NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz).
Number 391, March 10, 2000.
Visit our home page: http://www.oneworld.org/sejup/
Dear News from Brazil readers,
In the land of Carnaval, not much passed through the media this past week
except news from the various Carnaval events going on throughout the
country. We are taking advantage of this respite and sending you two
pieces we received this week on this year's Lenten Campaign, as well as a
longer piece on the World Bank's "Cedula da Terra," the Land Bank which we
received via Global Exchange.
By the way, for all of you sambistas, Imperatriz won the samba school
competition in Rio, and the schools Vai-Vai and X-9 won in Sao Paulo!
Sejup
In this week's issue:
- The 2000 Lenten Campaign
- Seven Churches judge Brazil by Frei Betto
- The 2000 Lenten Campaign
The CF (Campanha da Fraternidade, the Church's Lenten Campaign) has been
in existence for over 30 years. It's objective is to see the Word of God
in the midst of the daily concrete problems in society. The CF has had
three major goals: 1) facilitate the faithful and the people in general to
study more intensely the Word of God and as a result a deepening of faith,
2) communicate to the public at large the prophetic voice of the church in
the midst of social issues, and 3) initiate concrete responses to the
clamor of injustices in relation to the Word of God and it's reflection in
the BCC (Base Christian Communities).
A SPECIAL CAMPAIGN
This year the CF is ecumenical in that it involves the participation of
CONIC (National Council of Christian Churches of Brazil). The CF 2000 is
extremely different form other years due to the participation of other
churches. It is something new, which in itself is a witness to unity.
Seven churches form part of CONIC: the Roman Catholic church, Reformed
Christian Church, Episcopalian Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of
Brazil, Methodist, Syrian Orthodox of Brazil and United Presbyterian Church
of Brazil.
SLOGAN & THEME
The theme of the CF 2000 is: Human Dignity & Peace. This theme maintains
the spirit of previous themes of the past years. Human Dignity & Peace
incorporates the fundamental rights to be human in all the various stages
and circumstances of life. As well as promoting the value and dignity of
the human person, this theme reflects the prophetic message in the bible
that "Justice leads to peace"(Isaiah 32,17) The slogan for the CF 2000 is:
A New Millennium without Exclusion. If anyone is excluded or deprived of
their human dignity, then evidently real peace cannot be achieved. In the
words of Jeremiah 6, 14 "They dress my people's wound without concern and
say 'Peace!' but there is no peace"
OBJECTIVE
The general objective of CF is to unite the Christian churches to be a
common witness in the promotion of a life of dignity for all and denounce
the threats to human dignity. The manner of conducting the campaign places
value on dialogue with the participants of the CF and welcoming all as
brothers and sisters. The CF is not simple a study or the propagation of
ideas; it is a concrete expression of being partners with all people of
good will who unite to bring about human dignity and peace.
THE TEXT
The basic textbook is one of the most important documents of the
Ecumenical CF - 2000. It relates the basic proposal of the campaign to
maintain the core relationship between human dignity and peace, and to have
a society without exclusion. It is divided into 3 blocks. The first is
under the title "The wounded dignity of humanity in the basement of life."
It tells of situations of which society itself is ashamed and wishes to
hide. They are situations in which the dignity of the person is debased.
The second block is titled "The wounded dignity of humanity in the light of
day." It speaks of situations which society accepts and to which it does
nor react. This is because the disrespect of human dignity is often part of
the greater society. It is 'life as it is' sometimes cruel, but not to the
point where people act with indignation. The third block is titled "The
frames." This speaks about the causes of inhumanity and the obstacles to
unity and peace.
Source: Santuário
March 2000.
