O Nordeste Parte 2

After visiting the Escola Estadual in Assentamento Quisama, I travelled the MST acampamento Mario Lago just 30 minutes outside of Aracaju. The 85 families in the acampamento have been camped out for over 8 years. When the MST first invaded the land and set up an acampamento there were over 600 families, however over the years the theifs, free-riders, and half-hearted MST families desisted back to the city or to other acampamentos.

The Acampamento is located within a large tract of government land that has been leased out to farming companies to plant monoculture crops, especially sugarcane. The luta of the Acampamento has been a frustrating one. Since the land is already owned by the government and is leased to companies and not families, the MST believed it was prime land to be reallocated for agrian reform. The 10 year lease ends in 2012 and the coordinator of the Acampamento is sure that next year they will win access to the land.

However after 8 years the families have establish a very dignified little Agro-villa with 80 little huts of plastic, wood, and metal stretching on either side of a compact dirt road. Behind each house stretches a 3 acre lot where the family grows produce or raises chickens or pigs for family consumption and also to sell in the nearby markets. Even though the families have been squatting for 8 years, they have established productive little farms and gardens and have invested their community, school, and houses.



I also visited another Acampamento just 3 miles away from Mario Lago, called Acampamento Tingui. At 14 years, this is the oldest Acampemento in the state. Unlike the acampamento I visted in Rio Grande dol Sul, where families come and go after a few years, the 2 acampamentos here have had the same families throughout the struggle. Acampamento Tingui is located within a huge, unproductive farm/fazenda that is owned by a rich family that lives in Aracaju and is active in state politics. Since the family has so much sway and is unwilling to compromise on a lower land price, the MST has been unsuccessful in negotiating terms for land distribution. Like Acampamento Mario Lago the families have begun to expand and cultivate the land surrounding them that has gone unused for decades.


In the south and coastal region I was invited to accompany one of the regional directors on a visit to a few assentamentos in the region. I was allowed to sit in and listen to the discussions he had with the coordinators of each assentamento. He also introduced me and afterwards I was able to talk to some of the coordinators and learn about the history and development of each assentamento.



Most of them had only been assentamentos for 2 years and were struggling acquire funds to build houses and begin agriculture production. The government Agrarian Reform department is required to provide new assentmantos and families with credit and loans to build houses and buy tools and seeds for production, however the government is incredibly slow and bureaucratic and after 2 years many families have seen nothing. The agriculture production that existed at each assentamento is a result of each families own ability to pool resources and work, and also a result of collective work by families, helping one another plant and harvest when the time comes.




My last few days in Sergipe I spent in the northwest part of the state in the Sertao. The area only expiences a dry season of 9 months and a wet season of 3 months where it rains only a few times a week. Since the Sertao is less populated and has less agriculture production, the majority of MST assentamentos in Sergipe are located in the Sertao. However, the main agricultural struggle is the access to water and irrigation, because during the dry months farmers must rely on groundwater and irrigation to keep crops alive.



While in the Sertao I visited the largest MST assentamento of 760 families on some 30,000 hectares of land. The assentmaneto in itself is a small town, with a school, health center, ice cream shop, various small mercado shops, and also a co-op which produces fruits, vegetables, and milk to be sold in the city and to schools, hospitals, and other public institutions. Luckily the assentamento is located on an irrigation project that the government funded in order to bring big agri-business companies to the area, however the MST was successful in moving in and opening up the land for Brazilian families instead of multi-national companies. As of today only 1/3 of the area has been irrigated and the government is slowly extending irrigation infrastructure to the rest of the assentamento.

The Northeast Part 1

For the last stage of my project I traveled by plane to Sergipe, a small state on the Northeast coast of Brazil. I am documenting the trip in two segments because I didnt have internet access while I was there.

Sergipe is the smallest state in Brazil and can be crossed from one side to other in less than 4 hours. Although the state is small it has a number of micro climates, including the wet green litoral, the zona de mata (the forest zone--where the majority of the sugarcane plantations are located), the agreste (verdant rolling hills in the interior), and the Sertao, which is the famous Brazilian desert.

When the Portuguese arrived the Northeast was the first area of Brazil to be colonized and developed, due to the perfect climate for sugarcane production. Today the Northeast of Brazil is seen as almost another country from the South and Southeast regions, which experienced much more European immigration and developed at a much faster rate. The Northeast is dominated and inhibited by 5 centuries of sugarcane production, and today has become one of the most poorest regions of all Latin America. It also has the highest concentration of Afro-Brazilians, due to the sugarcane slave trade that brought nearly 40 million Africans to the Northeast.

