This month sees the retrial of Jose Rainha, a national leader of the MST (Brazilian Landless Movement).
In a trial which an Amnesty International report demonstrates was clearly political, Jose was sentenced to 26 years and six months for instigating the murder of a farmer during a land occupation in 1989.
The MST is the largest social movement to have emerged in Latin America in the last twenty years. It was set up in 1984 by groups of rural workers fighting to gain access to land in a country where concentrations of land ownership are the second highest in the world. While 180 million hectares of arable land lie idle, five million rural families have no land at all.
The MST struggle has intensified in recent years, as thousands of rural workers have occupied idle land across the country as a means of survival as well as pressing the government to fulfil its promise of land reform. This has met with the rage of the landowners, who hire gunmen and off-duty policemen to evict rural workers.
These operations invariably result in the wounding and murder of rural workers, most recently in Eldorado dos Carajas last year where 19 were killed and sixty seriously wounded. None of those responsible has yet been brought to justice.
Here, the Friends of the MST have picketed the Brazilian Embassy and organised a speaking tour for the partner of Jose Rainha, Diolinda de Souza, an MST leader in her own right. In December, Brazilian President Cardoso is coming to Britain for talks with the Government and to receive awards from colleges in London and Oxford.
Cardoso’s record on land reform is miserable, and most resettlements during his term of office have been thanks to the efforts of the MST. Cardoso has relaxed laws protecting the reservations of the indigenous population, allowing multi-national companies to burn and log the Amazon forest.