260 Lives, Mostly Squatters’, Lost as Brazilian Peasants Battle for Land

A peasants’ battle for land is under way in Brazil, which takes up nearly half of South America and is bigger than the continental United States.

Squatters tired of waiting for promised land reform are invading privately owned farms and ranches, and landowners are arming themselves against them. Clashes have claimed 260 lives, mostly squatters; people involved predict the situation will get worse.

Brazil’s new civilian government promised last year to give land to 1.4 million peasants, but so far it has given title to just 2,000, and pressure is mounting among church-backed peasant groups for faster action.

On May 10, the Rev. Josimo Morais Tavares, a 33-year-old Catholic priest who had been leading peasants in a struggle for land near the southern Amazon, was gunned down by unidentified men in a passing car.

1,000 Trouble Spots

The government acknowledges more than 1,000 trouble spots involving land seekers and landowners in all areas of the country, and maintains that land reform is an intricate matter that takes time.

Some landowners, even before the government promised to undertake land reform, have traditionally hired armed guards to protect their property. Now more of them are doing so.

Clashes between guards and squatters are reported almost constantly in the Brazilian press and the reports indicate that in some cases the squatters have themselves obtained weapons.

Fifty percent of Brazil’s farmland is owned by 1.6% of the farmers. Twelve million peasants have no land at all. Brazil’s population is more than 120 million.

88 Million Acres

President Jose Sarney, a centrist who took office in March, 1985, ending 21 years of right-wing military rule, promised to distribute 88 million acres of land to peasants over a four-year period.

Here in Ronda Alta, 7,000 squatters have taken matters into their own hands after getting no results from the government and have been camping on the Annoni Fazenda (plantation) since invading the 20,000-acre property in November.

The plantation, deep in the rich grain belt of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, had been earmarked for expropriation by the government’s land reform agency.

The peasants thought it would be a matter of weeks for the government to give them legal title, but no action was taken.

‘Violence Seems Inevitable’

“Tension is mounting, and violence seems inevitable,” said the Rev. Arnildo Fritzen, a Roman Catholic priest closely involved with the Annoni case.

“The government has no intention of enacting the agrarian reform it announced,” complained Marli Castro, one of the leaders of the squatters. The peasants have been surviving on handouts of rice and black beans, while living in an encampment of plastic sheeting hung over tree branches.

Five children and four women have died in the camp from illness or poor diet. The peasants have not harvested any crops because they lack tools and seeds they would have received as part of the government’s land reform plan.

The owner of the land, Bolivar Annoni, a large holder in the region, said in an interview, “These peasants have no interest in farming this land. They just want to gain possession and sell it.”

A ‘Marxist Plot’

He called the invasion “an imported Marxist plot led by Cubans and Nicaraguans.”

The peasants, although acknowledging support from Brazilian activist priests, leftist political parties and labor unions, deny any links to communism or foreign governments. They also deny Annoni’s charges that they have brought guns into the camp.

The invasion was led by a church-backed group called the Movement of Landless Workers.

One of the squatters is Marilene Bosch, 34.

“For the past 12 years my husband and I worked as sharecroppers on a farm near here,” she said. “We had to give 50% of what we harvested to the owner.”

Speaking outside a makeshift tent where the couple live with their six children, Bosch added: “That system left us with only enough money to buy food and the barest of clothing for our children--nothing more. The takeover was an action we can’t revoke. The old landowner won’t have us back as sharecroppers. So we must stay here and wait until we win.”

Rio Grande do Sul, which borders Argentina and Uruguay, is one of Brazil’s more prosperous states. It produces a bountiful crop of soybeans, helping make Brazil the world’s No. 3 exporter of farm products after the United States and France. Many farmers are descendants of German and Italian immigrants who came here in the 19th Century.

Lacking Minimum Calories

But poverty is widespread in the state’s rural areas. Government statistics indicate that farmworkers toiling under antiquated systems of day labor and sharecropping do not get the daily number of calories internationally recognized as necessary for basic existence.

The government told the Annoni squatters in February it would buy the property under Sarney’s land reform program and then give each farmer title to a small plot.

“But that promise was broken,” Fritzen, the priest, said. “Unfortunately, the message we get from the government is that the only way this country’s landless peasants will get anything will be by putting up a tough fight.”

Roberto Illas, the spokesman for the newly created Ministry of Agrarian Reform, said: “This administration has been in office only a year. It is the first one in Brazil’s history to take agrarian reform seriously. To carry out land reform correctly will take time. Patience is necessary.”

Landowners Organizing

According to Bishop Jose Gomes, the president of the church’s Pastoral Land Commission, which is a prime force behind the campaign for land reform, the peasants’ fight for land has been made all the more difficult in the last year by the organized campaign of landowners to oppose any redistribution of property.

“The large landowners have also mobilized their allies in Congress, many of whom are also landowners, to oppose agrarian reform,” Gomes said. “The rich farmers have great political and economic clout. They have made themselves heard. And the government has definitely backed down.”

The bishop and other campaigners denounced the government’s agrarian reform law as timid when it was signed by Sarney last October, after months of revision. The final version tightly curbed the powers of the national land reform agency to expropriate property. The agency’s president resigned in protest.

Claro de Freitas, the No. 2 man in the land reform agency in Rio Grande do Sul, said his office supports the peasants who invaded the Annoni ranch. But he added: “It seems there is a definite lack of political will at the highest levels in Brasilia.”

‘These peasants have no interest in farming this land. They just want to gain possession and sell it.’

Bolivar Annoni

landowner