Violence, slave labor and contaminated food: the warning from rural movements to the population of Alagoas

The report by the Pastoral Land Commission, published this year, revealed that violence continues to terrorize rural areas in Alagoas. The document records at least 61 people rescued from slave-like work, 36 conflicts in the countryside, 28 conflicts over land, in addition to occurrences of labor conflicts and disputes over water.

Released during the Zumbi and Dandara dos Palmares Agrarian Reform Festival, the document draws attention to the perpetuation of attacks on the people of the forests, waters, and countryside.

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The report is also made available as a tool for a didactic warning of the movements to the population of Alagoas: the agenda of Agrarian Reform and agrarian struggles must be extended to the people of the city.

The coordinator of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Alagoas, Débora Nunes, draws attention to the publication.

“These are data that point to concern, because for 524 years in Brazil, violence has continued, predominating in the Brazilian countryside, in the Alagoas countryside. For 524 years, since the original peoples, through quilombos, going through so many struggles, landless workers, heirs of all these struggles, continue to be raped. This is all because they cry out and demand the land as a way of life”, reports the MST coordinator.

This increase in violence cannot but be attributed to the privileges granted to the extreme right during recent years, according to the CPT coordinator, Carlos Lima, although there are also records of an increase in mobilization in the field to confront these attacks.

“ Alagoas also has a situation of increasing violence, and the number of demonstrations and mobilizations is increasing, but this is the result of two things, firstly the growing struggle for Agrarian Reform and, secondly, the ease that the extreme right has found to organize itself and combat peasant struggles, often armed, because there was also a growth in pistol shooting. This is a chaotic, very difficult situation,” he reveals.

Débora Nunes also reinforces the link between the problems and the absence of a land distribution policy. “This data needs to reach society. If we face all this violence, face the concentration of land, face hunger, poverty, global warming and all the problems and problems experienced by the Brazilian people, which have a direct relationship with the failure to carry out agrarian reform”, he says she. “The swollen city, hunger, lack of mobility, environmental disasters have a direct relationship with the hegemonic model of agriculture that is developed in the Brazilian and Alagoas countryside called agribusiness”.

Agro nothing pop

For the MST coordinator, understanding how healthy food reaches the table is essential for mobilizations to receive more support from the population.

“It is necessary to understand that it is only possible to have this food arriving without the use of pesticides, in a healthy way, at a fair price for those who produce, but also for the city’s workers, because there is a process of previous struggle, of demanding of the Brazilian State to carry out agrarian reform”, he explains.

However, in addition to carrying out Agrarian Reform, other situations need to be guaranteed. “It’s credit, mechanization, industrial water, bio-inputs, in short, the necessary conditions for us to be able to produce healthy food. And, in doing so, we are not asking for anything too much, nothing out of reality, quite the opposite, because what has been supported by the Brazilian State is agribusiness, which effectively does not contribute to the development of our country, does not contribute to the generation of employment, does not contribute to the production of healthy food, but carries a fallacious narrative, which is what Brazil is carrying on its back. It’s a lie,” he adds.

“The agro that calls itself pop is the agro of poison, it is the agro of pesticides, it is the agro that is exempt from exports and that has no commitment to facing and overcoming hunger in our country. It is the agricultural sector that, when the external market is paying more, sends it abroad without any concern for the internal market, for the supply of our country. So this is an important debate.”

The historic struggle and immediate demands

The fight for agrarian reform has been a long-standing issue for agrarian social movements across the country, which use the most diverse forms of mobilization to raise awareness about the seriousness of the situation in rural areas and the impacts on the urban region. A link illustrated by the well-known catchphrase: “if the field doesn’t plant, the city doesn’t have dinner”.

The Zumbi and Dandara dos Palmares Agrarian Reform Festival, which ended this Sunday, May 5, was one of these activities. In addition to the expected country foods, peasant, indigenous and quilombola crafts and art, and cultural presentations, the event that took place at Praça da Faculdade, Centro de Maceió, also aimed to reinforce the debate about conditions in the countryside.

The activity is also associated with another mobilization: the occupation carried out at the Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), in Alagoas, in repudiation of the federal government’s decision to appoint another nominee of federal deputy Arthur to the Institute. Lira (Progressives). The people of the countryside were confident in the appointment of Incra’s career server, José Ubiratan, after the dismissal of Arthur Lira’s cousin, when they were surprised by the appointment of yet another Bolsonaro supporter, Júnior Rodrigues do Nascimento.

The MST coordinator, Débora Nunes, portrays the consequences of these choices. “Since the Temer government, agrarian reform has been paralyzed in Alagoas. There is nothing to meet the needs of workers, in terms of credit, in terms of roads, in terms of housing. And, suddenly, the superintendent is removed after almost eight years at the head of the organization, and someone is appointed who has no connection, no commitment, someone who does not represent the desires and needs of the workers”.

In yet another statement, the CPT coordinator in Alagoas, Carlos Lima, criticizes the PT government’s stance. “Unfortunately, the left-wing government did not understand the need for agrarian reform, it took a long time to present a plan for society, and it also took a long time to dismiss the superintendents. In more than 100 days of the Lula government, he interacted with Bolsonarian superintendents. And here in Alagoas, one year and four months, and, when it changes, it puts someone from the same political group that is an enemy of agrarian reform”.