The Landless Workers Movement and the American "bubble"...

Pictures at rvcb.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/511/

For you, my dear non Brazilian reader, or that is in doubt about whether the LWM is "of good": if the movement did not bring the essential bread of hope to millions of Brazilians to whom we all have given our backs, we would be today another Colombia, occupied by troops of various origins and torn apart by war.

Everyone makes mistakes, all organizations make mistakes, so here I will not try to canonize the landless workers' movement: sure there was and there are excesses.

However, if we consider that the LWM organizes today millions of Brazilians who are in the field with no land and are ill-accommodated in the outskirts of our major cities, dreaming of a piece of land to be happy, we believe that any radicalism and hardening of the movement, is nothing if compared with the stupid stubbornness of Brazilian State not to create a simple, fast and secure way for land acquisition.

After organizing the Statement of Puebla Group, years ago, we’ve generated a multitude of ideas and proposals of work for the government of Parana, who incarnated in the person of Governor Roberto Requião, the hope for a better Brazil, after the devastating attack of neo-liberal vassals of "Washington Consensus".

Requiao did not betray our hopes. Rather, extended them with the fertility and fairness of the actions of the team that he runs.

There is an emotional story, hard to work, behind the "prank" of some sectors against the LWM and of it against some sectors.

The military, during the course of their governments, created the Housing Finance System and the National Bank of Housing, both of nostalgic memory. Myself, that by the season was a young man starting life in the area of data processing, I could buy a decent first apartment, in a good place of “my” city.

Mr. Fernando Collor de Mello, at the head of the neo-liberal forces already mentioned, put down this wonderful tool, starting to build the country's and international private banking monopoly.

Why didn’t the same military built an equivalent mechanism to that land for working could be gained in the long term, with the same facilities and with the land itself as the guarantee?

They had, I imagine, other guidelines or spoke the highest the anti-Communist psychosis, fertilized thoroughly before and after the coup d'etat of 1964 and closely associated, for historical reasons, to the issue of land.

At the original times of the Statement of Puebla Group, I did a lot of calculations on the ideal measures for the properties, their relationships to increase and decrease as the application of appropriate technology, indigenous and rebuilders of eco-systems happened. I saw that the amounts involved to resolve the life of millions of Brazilians were great, but perfectly compatible with the collection of the Union and more, that it will turn back multiplied in the payment of funds, in the collection of the Union, in jobs, in goods, in products and services it will generate. Also saw that additional public policies, support and encouragement would be needed, all of them widely known by brazilian states and by Brazilian National State.

I have written a time or two that brazilian state was the only one in the world that pushed up, through the boys of the market, accommodated in Copom, the interest rate that pays its own debt.

President Lula, in a moment of clairvoyance, provides a first significant reduction in the rate of interest: 1%. It seems unlikely, we want more, we expect much more, but as each percentage point decreased from interest rate in the public debt frees fortunes of the Union budget, perhaps coincidentally, the President Lula made more, and beautiful 100 billion Reais (brazilian national currency) were sent to BNDS (Brazilian National Social and Economic Development Bank) that jumps to 165 billion in its ability to assist and encourage companies to ensure jobs and overcome the crisis.

The controversy begins: Who will put the hands on all that money?

Large companies lured by the chatter of brokers, speculators and smart guys of the market in general, applied really big sums in the derivatives of so called U.S.A "real estate bubble", thick smart maneuver made only possible by irresponsible impunity guaranteed and encouraged by George W. Bush’s times and by his dangerous companions.

These large companies are now, "trousers in hand ', and powerful and articulate, they run to BNDS, in search of relief.

You, my dear reader, will ask me: Who deserves more resources: large companies just devastated by the smart guys of money’s monopoly, that have absorbed for three mandates
and a half, more (and much more) than a trillion of Reais through the interest rate on public debt, or landless workers who want to establish tiny and small business and cooperatives also, to participate more positively of the virtuous circle of labor, production and consumption markets?

We all know that tiny and small business those that employ more, we all know that the smart guys of the market should cover the leak that they have produced and they are all free and happy while people like the federal policeman Protógenes suffers mysterious accidents.

Pictures at rvcb.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/511/

Meanwhile reader friend, nor is this the case: once is guaranteed priority to small farmers who need to establish and work, the truth is that there are lots of money, for everyone and for everything, simply that the President Lula continues pushing down, more and more , the interest on debt rate. The smart guys of the market already have absorbed too much public money.

So President Lula ( I ask your support, Governor Roberto Requião ), here goes my short list:

1. Total priority to small farmers from the LWM in BNDS, please. You know: poor people pays straight and there is still the bought land as real guarantee.

2. Do include, please, trains and waterways in the PAG (Program of acceleration of growing).

3. Do please determine more and more decreases of interest rate: Billions and billions will remain for everything and more. You know Union’s revenues.

4. Do ensure, please, the best medical assistance and the best protection to federal policeman Protógenes and put him once again, ahead of the investigations, with all yours and our support. The honor of Brazil is at stake, mister president.

5. Do strongly work for peace in Palestine, mister president: That’s mass murder and the seeds that are being planted there are very bitter.

6. Leonardo Boff asks an Acceleration Plan of Amazon Preservation. I do ask, please, your attention to this proposal, mister President. Details on rvcb.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/511/ link.

Hugs to everyone,

Emilio de Lima.