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| In SILENT KILLER, we visit an MST (Brazil's powerful Landless Peasants' Movement, known by its initials MST -
in Portuguese Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) camp near Belo Horizonte. Dozens of such camps exist in Brazil, where landless rural workers have taken over agricultural land that has been left unused by its wealthy owners. |
| Unlike many developing countries, Brazil never had a land reform program, and its distribution of land is among the most unequal in the world. Much of its good agricultural land has been used for cash crops for export or has been left idle because there was not enough of a market to make production profitable for the landowners. Brazilian law allows landless peasants to take over land that has been unused for many years and use it to grow food for themselves and their families. |
| But such takeovers by MST-organized peasants have sometimes been violently opposed by landowners, occasionally with the support of the Brazilian army or police. In several cases, deaths have occurred. Each land takeover that is contested by the landowner finds its way, slowly, to a courtroom, where a decision is made to either give the land to peasants or force them to move out again. Often, these slow decisions result in uprooting people from long established camps. |
| Brazil's current president, Lula, has been a supporter of the MST, but he also wants to avoid angering wealthy Brazilians so he has moved slowly in assisting the MST, and in including land reform as part of his Fome Zero anti-hunger campaign. He is walking a tightrope between rich and poor Brazilians and has angered many of his most active former supporters who want him to take a more proactive position in support of the MST. |
| Meanwhile, the MST camps provide a haven for thousands of Brazilians who have left violent, drug-infested and poverty-stricken slums in Brazil's cities to come to the countryside where, despite their poverty, their children live in safety and natural surroundings. |
| You can see a video clip and read a related interview with Wagner Martins, an MST camp coordinator, on this Web Site. For more information about the MST check out:
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