- Seven Churches judge Brazil by Frei Betto
The Lenten campaign for the year 2000 will begin on Ash Wednesday, the
8th of March. The slogan is "A New millennium without Exclusion" and the
theme is "Human Dignity and Peace". For the first time ever the campaign is
ecumenical. The Catholic Church began the Lenten Campaign (known as the CF,
Campanha de Fraternidade) in 1964. This is the first year other churches
have participated including the Anglican Church, Methodist, Lutheran,
Christian Reform, Presbyterian United and Syrian Orthodox. The seven
churches form part of CONIC (National council of churches of Brazil) which
was founded in 1982 The basic text of the CF, distributed through out the
various churches and Basic Christian Communities, depicts and denounces the
various "Basements of Life". The text tells the story of the 'slave
worker's in Brazil at the end of the XX century. In 1998 in Perolandia the
state of Goias, 39 men worked in the charcoal-pits on a farm in Campo Limpo
as slaves. On estates in Colorado, Sapucaia, Santa Helena, Agua Azual do
Norte areas in the state of Para, 60 workers lived as slaves. In the states
of Para and Amapá, 70 estates were found guilty of having slave workers. In
his first year of office, President FH Cardoso promised to put an end to
slave working in Brazil. The CF 2000 text shows that up until now the
President has not fulfilled his promise. Regarding child labor, the seven
churches denounce that "invisible working hand and silence exercised on the
7,5 million children and adolescents working as adults." These are the
children who cut sugar cane in Pernambuco, work in the charcoal furnaces in
Mato Grosso do Sul, make shoes in Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo. Fifty
thousand children go through the garbage heaps daily in search of morsels
to live on. Looking at the 500 years of colonization of Brazil caused the
churches to denounce the indigenous genocide. In the Amazon where 60 % of
the indigenous people of Brazil live, "there is freedom to exploit, kill,
hunt or destroy the timber, minerals, wildlife and lands." They denounce
also the pirating by missionary impostors who patent outside of Brazil the
medical knowledge of the indigenous people. In 1998 the Guarani-Kaiowá
were expelled from their land by large land grabbers. In 13 years, 319
cases of suicide have occurred among the Guarani of Mato Grosso do Sul as a
result of having no land and no conditions to work. The CF text speaks of
the discrimination of blacks and women as well as the intent by the
government to "promote trading of foreign products, forcing the nation to
adopt the multinationals' criteria's for production." In this country,
the richest 20% control 64% of all income, while the poorest 20% survive on
a 2.5% of the income.
The CF does not limit itself to analyzing. It proposes involvement and
participation: create groups and movements who are ready to take on the
cause of abandoned children and the exploited, collaborate with unions,
participate in counsels where there is partnership, promote co-operatives,
support the struggle of the landless, support land reform, organize
community work, demand political democracy and communication, make
available means of communication of the churches for popular causes, and
support and participate in social movements.
The social situation in Brazil is so dreadful and made worse by President
FH Cardoso that even his own political party are speaking about fighting
against poverty. The IMF with its policy of genocide expressed its
dissatisfaction through Lorenzo Perez, its representative in Brazil. They
do not know one country in the world (where IMF acts) where the rich
continue to stay a little richer and the poor poorer. We need to let the
lucid, prophetic vision of the seven churches be our guide as we choose our
candidates for the municipalities this year. Let's return to a Brazil
without exclusion.
- The World Bank and Land Reform in Brazil by Stephan Schwartzman,
Environmental Defense
In 1997 the World Bank and the Government of Brazil embarked on an
experiment in "market- based" land reform, proposed as a new approach to
improving the lot of one of the poorest populations in the world --
Brazil's rural poor. The pilot project, designed behind closed doors, was
presented to the broadly representative grassroots and non-governmental
organizations that represent the landless and rural workers, and that have
worked for land reform in some cases for decades, as a fait accompli. Not
surprisingly, the project came under intense criticism. The World Bank
Inspection Panel has now rejected the second request for an investigation
of the Bank pilot project from Brazil's National Forum on land reform, the
umbrella group of these organizations. Is the criticism, as Bank management
maintains, merely a case of ideological bias against market mechanisms, or
based in national-level organizations' unawareness of the successes the
project has already achieved? Hasn't the Inspection Panel, after two field
visits attested to the project's basic soundness?
The following memo shows that, contrary to Bank claims, grassroots
opposition to its land reform projects is based in well-grounded concern
for the perverse effects on land reform that these projects are likely to
cause. Bank staff has, through avoiding transparency and bypassing key
actors in land reform in the project's design, from the outset involved
itself on one side of a political struggle. The most comprehensive
independent analysis based in field studies of the pilot to date, the
Preliminary Evaluation contracted by the Bank and the government, clearly
supports many of the grassroots groups' central concerns, while showing
that various of management's optimistic claims lack factual basis.
The following memo traces the recent history of land reform efforts in
Brazil and the role of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, discusses the
Bank project in this context and compares Bank management's claims for the
project with the major empirical study to date of its implementation, the
Preliminary Evaluation.
