Brazil:
Why landless women are opposed to monoculture eucalyptus plantations
The struggle between two agricultural
projects has stepped up in Brazil. On the one hand, the agro-business
project based on the concentration of vast stretches of land,
on production for export, on large-scale production and on monoculture
plantations, mainly of soybean, eucalyptus, and sugar cane. On
the other, various Via Campesina social movements in Brazil defending
Agrarian Reform, and supporting an agricultural model based on
agro-ecology, production to strengthen the domestic market, family
and peasant farming, diversified production, cooperation and a
change in the technological and productive matrix.
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This context gives us a basis on which
to understand the struggle of Via Campesina women against the
social and environmental impacts of monoculture eucalyptus production.
The action of two thousand women from
Rio Grande do Sul on 8 March 2006 [see WRM Bulletin Nº 104] to
draw the attention of Brazilian society and of the participants
at the Second World Conference on Agrarian Reform placed on the
agenda the risks of what we call “Green Deserts.”
From the standpoint of social movements,
this broke away from the established model of the role of women
in a process of change because it was a collective action, organized
and headed by women – peasant women – in a conflict with one of
the world’s largest transnational eucalyptus producing companies:
the Aracruz Celulose Company. This company has an annual production
of 2.4 million tons of bleached pulp.
During this action, over 10 million
eucalyptus and pine seedlings were destroyed. From then on for
society, the struggle for land took on a different nature: the
struggle against transnational capital investing in agriculture.
As a result, women struggles stepped
up all over the country in a one-day activity under the slogan
of “Landless Women: struggling for food sovereignty and against
agro-business.” This action gathered over fifteen thousand MST
(Landless Peasant Movement) women and attracted the attention
of society because of the nature of the complaints against the
green desert, and the funding of transnational corporations by
the Brazilian Government, mainly for the installation of new pulp-mills
and ethanol factories in Brazil.
Our assessment is that women’s struggles
against transnational corporations in agriculture, particularly
regarding pulp, tend to be strengthened. Therefore, it is
time to answer the question of what are the negative impacts of
these corporations and of monoculture on farming and on women’s
lives. For us women, the answer to the question is a way of opposing
monoculture eucalyptus plantations for various reasons that we
want to express and that give strength to our struggles.
1. We consider that the earth, water,
seeds, air and forests are the basis of life and can never be
commercialized.
2. We are going through a process of
globalization of poverty, particularly among women and children
and this is because transnational corporations have taken over
our natural wealth, our territory, through the policies of international
banks and institutions.
3. Monoculture eucalyptus plantations
cause environmental destruction. Many of the chemicals used are
destroying our biodiversity.
4. For us, pulp is a synonym of poverty,
unemployment and rural exodus.
5. Pulp companies have taken over large
properties and this contributes to land concentration in Brazil.
6. In Brazil, these same corporations
have benefited from environmental legislation negotiated by many
Brazilian governments.
8. We are going through a privatization
and internationalization process of the Brazilian territory and
its natural resources.
9. Human health particularly that of
women and children, is endangered by the encroachment of the green
desert, that destroys biodiversity, dries up rivers, increases
contamination, pollutes the air and water and threatens our life.
Our struggle is to get the vast stretches
of land used by these corporations allocated to the Agrarian Reform
for the production of healthy food for self-sufficiency and the
generation of income; to end latifundium large states and guarantee
social justice in Brazilian rural areas; and to build up our country’s
food sovereignty.
It is mainly to guarantee the restoration
and preservation of biodiversity, forests, medicinal plants, local
seeds, water, land, that are the peoples’ heritage at the service
of humanity.
To our way of thinking, all public investment
in science and technology and research must be for ecological
peasant agriculture.
We want respect among the ethnic, religious,
cultural diversities, in gender equity and cooperation for the
preservation of natural wealth and in production aimed at covering
people’s needs, not capital needs.
We demand that the governments concern
themselves over negative socio-economic, territorial and environmental
impacts caused by agro-business, and in particular by the so-called
“Green Desert.”
Motivated by this struggle and sure
of victory, we the Landless Women of the MST on the occasion of
Mother’s Day have prepared a letter entitled: “Letter From the
Landless Mothers” (http://www.mst.org.br/mst/pagina.php?cd=3506),
calling on all women around the world “to struggle tirelessely
against the neoliberal system that conceives food, water, land,
people's knowledge and women's bodies as a commodity.”
We invite you all to raise our hands,
our tools and our conscience … to unite against those who exploit
land, life, and our labour. We are standing vigilant and carving
night and day the fertility and rebelion that is born from the
guts of the earth.
Agrarian Reform: for social justice
and sovereignty of the people!
By Lourdes Vicente, MST Gender Sector
and national coordination, e-mail: genero@mst.org.br
