Brazilians End 2-Month Trek for Land

Tens of thousands of marchers demanding agrarian reform completed a two-month trek through the brush with a historic rally Thursday in Brasilia, dramatizing the strongest political challenge to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso during his two years in office.

The demonstration was organized by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers, a highly disciplined leftist group that is the most important social movement in Brazil today. It has led squatters in occupations of rural property and clashed with landowners and police.

More than 25,000 protesters--the biggest such gathering in the capital in decades--assembled among stark, box-like buildings and called on Cardoso to speed agrarian reform. Brazil’s rates of income and land distribution are among the world’s most unbalanced: 20% of Brazilians own about 90% of the land. The marchers also marked the one-year anniversary of the massacre of at least 19 activists by police in the state of Para.

“My hope is to get land,” said Luiz Beltrani de Castro, 89, a sun-beaten sugar-cane worker who made the 630-mile march, “and to demand agrarian reform and justice . . . from the president in a nation where [the authorities] kill the landless like they did last year.”

Cardoso agreed to meet today with leaders of the group, known as the MST. Although the president enjoys a 70% approval rating, he must contend with the masterfully organized opposition movement, which has the support of the Roman Catholic Church and many Brazilians.

And the historically volatile question of land reform forces the president to walk a tightrope between powerful conservatives and the leftist leaders whose goals conflict with his ambitious plans to cut government spending and privatize state agencies.

Cardoso’s decision to meet with the activists acknowledges their clout. Two months ago, he called their tactics “primitive.” His agrarian reform minister offered conciliatory words Thursday but criticized the takeovers of private property. “The MST must, without reducing its capacity for struggle, find methods that are not illegal,” said the minister, Raul Jungmann.

Gilmar Mauro, an MST leader, told reporters in the capital that the rally had “mobilized the society. If we don’t come to an agreement [with Cardoso], we will continue to organize the workers. No social transformation in the world has happened without a fight.”

Cardoso has impressed voters and investors with neoliberal economic reforms that have tamed inflation. Simultaneously, his emphasis on redressing social injustice has weakened traditional left-wing parties.

Experts say Cardoso has done more than his predecessors on land reform, perhaps his toughest challenge. The despair in the countryside is a legacy of Portuguese colonialism. Agricultural magnates own estates the size of small nations and wield vast control over politics and the justice system in rural areas.

The last major rally raising the banner of land redistribution, convened by populist President Joao Goulart in 1964, ignited a military coup and resulted in 21 years of military rule.

Today, with democracy firmly in place, there are at least 2 million landless peasants and millions of acres of idle land. Cardoso has promised to settle 280,000 families by 1999. The government says it has given land to more than 100,000 families, a process costing $40,000 per family per year.

“The government is doing everything it can . . . at unprecedented speed,” Cardoso said recently. “And the government knows that it must work faster. But it knows that it does not have the resources to do more.”

MST leaders profess nonviolence, though they do not back down from confrontations with police and private gunslingers deployed by landowners. An estimated 47 peasants, including women and children, were killed last year.

The marchers’ determination showed in the wrinkled face of Beltrani, who has chopped sugar cane since he was 13. He said only one of his 47 grandchildren and 52 great-grandchildren owns land, and the march represents new hope for an ancient struggle.

“Land is a blessed thing,” Beltrani said. “And even at the end of my life, I want to get a piece of land of my own.”

Beltrani and about 1,500 other marchers were joined in Brasilia by union workers, politicians and clergy. Polls show that 65% of Brazilians approve of the squatter occupations, and European foundations have donated funds. The MST runs its squatter encampments with military-style discipline; its cooperative farms make profits.

“They are not looking for a revolution, they want into the system,” said political scientist Amaury de Souza, a critic of the group’s politics.

Paula Gobbi of The Times’ Rio de Janeiro Bureau contributed to this report.