Land Reform in Brazil and the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST)
Brazil has the ninth largest GNP in the world and among the most unequal
distributions of wealth – and land – in the world. Brazil's current
president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) perhaps put it best: "Brazil is
not a poor country, it is an unjust one." Social movements, government,
and the Bank in principle agree that the redistribution of land is an
urgent necessity for addressing rural poverty.
Current law regulating land reform in Brazil (the Estatuto da Terra of
1964) was authored at the outset of Brazil's military dictatorship, based
in the understanding that massive concentration of landholdings not only
contributed to rural poverty but froze potentially productive assets and
hindered development. The law established that the federal government
could expropriate unproductive or over-large landholdings (latifúndia) for
the purpose of land reform, and indemnify the owners with government bonds.
The political power of Brazil's large landowners, however, effectively
precluded significant action on land reform during the military
dictatorship. When the military stepped down and were succeeded by an
indirectly elected President in 1985, the civilian government announced an
ambitious goal of settling 1.4 million families on 43 million hectares over
four years. Only a fraction of this objective was attained – some 82,000
families were settled on 4.3 million hectares by 1989.
By the mid-1990s, however this picture would change dramatically. While
World Bank descriptions of the Cédula da Terra belabor the need to make
land reform quicker and cheaper than the Constitutionally mandated
expropriation/indemnification mechanism,
in reality both expropriation of unproductive areas, and settlement of
landless families accelerated dramatically after 1994. The National
Institute for Agrarian Reform and Colonization (INCRA) under the current
government prides itself on having provided land to 372,866 families on
over 8 million hectares between 1995 and 1999, over half again as many as
the 218,000 families given land in the entire preceding 30 years since the
promulgation of the Land Statute. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's
four-year goal announced in 1995 was met and excceeded. The principal
cause of this leap forward in land reform, is the mobilization of the
Landless Rural Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem
Terra – MST) and allied organizations (the National Confederation of
Agricultural Workers – CONTAG, and others.)
Starting in southern Brazil in the mid-1980s' MST built a grassroots
movement of the rural poor and landless, drawing on the desperation of
those marginalized in the consolidation of large scale capital-intensive
export agriculture and displaced by large scale infrastructure projects.
The MST was able in various specific instances to contest the seemingly
insurmountable political power of large landholders through the
confrontational tactic of land occupation. Local groups would identify
lands qualifying under the law for expropriation and dozens or hundreds of
families would move in together, set up makeshift encampments and begin to
farm. Growing numbers of MST adherents assembled in tent cities along roads
and highways, planning new occupations. Confrontations with landowners,
their hired guards, and the Military Police proliferated, as did groups
identified with the MST, with varying degrees of relationship to the
national coordinating body. In 1995 in Rondonia and 1996 in Pará, landless
groups were massacred by military police sent to prevent or expel
occupations. With a frankly leftist political orientation, the movement
soon became identified as the most dynamic opposition to the FHC
government, all the more clearly as MST groups repeatedly occupied INCRA
offices to force negotiation or action on expropriations. MST marches and
demonstrations regularly mobilized tens of thousands of people, even by the
government's count.
The federal government was faced with a serious dilemma. On the one hand,
MST direct actions generated highly visible conflicts and pressure to act
on the government, and the President's, repeated commitments to social
equity. On the other, the government's major parliamentary coalition
partner, key to the passage of its economic reform program in the Congress,
the conservative PFL (Liberal Front Party), includes most of the
representatives of the landed elite. That INCRA settled more families
between 1995 and 1998 than in the preceding 30 years was politically
costly, controversial within the ranks of the government's parliamentary
coalition, and could not have occurred without the continual, large-scale,
public pressure applied by the MST strategy of land occupations.
Unsurprisingly, while government has often negotiated with MST leadership,
locally and nationally, it has as often denounced the movement as
irresponsible, politically motivated, violent, given to illegal methods,
and has brought a series of legal charges against leaders at various
levels. The government and the MST are political adversaries.
Regardless of the view one takes of the MST or the strategy of land
occupation as a means of achieving government action on land reform, it is
indisputable that the movement has been the driving force behind the
advances in land reform via expropriation that have taken place in the
1990s. Bank staff themselves have noted that it is owing to the
mobilization of the MST that there is a land reform process occurring in
Brazil for the bank to support.
