NEITHER WASHINGTON - NOR BERLIN!
don't believe de hype
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From: ralf@anarch.free.de (Ralf Landmesser)
To: abc_berlin@hotmail.com
Subject: The Popular March for Brazil - interview with Joao Pedro Stedile
Date: 29 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0000
## Nachricht vom 28.09.99 weitergeleitet von LPA Berlin
## Ersteller: sergio@artamis.org
*** please distribute widely ***
Dear friends,
Following is an interview of Joao Pedro Stedile concerning the arrival of
the Popular March for Brazil next October 7th. It would be vey important to
spread this information, as the March is suffering of a boycott by the
Brazilian mass media.
It would be great if you could:
1. resend this interview to all your contacts
2. publish it in the bulletins and other publications of your organisation
3. contact the media in your country and ask them whether they have interest
in publishing an article about this march
4. send messages of solidarity addressed to the MST and to the CONSULTA
POPULAR
5. send donations for the march
If you do 1, 2 or 3, please send an email to <terra.brasilis@zaz.com.br>
informing us about what you have done.
If you want to send messages of solidarity (point 4), please send them to
the office of the MST in Sao Paulo (email <sri@mst.org.br>, fax + 55 11 3361
3866). If that does not work, please send them to the office in Brasilia
(email <mstdf@zaz.com.br>, fax + 55 61 225 10 26).
For the donations, please send a money transfer to the account of
ANCA-Marcha (ANCA: Associaçao Nacional de Cooperaçao Agrícola), Bank
BRADESCO, office number 0136-8, account number 127384-1.
In solidarity,
Denise da Veiga Alves
pp. MST Communication' Sector
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Popular march arrives at Brasília
Interview with Joao Pedro Stedile, member of the MST national board
1. Where and how is the popular march that started from Rio de Janeiro on
July 26?
The popular march follows religiously/faithfully its schedule marching daily
between 25 and 35 km. The fellows get up before 5 a.m. and march early to
protect themselves from the burning sun of this region, the "triangle of
Minas". They get up, prepare their backpacks, and leave them ready for the
transportation team. They walk about two hours before the kitchen team has
breakfast ready, followed by another four to five hours of walk to arrive at
the foreseen place before midday. The infrastructure team - as we call it -
has already arrived there with our trucks and risen the tents. The marching
fellows arrive, have lunch and then relax or follow their individual duties
as washing cloths, converse with visitors or meet with their state's
brigades to debate. There are also two brigades of about 40 fellows each
passing always in front of the others and staying one or two days in the
cities to be visited. They hold lectures in colleges, unions, churches,
local radio stations, etc.
Now we're already on the home straight. The march has achieved an impressive
discipline. The major health, climatic adaptation, etc. problems have been
resolved. This week we will already enter the territory of Goiás at the
county of Catalao. From there we'll head for Brasília, where we should
arrive on October 7.
2. The so-called official press seems to have forgotten the march - what's
happening?
In fact the march has had some headlines in the mainstream press at its
start from Rio de Janeiro, and afterwards in Belo Horizonte. Now we continue
important at the local press. We're in the local radio stations, newspapers,
and television channels, but the mainstream press, orientated towards the
(president's) Planalto Palace is concealing us. We're realizing a real epic.
Never before in the history of Brazil so many people walked 1580 km in so
short a time, not even the historical Prestes column which, it's true, had a
much higher significance, but made its almost whole way on horseback. We
believe that the government is still frightened by the mobilization of the
100,000's march in August, by its increasing unpopularity, arriving this
week at only 8% of approval, and by its economic politics not showing
results. At its evaluation, if the press would start to pay attention, it
would be possible to repeat the 100,000's march again, worsening its
situation.
3. What's the final political objective of the popular march? Isn't it to
get again 100,000 to Brasília?
First of all, our political objective is to realize a gesture we call
"pedagogy of the example", e.g. to show the Brazilian population that there
are other ways of making politics. Fight for collective interests, not being
this vicious routine waiting for the biannual elections. The people are
angry with the politicians, but they need to learn that making politics is
also to organize themselves, to fight. It's amazing to see, how along those
more than 1000 km already marched, the people have learned the lesson. We've
seen thousands of peoples. Almost all of them were full of emotions,
weeping, making donations, and not only revealing openly their support, but
transferring to the marching fellows their mission: "Even not being able to
follow you, go, you at least, in the name of the people, telling that this
country is shipwrecking. Someone has to bellow."
