework for assessing the performance of left and left-of-center governments in Latin America during the Pink Tide. The “Pink Tide” refers to the wave of progressive governments beginning with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. These progressive governments provided alternatives to the neoliberal economic model that had brought growing economic and social inequality, austerity, privatization of public resources, and political subordination to Washington to most of the region during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Pink Tide governments were brought to power by widespread disillusion with traditional political parties and were buoyed by social movements that sought economic and social justice and more democratic participation in the political life of their nations.

Tell The People That The Struggle Must Go On

August 20, 2020 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Organize! Basic Necessities, Brazil, Hunger, Pandemic, Police violence, South Africa

Young children marvel at an obvious contradiction in capitalist societies: why do we have shops filled with food, and yet see hungry people on the streets? It is a question of enormous significance; but in time the question dissipates into the fog of moral ambivalence, as various explanations are used to obfuscate the clarity of the youthful mind. The most bewildering explanation is that hungry people cannot eat because they have no money, and somehow this absence of money – the most mystical of all human creations – is enough reason to let people starve.

How The FBI ‘Toppled Presidents’ In Brazil

July 12, 2020 Brasil 247, BrasilWire. Educate! Brazil, FBI, Lula da Silva, US Regime Change

Natalia Viana, editor from the respected Brazilian investigative journalism site Agência Pública, recently published a 5 part series based on information shared from leaked Telegram conversations revealed by Intercept Brasil as part of the Vaza Jato scandal. In the series, she shows how Lava Jato task force director, public prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, received financial compensation through an asset sharing scheme based on kickbacks from fines that the US Government collected from Brazilian companies and individuals. According to Viana, during a meeting in which they negotiated the asset sharing deal, Deltan received a cash payment. In a leaked message Dallagnol says, “yesterday we spoke with them about ‘assets sharing’ of fines associated with the actions against Petrobras, and there is a positive perspective in some of these values. ‘Asset sharing’ is an elegant term for division of the cash.”

The Pandemic Of Hunger

June 26, 2020 Frei Betto, Resumen English. Educate! Brazil, Hunger, Pandemic, Recession

In April, the World Bank predicted that the Brazilian economy would shrink by 5% of GDP by 2020. Now, in June, the prediction is 8% to 10%. And the government’s expected 2% growth. As the pandemic mainly affects self-employed and informal workers who, in order to survive, cannot be confined to their homes, the number of Brazilians in poverty is expected to increase this year from 41.8 million (2019) to 48.8 million people, equivalent to 23% of the population. The poor are all those who survive on a daily income of less than R$27.5 ($5 USD) or a monthly income of less than R$825. This year there will be 7 million more Brazilians. The emergency aid has eased the social drama a little. But until when? A survey conducted by Plano CDE, a company that analyzes life and consumption in classes C, D and E, indicates that between March and April of this year, of the 58 million Brazilians in classes D and E (with monthly incomes of up to 500 R) 51 million saw their income reduced by half or less.

How Western Media Confines US Imperialism To The Past

June 10, 2020 John McEvoy, Brazil Wire. Educate! Brazil, Media, US Regime Change, Venezuela

Many of the newspapers that – years after the fact – have found the nerve to condemn past episodes of US imperialism have not yet mustered the same reproach for US intervention in Venezuela. The present, it seems, has paralyzed their capacity for critical analysis. Despite enormous historical precedent, Western journalists fail to see that what is happening now has happened before – time and time and time again. In some decades, they may go through the archives and profess their horror at the true nature of US foreign policy in Venezuela. But by that time, it will be far too late. As they scramble to recover shreds of their professional integrity, the damage to Venezuela will be long done. Holding the powerful to account in the past but not the present allows Western imperialism to continue. Everyone’s a winner; Western intervention goes unchallenged while the media retains ‘respectability’ with futile ‘critical’ hindsight. If journalists can learn anything from Iraq, it must be this: it is not good enough to challenge powerful interests once many hundreds of thousands of people have died.

Large Indigenous Territories Are Necessary For Culture And Biodiversity

May 24, 2020 By Liz Kimbrough, Monga Bay. Create! Brazil, Environment, Indigenous culture, Indigenous Peoples

In Brazil, indigenous lands make up 13.5% of the national territory and are home to half a million indigenous peoples speaking 280 distinct languages. New research, published in the journal Land Use Policy, argues that large, legally protected territories are necessary for indigenous peoples to maintain their traditional livelihoods and to safeguard the global-scale environmental benefits provided by these lands. “Our paper entirely rejects the often-proclaimed anti-indigenous political banner in Brazil of ‘Too much land for too few Indians’ (in Portuguese, ‘Muita terra para pouco índio’),” Rodrigo Begotti, of the University of East Anglia in the U.K. and co-author of the study, told Mongabay in an email.

Brazil: Right Wing Militias On The Loose

May 24, 2020 Shobhan Saxena, The Hindu. Educate! armed militia, Brazil, Fascism, Violence

On Wednesday, a police team picked up two men from a luxury condominium by a lake in Brasilia. They also seized posters with photos of heavily-armed men in full military gear, calling for a military coup in Brazil. The suspects had sent a mail, titled “Death sentence to the traitors of the motherland”, to the country’s top judges. “We call on the people to kill politicians, judges, prosecutors, Mayors, their advisers, relatives, and demons of all sorts in defence of themselves,” the mail said. For a year, judges have been receiving death threats from anonymous groups. A Supreme Court judge, Celso de Mello, said on Thursday the people behind the threats were “fascists” and “Bolsonaristas” — the fanatic followers of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s ‘Operational President’ General Braga Netto Unveils His ‘Marshall Plan’

May 11, 2020 Brasil Wire Educate! Bolsonaro, Brazil, Walter Braga Netto

In early April 2020, the first rumors emerged that Brazil’s Chief of Staff, General Walter Souza Braga Netto, had been quietly anointed “acting” or “operational” President of Brazil. It was a position that did not officially exist, therefore no official confirmation of this was even possible. The General’s announcement of a massive Keynesian investment program called Pró-Brasil – informally called a “Brazilian Marshall Plan” – has prompted Brazil’s biggest newspapers Folha de São Paulo and Estadão to acknowledge the General’s position at the de-facto head of government policy.