The Cédula da Terra in the context of land reform in Brazil
When the Bank embarked upon its land reform venture, it intervened in an
ongoing political conflict. Rather than taking a neutral posture that
supported Land Reform as such, the Bank's project supported the government
and landowners against the Landless Rural Workers' Movement and the civil
society organizations aligned with it. First, the Bank planned its pilot
project without consulting or informing any of the national representative
organizations of the beneficiaries of land reform. While bank staff may
claim that MST and other national level groups are ideologically opposed to
"market-based" land reform, the fact is that no effort was made to engage
these groups in dialogue at the project's inception. Second, the Bank and
government refused to negotiate when rural workers' organizations made
proposals (eg, the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers' (CONTAG)
1997 proposals to use Cédula funds for credit in areas of high
concentrations of landholdings too small to support families.) Third,
having bypassed the representative organizations of rural workers and the
landless, the Bank designed a program, ostensibly driven by freely
organized local associations of rural poor, which in fact funded and
empowered state government agencies to organize or enlist associations into
the program. The state government agencies are typically much more
susceptible to influence and manipulation by the landed interests most
intransigent in their opposition to land reform than federal agencies. The
Preliminary Evaluation of the Cédula da Terra Report , in fact found that
the Cédula associations typically define themselves in opposition to the
MST. The evaluators state, " . . . the Cédula da Terra Program introduces
a political and ideological dispute with other social movements and their
mediators (principally the MST, sectors of the Catholic Church, and civil
society organized in NGOs), which today have the political initiative in
this area and support access to land through expropriation."
In principle, nothing prevented the Bank from supporting the land reform
process as such instead of taking sides in the political battle. The Bank
could have pursued alternatives raised by CONTAG in 1997; it could have
supported the Constitutionally mandated land reform process in addition to
a "market-based" pilot; or it could have linked the pilot to specific
targets for expropriation and settlement. One difficulty here appears to
be that, while management maintains that the project was a pilot for an
alternative, complementary land reform mechanism, some sectors of
government defend the approach as a substitute for existing land reform.
Thus, the Bank has sided with the political agenda of particular government
agencies and their supporters that ultimately seek the replacement of
existing means of land reform with "market- based" mechanisms, and against
the social movements and sectors of the government that seek land reform
via the Constitutionally sanctioned means of expropriation of unproductive
land.
"Market-Based" Land Reform – What the data say
It is of considerable importance to sort through the claims management has
made for the likely prospects of this approach. If the Cédula approach can
be shown to better the situation of the rural poor more cheaply and quickly
than traditional land reform, based on participating families ability to
buy land in the free market and pay off their loans, as the Bank claims,
there might be little reason for concern. The only independent data on
progress to date and potential for success or failure of the pilot is the
Preliminary Evaluation Report, commissioned by Ministry for Agrarian Reform
as one of the conditions of the project, and elaborated by a team from the
University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the University of São Paulo (USP).
This study is referenced in the Management Response to the first inspection
panel claim. The research team surveyed 116 of the 223 sub-projects in
the five states where the pilot is underway, that is, the sample is over
50% of the projects. The data and conclusions of this report are critical
to understanding what the project has done to date, and what its future
results are likely to be.
The Preliminary Evaluation Report contradicts or casts doubt on various
central claims Bank management has made for the project. The following are
some of management's claims, contrasted with the factual evidence of the
Evaluation Report.
Is the Cédula da Terra a success?
"New Approach to Land Reform Proves Successful" is the characterization of
the Cédula Project that appears on the Bank's web page. The description
goes on to say that "the three year project achieved its objectives one
year ahead of schedule. A follow-up $1 billion adaptable program loan is
being prepared for this fiscal year to capitalize on the current project's
success and maintain the momentum that this kind of land reform has
generated." This public relations document reproduces arguments that appear
in the Management Response to the first inspection panel request: that
implementation is running ahead of schedule and that based on "results of
the pilot", government wanted to rapidly expand the program; that the
economic and financial viability of the program has been verified, "based
on the experiences of ongoing subprojects", that the project "places
beneficiaries in the drivers' seat and its success depends entirely on
their active participation at, in all stages of the Project cycle."