The second major objective is to have a debate with the population about the
seriousness of the Brazilian crisis, maybe the worst one in the history of
Brazil. And the people, absorbed by its daily problems don't realize it. Or
they just realize that their problems are growing, without realizing that
they only reflect a bigger one: the submission of the nation to serve the
interests of the international capital.
For this purpose we use pamphlets, booklets and lectures, and the
participation of the people is impressive. They want to know, they ask,
converse, etc. I was astonished as well by the abandoned grassroots work. In
some cities one can find the churches doing grassroots work with the poor,
but the unions, the movements, left-wing parties don't do any real
grassroots work, on the base, organizing the people, there in their
district, at their workplace. Nobody has the patience anymore to go to the
people, not even the artists, to paraphrase Milton Nascimento. And this is
serious, because the people become confused, at the mercy of only the big
mass media like the TV Globo.
The third major objective is to go and debate a new popular project for the
country. It's no more enough to shout down the president, to declare
adhesion to the slogan "Fora FHC" ("Go away, FHC"). The polls show that 92%
of the population are already saying that, but the people have to discuss
now an alternative project. Because strictly speaking, the problem is not
only to dismiss Malan and FHC, or change the economic politics to another,
more or less similar to the current one.
4. What means a popular project for the country at this moment?
It means that we have to discuss, to meet with all the organized parts of
the people, be it in unions, movements, churches, parties, and to see what
are the solutions for this serious crisis. And in our opinion and for the
discussions we've had, there is a solution, which has to be divided in two
parts. One part could be called an emergency program. Or, one that has to be
implanted tomorrow to repair our economy and restitute the sovereignty of
our country. The second part would be a popular project in the medium and
long term. In relation to the emergency program, we have to stop the
bloodshed that our wealth has suffered by the plundering of the
international financial capital. Therefore it is a surgical intervention to
save the patient before he is totally destroyed. There are some basic ideas
for this, as: suspend completely the payment of the internal and external
debt's interests a real moratorium. The public treasury is made
impracticable because of the interests. The government has already paid R$
50 billions this year only in interests. That's why there is a lack of money
for everything: education, health, etc. Second, we have to break the treaty
with the IMF, whose real terms are unknown to the nation until today. Then
we have to confiscate the high profits that the banks made with their
exchange speculation in January, R$ 7.4 billions in a few days, strictly
control the financial capital and impose a emergency tax on the property,
the fortune of the 500 richest families of the country. With this emergency
program, a popular government would collect billions in a few months that
should be applied to the reorientation of the whole economy. This way, the
resources would serve to finance thousands of popular homes, reactivate
civil construction, create jobs, and be applied in the familiar agriculture
and in the agrarian reform, be applied in a wide program of guaranteeing
free education and health for the whole population. This public spending
would create an enormous multiplying effect on the economy, create an
internal mass market of consume goods needed by the population.
Together with these measures goes a general raising of salaries and pensions
as an immediate form of distributing income and raising the purchasing
power.
In the medium or long term, a popular project means to reorganize the
Brazilian economy and state to resolve the structural problems faced by our
country: the concentration of wealth and income, the monopoly of mass
communication, the centralization of the financial capital, the external
dependency, and the tragic colonial cultural heritage.
5. What's the expectation of the march's arriving in Brasília?
We reaffirm our call that all militants from the most different fields of
movements, unions, and parties shall be with us in Brasília on October 7.
But we do not just care about numbers, above all we want to bring together
militants to march with us from the outskirts of Brasília to the Central
Bank. They shall not only listen to speeches and return back home, but
debate on an emergency program, expulse the IMF, and stay as well for some
days with us debating on a popular project for Brazil. We're thinking of
renting a gymnasium and see who will stay in Brasília from October 8 to 10,
five to ten thousand militants, to profoundly and seriously debate in these
three days on the urge for another project for Brazil, being not only the
substitution of the president.
And at the same time we'll charge our batteries to go back to our states,
our bases, not to continue the debate on a popular project with the
population, but to push further the mass movements to prepare the big
national paralysis, that will bring the country to a standstill in October.
Therefore, all readers shall prepare to join us on the march to Brasília on
October 7, but furthermore, you shall organize debates in your environment
about the real changes needed by this country.
Joao Pedro Stedile, 45 years old, economist, is a member of the MST national
board.
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra
Landless Rural Workers Movement, Brazil.
*********************************************
Sergio Oceransky sergio@artamis.org
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