Assentamentos in Rio Grande do Sul

After spending time getting to know the Levante Popular Juventude, and their luta in Porto Alegre, I visited an assentamento or agricultural community of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Desempregos (Unemployed Workers Movement). The MTD was created in 1999 in Rio Grande dol Sul and has spread to inlcude some 10 other Brazilian states. The movement is focused at creating better job security and opportunities for the working class, and also works closely with the MST and other social movements.

The Assentamento Belo Monte (Beautiful Hill) is the oldest assentamento of the MTD, and is one of seven in Rio Grande do Sul. It is located 45 minutes outside of Porto Alegre, and is composed of 35 families who each manage 10 hectares of land. Due to its close proximity to Porto Alegre, many family members commute to work in the city, while others work the land to produce for family consumption.

The MTD is a young cousin of the MST and works to connect more urban-oriented families and workers with better options. One very interesting aspect of the assentamento, is the mentality of the city or peripheria that the families bring to the countryside. Living in a favela or in the periphery of a city cultivates a certain city mentality that is difficult to shed once family or youth move to the city.

After spending a few days in Assentamento Belo Monte, I travelled to Viamao, a smaller city outside of Porto Alegre, and and stayed a few days in Assentmanto Tiaraju, which is also home to the Escola Estuadual of Rio Grande dol Sul, which hosts classes and conferences of the MST year round. While I was at the Escola, there were only a few MST members there who worked in and around the Escola, however the week after I left commenced a two week course of political formation for MST youth and also a 4 day state-wide conference of the MST.

Assentamento Tiaraju is composed of 350 families, and totals some 10,000 hectares. The land previously pertained to a weathly businessmen who also owned the conservative newspaper of Porto Alegre, however he defaulted on loans and ended up ceding his fazenda to the government, who was able to distribute it the MST; however this method of land aquisition is not very common in Brazil. The IMF and World Bank support a model of land redistribution that is somewhat similar, and entails the governemnt buying up land and fazendas at face price and then

distributing them to MST families, who then have to repay the price of the land after a certain number of years.

The fazenda formerly was a monoculture farm of rice production. Today each of the 350 families have 10-15 hectares for family production, in addition to a cooperative that manages a small scale production or organice rice, using the irrigation and infraestructure that the old rice fazenda left.

The Assentamento Tiaraju is a successful example of an MST assentemento, due to its large area of land for each family, proximity to Viamao (15 min) and Porto Alegre (45 min) which allow market access and also employment options, and also the successful internal organization of the assentmanento, which has a number of successful cooperativos.

Levante Popular da Juventude, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande dol Sul

After the Jornada de Agroecologia I returned to the ELAA for a day and then travelled 12 hours south to Rio Grande dol Sul, the southernmost state of Brasil. The state is known for its fertile rolling plains, cold winter weather, yerba mate, and ''gaucho" culture. Rio Grande is also the birthplace of the MST, with the first acampamento in Ezcruzilado Natalinho, and the first major land vicotry in Fazenda Annoni. A number of other agrarian social movements also took root in Rio Grande, including the MPA (Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultures-- Small Farmer Movement) a 'cousin' of the MST that fights for rights and support of small family farming, and als the CPT (Comission Pastoral del la Terra) a socially active sector of the catholic church that helps organize and support farmers and peasant groups and helped create the MPA. A major reason why many social and especially social agrarian movements take root in Rio Grande is due to its accellerated development of captial and agro-industry in the state which occurred following WWII. The development of mechanized and chemical agriculture by large agri-business companies, pushed peasants off the land and pooled land and resources in the hands of a small minority, that managed the land in a much more 'productive' manner.

During the late 19th century and on into the 20th century, the region experience heavy italian and german migration, especially during the period known as the "embranquecimento" or "whitening," where the Brazilian government cleared large areas of land of Indians and African-descendents, and heavily emphasized European immigr

ation. In Porto Alegre, many times I've heard people refer to a white-

skinned, cleared-eyed man as 'alemao' or 'german', regardless of their actual descent.

After meeting with the MST office in Porto Alegre, I spent the next few days spending time with a group called "Levante Popular da Juventude." (Popular Youth Rising, or something of the sort). The movement surfaced in 2005 in Porto Alegre, with support of la

Via Campesina and other social movments in the area, that sought a need to organize and empower the youth of different social movements, as well provide contstructive environments and opportunities for kids and young adults in the peripheries of the city.