But the evaluators state clearly and repeatedly that it is too early to
determine what the actual results of the program are. "It should be
underlined that the Cédula da Terra program is still too recent to permit
an evaluation of its socio-economic impacts, either on the beneficiaries or
on the communities." Or again, " This study . . . should not be confused
either with an evaluation of [the Program's] socio-economic impacts or with
a study of its viability or sustainability. Or, once again, " The
questionnaire applied had as its objective to trace a socio- economic and
technological profile of the beneficiaries, as well as showing the
productive use of their property in its first year of occupation. For the
reasons noted above, the second objective was considerably prejudiced,
since there is practically no production on the properties in the project."
For these among other reasons, the evaluators state, "It is an open
question whether these beneficiaries . . . will be able to take charge of
the management of their properties and generate sufficient income to meet
the commitments they have undertaken and improve their living standards."
Even were information available on the productivity of the land acquired in
the project and the management capacity of the beneficiaries, it would
still be extremely precipitous to call the program a "success", since there
is a three-year grace period for project loans, and the first beneficiaries
will only have to begin repaying their loans in 2001.
Does having "met its objectives early" mean that the project has succeeded?
That the program has "met its objectives one year early" means that project
funds were spent. This is unsurprising and no indication of its lasting
effect on land reform or poverty alleviation.
It would be surprising if the project funds were not spent, given that 1997
and 1998, the years the program began were severe drought years in most of
the project area, which reduced the already poor to destitution and
desperation, restricted employment opportunities, and made any chance for
access to land and money an exceptionally attractive option. In the
evaluators' view the project, " . . . took on a role similar to emergency
drought-relief programs . . . in a context marked by a succession of bad
and very bad agricultural years access to land is seen, more than anything,
as a means of survival . . . As is well-known, one of the principal effects
of drought in the semi-arid Northeast is to drastically reduce job
opportunities . . . Part of . . . the traditional clientele for emergency
relief programs sought support in the Cédula, regardless of considerations
of personal aptitude for participating in a program of this kind of
economic calculation of the viability of the projects. " It is
consequently perfectly understandable that as Bank staff constantly
emphasize, there is great local demand for project funds, and a surfeit of
families that want to participate in the project.
In what sense is the Cédula a "participatory" project?
The context of the drought and the attractiveness of the Cédula program as
a survival strategy are important to understanding what are perhaps
management's most profoundly misleading claims for the project. "The
[Cédula] program represents the ultimate participatory process, says its
manager, Luis Coirolo, because it revolves completely around its
beneficiaries: They choose the land and negotiate its purchase. They decide
how to use the land, what investments are required to make it productive
and what technical assistance they will need." The idea that associations
of the rural poor and landless negotiate directly with landowners, select
the lands that best suit their needs, and purchase them at their market
value, is indeed at the heart of the program.
The Evaluation Report however documents that large part of the
beneficiaries lack even the most basic information on the terms of the
program in which they are involved: "Another extremely revealing point is
the almost complete lack of knowledge of the terms of functioning of the
Cédula da Terra program itself. When asked if they had taken out a loan in
the last year, the spontaneous response of the great majority was "no".
Reminded of the credit to buy land, and asked about the source, value,
interest rate and type of guarantee given, practically no one knew how to
answer." Moreover, even when reminded of their participation in the
program, nearly a third (30%) of the beneficiaries are unaware that they
have taken out loans; fewer than 1% could correctly state the interest rate
on their loans; and fewer than 10% recognize that they have guaranteed
their loans with their land.
It is difficult to see under these circumstances how anyone could consider
this a "participatory" process.
Are the beneficiaries "in the driver's seat"?
Generalized lack of basic information is only one of the factual findings
of the evaluation that contradicts management claims. It is also not the
case that the beneficiaries "choose the land and negotiate its purchase."
"The great majority of the associations [of the beneficiaries], even those
that declared that they had negotiated directly with the landowner, played
a secondary role in the process, limited to receiving an offer, taking it
to the government agency responsible for the program, taking back the
counteroffer, and so on. . . . what occurs, in the majority of cases, is a
negotiation between government agencies and landowners. . . . As far as
the latter are concerned, the potential buyer is the Government and whether
the associations are able or unable to pay is of no importance. The
landowners know that the weight of the government agencies is fundamental
in the negotiations and that the staff of the agencies responsible for the
program elaborate inspection reports (o laudo técnico), establish the value
of the land, veto sales because of irregularities, and often "convince" the
parties. It is the government, not the associations, that closes the deals."
