The World Bank Undermines 
Agrarian Reform in Brazil

By João Pedro Stedile

João Pedro Stedile is a founding member of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), and serves in its National Board.

Brazil is a relatively rich country. However, although its Gross Domestic Product is the eighth largest in the world, today most Brazilians are living in poverty. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Brazil is one of the countries with the highest social inequality worldwide.

Economist Maria Conceição Tavares has pointed out the two main causes of poverty: the concentration of land, and the lack of access to formal education. The Brazilian elites perpetuate this situation to maintain their economic and political dominance over the masses. This problem is more acute in the rural areas where poverty, hunger, and illiteracy afflict vast numbers of day laborers who survive by working for the large agricultural landholdings.

All over the world, agrarian reform has been implemented as a way to deal with these problems. Acting on society's behalf, many governments have adopted laws that ensure the distribution, and therefore the democratization, of land property. Land has been expropriated and distributed among landless peasant families. Public schools have been opened to provide for free education to vast sectors of the population.

Why has this not happened in Brazil? The Brazilian Constitution has a number of laws that empower the government to redistribute land. However, entrenched in the government as they are, the powerful élites obstruct the implementation of these laws. They argue that land reform has not been successful in any country to date, and that a different model is needed. However, the history of this century testifies to the contrary: in all developed countries, the creation of a strong internal market, and the development of an industrial base were preceded by a solution to the agrarian problem.

Recently, in an attempt to divert attention from the application of the law, the Brazilian government has been promoting the so-called banco da terra (land bank), a "magical" formula intended to put an end to land concentration quickly and without conflict. Adopted after the October 1998 elections and with the blessing of the World Bank, this new model allows large landowners to sell their land to the government, and the government in turn can sell it to landless peasants on credit. 

However, this formula has a hidden agenda. To begin with, land would be sold only if the landowner wants to sell it. This is problematic, since landowners tend to accumulate land and rarely offer it for sale. Secondly, the land thus sold would probably be of the worst quality, and far away from the marketplace. Thirdly, the selling price would be set by the landowner to his benefit. This is a mechanism to further land concentration, given the landowner would have money to acquire more property in the cities or the countryside. Meanwhile, in exchange for the small plots they would receive, peasants would be indebted with high-interest loans, subject to inflation.

In accordance with the neo-liberal doctrine, this new formula promoted by the World Bank expects to resolve the problems of land concentration and social tensions through the intervention of market forces. However, these forces are precisely the ones responsible for the concentration of land and the growing number of landless peasants in Brazil.

In order to push its agenda, the World Bank turn a blind eye to Brazilian living conditions. While 4.5 million families in Brazil are landless, 130 million hectares of potentially productive land remain idle, concentrated in large farms of over 1,000 hectares. According to the Constitution, these lands could be easily purchased by paying their owners an indemnity in the form of treasury bonds that are good for 15 years. World Bank resources could then be used in combating rural poverty through credits for production after purchase, as well as the improvement of services for the poor, such as electricity, construction of small agro-industries, irrigation, and schools for the rural areas in general. However, the World Bank has instead chosen to put money into the large landowners' pockets.

World Bank functionaries have repeatedly refused to listen to workers' organizations. No peasant-base organization has ever been approached by World Bank representatives for consultation, in spite of the fact that there are several well-established organizations in Brazil: the Brazilian Association of Agrarian Reform (ABRA), the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), and the Landless Workers Movement (MST). On the contrary, when asked by these organizations to establish an inspection committee, the Bank's functionaries responded negatively, arguing that these organizations did not represent Brazilian landless peasants. Who then is the specialist in landlessness, the World Bank, or perhaps the Minister of Agrarian Reform, who has publicly acknowledged having little knowledge of the matter?

The agrarian reform process in Brazil has stalled since President Cardoso's re-election in October 1998. No further land purchases have taken place, neither have new settlements been established, nor has any more land been released for production. On the contrary, by IMF-mandated regulations, the resources allotted by Congress to the INCRA (the official land reform body) were cut by 53 percent. The funds reserved for an adult literacy program in the new settlements were cut, and the MST had to resort to parliamentary amendments for its re-inclusion. Not only does the IMF fail to collaborate with agrarian reform in Brazil, it actually drives the Brazilian government to reduce its allocation to social programs to combat poverty.

As a result of th ill will generated by these developments, tension in the rural sector is on the rise. There are now more than 500 camps throughout the country with over 110,000 families (some 500,000 persons) living in roadside shacks an unprecedented reality in Brazilian history -- awaiting the fulfillemnt of promises. The magnitude of this problem is evident in the government's efforts to avoid massive starvation. Never before in Brazil's history has the government had to distribute so many food baskets among the poor, including those living in campsites.

In 1998 alone, the government distributed more than 20 million such baskets. But emergency relief is clearly not a solution to poverty. In April 1999 the MST submitted a formal petition for a public hearing with President Cardoso. We want to ask him to change his policy toward agrarian reform. We have already had a public hearing with the Senate, and its members have agreed to support our petition to the President. We have installed an encampment in Brasilia with more than 1,000 of our landless companheiros (fellow workers) in permanent vigil until the president agrees to receive us. On July 26, over 1,000 companheiros started a popular march from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, covering 1,300 kilometers on foot to denounce the seriousness of the situation in the countryside. We are demanding changes not only in the official agrarian policies, but also in the overall economic policy that generates more poverty in our country.

For more information on the Landless Workers Movement, visit http://www.mstbrazil.org/.

Translation for ISLA by Luis Esparza