I visited a perihpery community, also

known as a "morro" (hill) or "favela." With the Levante I attended a community assembly where the Mayor of Porto Alegre talked

about the impacts of the World Cup 2014 construction, which included the relocation of thousands of families in the perihpery to build bigger roads and hotels in the area.

The assembly took place in a church, packed with hundreds of worried community members, who gave the Mayor quite a hard time. Basically the Mayor was trying to ease their worries

about being relocated to other parts of the city and about the resources and financial aid they would recieve to make the move. However it became obvious as the assembly went on, that this project, funded by the government, would only benefit interests of tourism and commercial interests a small minority and move voice-less, lower income families further into the perfiphey.

The Levante hopes soon expand outside of Rio Grande to other parts of Brazil, organizing and create strong networks between social movements throughout the country to create a stronger and more informed "base."

(Kid's Banner: We want guarantee of our homes! With dignity!)

The first week of winter in the southern hemisphere I found myself in two experiences that few Americans have encountered: working in the sugarcane and listening to Almeida Guevara speak.

I spent my last day in Assentamento Contestado helping Adriano, a MST member who works part time in Curitiba, cut sugarcane on his family plot. We spent the first half of the day hacking the bases of the bamboo-like trunks and tossing the cana into piles. The leaves of the cana are long, thin and sharp and gnash at the arms, hands and face, inflicting little itchy cuts. In Northeast Brazil, home of the historical sugarcane plantations, thousands of Nordestinos work in the cana in piecemeal labor, paid by the amount of kilos of sugarcane cut per day, which sometimes amounts to abysmal income and encourages workers into 10 and 12 hour days. The poor health conditions include cuts and infections, dehydration, fatigue, and harmful particles from chopped sugarcane that damage the lungs, in addition to serious injuries incurred by weary workers swinging razor sharp machetes.

At midday we stopped to rest and eat lunch. Outside of their house is a small hand-powered mill that crushes the sugarcane and extracts a trickle of liquid from the sugarcane ´caldo de cana.´ This liquid is boiled and refined to make brown sugar, and by a chemical process, white sugar. The crude liquid is the sweetest and most delicious drink I´ve ever tasted. The essence of ´sugar water,´ it is light brown and milky, and glides over the lips and down the throat in a sweet chorus. I had to restrain myself from a 4th glass before lunch. In the afternoon we chopped up the sugarcane trunks and replanted the pieces along the edge of a field, to serve as a wind buffer and natural fence to keep animals out, and also a source of caldo and sugar. Sugarcane is a fast-growing and durable plant, and planted sectios of only one trunk can produce over 10 sugarcane stalks the following year.

That night 80 community members from Assentamento Contestado, and the students at the Escola LatinoAmericano de Agroecologia bussed 7 hours north to Londrina for the 10th annual Congress of Agroecologia. Over three and a half days, more than 3,500 attendees from all over the Americas came together to learn about, debate, and share experiences of Agroecologia.

The Jornada is organized through La Via Campesina with a large contribution from the MST. Other social movments such as the MPA- Movimentos dos Pequenos Agricultores, MMC-Movimento das Mulheres Camponesas, peasant and agriculture movements throughout Latin America, and professores, students, government officials, and anyone else interested in Agroecology is welcome.

The Jornada began with thousands of participants bussing to Londrina´s downtown area, and marching some 5 kilometers through town, stopping traffic and demanding the attention of the local population and media to make it known that the Jornada against agro-toxicos, trans-genicos, and large-scale latifundios was taking place in Londrina. In the center plaza the thousands of marchers gathered to listen to the keynote speeches before returning to the University of Londrina where the Jornada was held.

The Jornada hosted 16 seminarios given by professors and agriculutural, environmental and political experts, as well as 54 different small class on experiences of Agroecologia, mostly in Brazil, from beekeeping and composting to government policy and small scale cooperatives. By coincidence I ran into professor Maria-Josee Massicotte, who gave a presentation about the MST agroecology schools at UNC last fall, where I first learned about the movement. She helped me with my research proposal and also helped me get in contact with the ELAA. She is in Brazil for two weeks and is researching assentamento cooperativos in the north of Parana and comparing them with peasant organizations in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was great to touch base with her, converse about our research project and the different obstacles, and also share experiences from Chapel Hill to Brazil.