The project further supposes that the program will attract the
entrepreneurial, whose informed negotiations will net them land at price
that reflects its productivity. But the study strongly suggests that the
beneficiaries regard securing land as the primary goal, do not consider
price important (as long as it is below the maximum permitted by the
program), and frequently take the first property identified. The principal
selection criterion considered by 80% of the interviewees was "quality", as
opposed to 13.5%, who considered price the primary selection criterion. The
majority of the associations (52%) acquired the first and only property
identified without seeking another. "The beneficiaries do not have paying
a good price as a central concern, but rather assuring access to land "at
any price." For them the negotiation is not about price or conditions of
payment, but about access to land. In various cases, the association
pressured the government to accept the landowners' offer. Everything
indicates that these . . . attitudes . . . reflect a mixture of anxiety to
get land, and fear of losing the opportunity. It is necessary to recognize
that this attitude compromises the capacity of many associations to carry
on good negotiations to acquire property."
Are the beneficiaries' Associations independent?
The independent character of the associations, a key premise of the
project, is often dubious. The evaluation report finds that, "the majority
of the associations originated from the populist tradition, in which
representation is based on co-optation, subordination, and social and
political control over poor populations. Even many of the associations
that are being created exclusively to participate in the Program appear not
to escape this context. It is however necessary to call attention to the
fact that programs such as Cédula da Terra presuppose autonomous
associations, with the capacity to take and implement strategic decisions
on the use of assets under their control . . ."
State government agencies, local politicians, landlords and other members
of the elites, in fact have much more of a role in the creation of the
Cédula da Terra associations than Bank accounts would lead one to believe:
"The official proposal characterizes joining the Cédula da Terra program as
an initiative taken by the beneficiaries themselves. However, the
interviews show that the creation of the associations is not as "natural"
as one might hope. In all the states . . . there is clear intervention of
actors and institutions that are external to the group, such as municipal
governments, local politicians, "well intentioned" individuals, landowners,
staff of government agencies, etc. . . .In general these agencies are not
merely supporting actors in the creation of community associations."
The evaluation goes on to note that " in spite of the application and
interest of the beneficiaries, the associations are not establishing
themselves as independent actors, with real capacity for dialogue with
Government, relative to local political elites and the landowners. Their
members perceive the complexity of the tasks for which they are responsible
but are not succeeding in carrying them out."
Are land purchases negotiated in the open market?
The very notion of free negotiation in the marketplace among landless
buyers and landed sellers on which the project's claim to represent an
alternative approach to land reform rests is shown by the Evaluation Report
to be seriously flawed in several important respects.
Land prices are not set in an open market. "The low liquidity of the land
market, the small number of transactions and the still highly concentrated
structure of landholdings favor … a process of price formation that is not
transparent and is strongly influenced by extra-market factors." The
evaluators conclude their review of process of negotiating land acquisition
by stating, "(i) local land markets are incipient and do not define
reliable parameters for the transactions concluded; market prices that
could serve as reference points for the value of the land locally and for
transactions carried out through the Cédula, practically do not exist. The
conclusion is obvious: in large measure the price paid depends on the
bargaining power of the beneficiaries – which is small – and the
negotiating capacity of the parties; ( ii) the majority of the associations
do not appear prepared to deal with the negotiation process, such that
intermediation (until now exercised by the state government agencies) is
fundamental."
In short, the Cédula da Terra is not in practice predicated on direct
negotiation between buyers and sellers in the open market, which does not
in any case exist in large parts of the project area, and the
beneficiaries' associations are not the primary actors in the negotiations
over land acquisition. Many of them are unaware that they have taken our
loans at all, and almost none know the actual terms of the financing for
which they are now responsible. This in reality is not a "market-based"
land reform project at all, but a land reform project that devolves
responsibility for land reform from the federal government to state
governments – precisely those more susceptible to pressure and manipulation
of local and regional elites. It is then hardly surprising that, as the
report goes on to detail, the associations define themselves in opposition
to the MST. Whatever else it may prove to be, Cédula da Terra is an
effective source of support for local and regional interests ideologically
opposed to the MST and organizations aligned with it, to counter MST
organizing and potentially undermine its membership base at a local level.