Silvercorp: Foiled Venezuela Mercenary Group In Brazil During 2018 Election

May 9, 2020 Nathalia Urban, BrasilWire. Educate! Brazil, Election, Mercenaries, Silvercorp

The paramilitary group behind the foiled operation, called Gedeon, was based around security contractor Silvercorp USA, which has been linked to U.S. President Donald Trump. The State Department denied prior knowledge, yet U.S.- backed Juan Guiadó, the self-declared interim President of Venezuela, and figurehead of several failed coup attempts was revealed to have had a contract with the mercenaries, which include two former Green Berets. The $212 million dollar contract between Guiadó, opposition strategist J. J. Rendon, “US advisors” and Silvercorp included “strategic planning,” “equipment procuring” and “project execution advisement”. Silvercorp USA also claimed that they have forces in Venezuela already, training for a terror campaign, which included a threat to the life of President Maduro, whom the U.S. Government had recently placed a $15m dollar reward for information leading to his arrest.

Brazilian Court Upholds 17-Year Sentence Against Lula Da Silva

May 9, 2020 Telesur English. Educate! Brazil, Legal System, Lula da Silva

Brazil's Federal Court of the Fourth Region (TRF-4) Wednesday upheld the 17-year prison sentence handed down in November against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The TRF-4 judges also denied the defense's request that the virtual trial be suspended and postponed for a face-to-face session when COVID-19 no longer poses a threat. "Keeping the sentence is unjust and arbitrary," Lula's defense lawyers, who did not have access to the virtual trial, denounced. "The fact that we were not allowed to be at the trial is a violation of the constitutional right to a broad defense," attorney Cristiano Zanin Martins stressed.

Victory: Evangelical Missionaries Barred From Uncontacted Tribes’ Land

April 27, 2020 Survival International. Create! Brazil, Indigenous Peoples, Missionaries

Brazil - In a landmark ruling, a Brazilian judge has blocked evangelical missionaries from making contact with uncontacted tribes in the Javari Valley, home to the greatest concentration of such peoples anywhere on Earth. The lawsuit was brought by UNIVAJA, the indigenous organization of the Javari Valley, to counter concerted efforts by the missionaries to reach uncontacted communities. The judge’s ruling names several missionaries – Andrew Tonkin, Josiah McIntyre and Wilson de Benjamin – and the New Tribes Mission (Ethnos360), but extends to all the missionaries who are trying to enter the Javari Valley. The judge stated in his ruling that “Uncontacted Indians are especially vulnerable… To make contact with them is hugely risky.”

Without A Country In Which To Love…

April 17, 2020 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Brazil, Burkina Faso, Food and Agriculture, Land Reform

Burkina Faso, in the Sahel region of the African continent, has been struck hard by the global pandemic; officially reported deaths from COVID-19 are second only to Algeria in Africa. In the past sixteen months, nearly 840,000 people out of twenty million have been displaced by conflict and drought; in March alone, 60,000 people were forced from their homes. Last year, the United Nations calculated that the number of Burkinabè residents who had little access to food was 680,000; this year, the UN estimates that the number will rise to 2.1 million. Conflict over resources and ideology had already greatly strained the region, where the climate catastrophe-generated desiccation of the Sahel has produced a serious agrarian crisis.

Brazil: Favela Residents And Indigenous Communities Among Those Most At Risk Of COVID-19

April 15, 2020 Alexander Main, CEPR.net. Educate! Brazil, COVID-19, Indigenous People, Land grabs, Poverty

As of noon on April 8th the total number of Covid-19 positive cases reported by Brazil’s health ministry exceeded 14,000 and the number of deaths exceeded 700. This is, by far, the highest number of reported cases in Latin America (though Ecuador has a greater number of reported cases and deaths on a per capita basis). The actual number of cases is likely many times greater, given that the current rate of testing for Covid-19 in Brazil is still very low – 258 per million, compared to 3,159 per million in Chile, 6,423 per million in the U.S. and 10,962 per million in Germany. In São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, and the hardest hit urban area in the country, the local health secretariat is reportedly only providing tallies for severe cases of the virus.

Landless Workers Are Challenging Unequal Land Distribution And Corporate Agribusiness

April 13, 2020 Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Resist! Agribusiness, Brazil, Land Reform, wealth inequality

Brazil is among the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to land distribution and is home to the world’s biggest landed estates. This structure of land concentration and unproductivity has historic roots dating back to Portuguese colonization, which established a foundation of social inequality in the country that persists today. In Brazil—as elsewhere—the relationship with the land is fundamental for the country’s development. To talk about land is to talk not only about people, but also about the control of natural resources and of economic, social, and cultural development; land is an expression of society as a whole. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s new dossier, “Popular Agrarian Reform and the Struggle for Land in Brazil,” discusses the current stage of the struggle for land in the country.

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