The MST movement in the Northeast is also a very distinct reality from that of the South. In Rio Grande dol Sul there were only 600 MST families acampados (camping, waiting for land to open up), however in Sergipe alone there are 11,000 families acampados. The MST movement originated in the South and developed much faster there, however due to the pressing poverty and inequality in the Northeast, the movement is has become a prominent force. One of the national MST directors of Sergipe told me that the luta (fight) in the Northeast was access to land, and the luta in the South had become a luta for access to credit and loans.

The first day I arrive in Aracaju, the capital city of Sergipe located halfway up the state on the coast, and was driven around the city by two MST members who showed me places and buildings the MST had occupied. I also visited the MOTU Movimento dos Trabalhadores Urbanos, which is a new urban movement that the MST has grandfathered along to help organize and empower property-less and job-less urban citizens to gain access to proper housing and job opportunities in the city. The MST National Director also told me of a project the MST and MOTU have been working on to create a farmers market where MST families can send their produce to Aracaju and other cities to be sold by MOTU members, creating more employment and market connections for families in both movements.

In the past 4 years MOTU occupied a number of abandoned apartment buildings in the city, pressing the government to address the imminent homeless situation, however many times they were violently evicted by police, who used dogs and weapons to intimidate and hurt men and children.

The second day in Sergipe I drove deep into the interior to an assentamento in the Agreste. The director of the assentamento held a big afternoon bbq party and invited MST members and directors from accross the region to celebrate the successes and advancements of the movement. At the bbq I spoke with a number of different members of the MST including farmers, to Agro-technicians, policemen, and I also met a national senator who had been an MST member and farmer before being elected to the national congress.

The following day I visited one of the oldest Assentamentos in Sergipe, located just 20 minutes outside of Aracaju. The Assentamento also has a state-wide school and cultural center, where courses and MST reunions take place year round. When I visited there was a group of 30 Haitians, who where studying Agronomia with the MST in a year-long Technical Program facilitated through La Via Campesina, which is the international peasant movement that is very interconnected with the MST in Brazil. At the assentamento I sat in on a long meeting composed of the state directors, directors of various assentamentos, and also Agro-Tecnicos. The MST has a number of Agro-Tecnicos, which are professionals in Agronomy, Environmental Engineering, Zoology, and other areas related to agriculture production, that are hired through the government and help MST families learn agriculture skills and also plan new projects. One of the Major problems however, is that the government institution responsible fore Agrarian Reform is incredibly underfunded and plagued by a lethargic beaurocracy. Many families dont recieve the credit and loans they are entitled to by law up to 2 or 3 years late. Currently many of the Agro-tecnicos, who are professional government hired workers, haven't relieved their payment in 5 months.

Acampamentos - Campo e Cidade

My last days in Rio Grande dol Sul were spent in an MST acampamento and at a 3 day, statewide youth congress of varios social movements in the Rio Grande dol Sul area.

The MST Acampamento I visited is located an hour outside of Porto Alegre. The Acampamento is a community of black tarp tents that are located alongside a major highway leading to Porto Alegre. Over 50 families live in modest huts made of black plastic tarps with dirt floors and wood fired cook stoves. After joining the MST, landless families must camp in these acampamentos for an extended period of time until the State government authorizes land to be redistributed. Sometimes the MST organizes acampamentos inside the private farms or property (fazendas) that they hope to gain access to. However in recent years the MST has organized acampamentos, such as the one I visited, that are located on government land to press the government into action, and also to avoid violent conflicts with the private landowners, who often employ private securty forces to scare MST families and also evict them from the land. At the acampamento I visited Some families had only been there a few months, while others have been at the acampamento for over 4 years.

Life in the acampamento is my first real glimpse into the poverty and struggle of the landless families. While the families had little income they were very open and welcoming and offered abundant amounts of food and hospitality. Some cultivate little gardens and even had pigs and chickens out behind their tents. Many families have at least one member who busses into Porto Alegre to work, and others have family members living in the city who send food and money to support the camping families.

From the acampamento, me and 5 other youth traveled to a city in the interior of Porto Alegre for the Acampamento da Juventude, which is a statewide campout that occurs every year in the city Santa Maria. Over 700 youth from various social movements, including the MST, Levante Popular da Juventude, and many others, come together to debate and share experiences, create stronger networks between movements and youth that share the same luta, and also stengthen a projecto popular that aims to reduce inequality and poverty in Brazil and attacks the capitalist policies of the government.

It was interesting to see that although nearly a third of the youth came from country origins, it was almost impossible to distibguish and urban youth from a rural one. The urban culture, through television, music, and internet, has thoroughly penetrated the youth culture of the campo.

The Acampamento was a great experience to contextualize the youth of social movements in the south of Brazil. It was very interesting to see how the youth coordinate and organize among themselves.