Conclusion
It is puzzling, in light of the foregoing data, why the Bank would want to
commit itself to a $1 billion program based in this model at this point if
its goal is to construct a viable alternative approach to land reform in
Brazil. Given the very serious issues raised by the official evaluation,
prudence would dictate at very least that the Bank and Government wait
until 1) it were possible to evaluate agricultural production on the land
acquired in the pilot project over a minimally representative time period,
rather than relying on projected simulations; 2) that the Bank judge the
actual effects of some part of the program on beneficiaries' incomes and
living standards and discuss them with governments and other actors in land
reform in Brazil before deciding what course to follow. Actual effects
include inter alia the beneficiaries' ability to repay the debts they have
incurred, over a minimally representative time period, as well as the
projects' effects on poverty. The Bank has produced impressive farm models,
which project excellent results in virtually all scenarios. But these are
models, based, as are all models, on the assumptions and presuppositions
built into them. Since loan repayment only begins for the first
participants in 2001, there are no actual data about the results of the
program as a "market-based" land reform and poverty alleviation program.
Yet management argues that this is a model pilot program. The Bank has
worked in Brazil for nearly 50 years, and only supported land reform
beginning in 1997. Why this sudden haste to process a $1 billion dollar,
ten-year program, before any empirical results of the supposed pilot are
available for review?
The Bank's approach here, intentionally or not, clearly fits well with the
political agenda of the sectors of Brazil's federal and state governments
that oppose the MST, CONTAG and the other representative organizations most
active on land reform, as well as opponents of land reform more generally.
Large scale funding would be provided through state government agencies to
create or enlist rural workers associations in land purchase schemes that
are subject to political manipulation by local elites at the moment of
creation of the associations, selection of beneficiaries, and in the
negotiation and purchase of land. In the process, part of the MST
membership base can potentially be co-opted. While a $150 million pilot
program may be relatively limited in its impact in a country as large as
Brazil, a $2 billion, ten-year program is another matter. For the sectors
of Brazilian government that seek to halt pressure for land reform, this
program is an excellent tool.
The point here is not that land reform via expropriation is better than
market-based alternatives, or vice-versa. As Bank staff have stated, that
there is a process of land reform in Brazil for the Bank to support at all
is owing to the mobilization of the grassroots groups – MST in particular.
In supporting one side in the dispute, the Bank risks undermining the very
process its project alleges to be supporting. Regardless of whether one
views expropriation or purchase as better, worse, or complementary means of
achieving redistribution of land, it is obvious who the actors in the
political dispute that is land reform in Brazil are. It is also evident
that in bypassing the major representative organizations behind land reform
in the design of the Cédula, as the Bank clearly did, the Bank opted to
participate in, as the independent evaluation put it, "a political and
ideological dispute with other social movements and their mediators
(principally the MST, sectors of the Catholic Church, and civil society
organized in NGOs), which today have the political initiative in this area
and support access to land through expropriation. The Bank cannot in this
case plausibly accuse the MST or any of the other organizations that
requested an inspection of the program of being any more "ideologically" or
"philosophically" motivated than it has shown itself to be. As noted
above, the Bank had various other options before it when it embarked on its
venture in land reform in Brasil that would have allowed it a more neutral
role, in support of land reform as a process, rather than picking sides in
the fight. That it has incurred criticism for doing so should surprise no
one.
Recommendations
In light of the foregoing we recommend that the Bank:
Suspend preparation and negotiations of the Adaptable Program Loan
(APL) intended to replicate the Cédula da Terra nationally;
Release relevant data on the Cédula program and the APL, including the
Preliminary Evaluation Report, project supervision reports, appraisal
reports, loan agreements and loan contract;
Negotiate terms for the discussion of a participatory evaluation process
for the Cédulaproject, involving the major representative organizations of
the beneficiaries of land reform, the government, and recognized
independent researchers, to begin in 2001.
Commit to the principles that any future support for rural poverty
alleviation or land reform will only follow adequate, open and
participatory evaluation of the pilot program, the timing and terms of
which are to be decided jointly by Government, and civil society
organizations, which empirically shows positive results and is supported by
the representative organizations of the landless and rural poor, and that;
Land Reform projects of any description will be conditioned on specific,
quantitative and time-bound goals for expropriation of unproductive
landholdings according to Brazil's Constitution, and resettlement of the
landless and rural poor including the technical assistance and credit
required for them to farm viably.
January 27, 2000
Stephan Schwartzman
Environmental Defense
1875 Connecticut Ave. NW
Suite 1016
Washington DC 20009
202-387-3500
202-234-6049 - fax
steves@edf.org
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