 Hey, so welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America. Copics weekly webinar of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean, 20 minutes every Wednesday at noon. So today, I'm joined by Casa Betara. She is a member of the International Relations Commission of the Lowness Worker's Movement, or MSC, in Brazil. And we are here today to talk about the eviction of 450 families from Quilombo Campo Grande in Brazil. So just to give you a very short introduction, on August 12, in the middle of a pandemic, a businessman who happens to be the governor of Mina Shirai, his name is Romeo Zema. He sent the military police to evict this 450 families. From the 22-year-old camp known for its production of organic coffee. They surrounded the families, they intimidated them, and they tried to force them to leave. But the families resisted for a period of time. Until finally, on August 14, the Mina Shirai's military police successfully evicted one of the areas of Quilombo Campo Grande, destroying the homes of 14 peasant families, crops, and even a popular school named after Eduardo Galliano. So yeah, thank you, Garcia, for being here with us. And yeah, before we start with this conversation, I want you to explain, I mean, you are a member of the MSD. What is the MSD? Can you explain to us what is the MSD? Hi, Michelle, it's a pleasure to be here. So the Landless Workers Movement, MSD, as a Brazilian name, is a peasant movement that has been working and organizing peasant families for 36 years. And mainly with three objectives. One is the struggle for land. So I don't know if the US audience knows, but Brazil has one of the most unequal land distributions in the world. So it means that 40% of the agricultural land in Brazil is owned by 1% of the population. So what we do is to occupy unproductive land to make pressure over the government to give those lands for a grant reform. The second main goal is the struggle for a grant reform itself, which is broader than the democratization of land. It means we don't want to have lands to do the same thing as the big landowners do. So we want to build different model of production based on agriculture or agriculture, based on food sovereignty. And the third goal is the radical transformation of society. We understand that people's agrarian reform, and as we call our project of agrarian reform, is only possible in a different society. So we need to struggle with the whole broader society in Brazil for structural change in our society. So this is what MSD has been doing for 36 years. Thank you, Gassia. Thank you so much for explaining to us what is the MSD. It's very inspiring. And yeah, to begin with our subject today, I just wanted you to talk to us a little bit about the historic background of these families. So as I said at the beginning, on August 12, the governor, Romeo Zema, from Minas Gerais, he sent the military police to evict 450 families. But who are these families? What are they doing there? How did they got there in the first place? And what do they do there? Like, I understand that they are the largest coffee, or organic coffee producers of Brazil. So yeah, can you talk to us about these families, please? OK. So first, we need to understand a little bit the history of that area, right? So that area used to be a former sugar can plant that went bankrupt in the late 90s, right? So when it went bankrupt, it left millions of reais in debt with the state and with the workers. The former owner didn't pay labor rights to the workers, right? So when we occupied those lands, it was 22 years ago. It was occupied mainly by the former workers who had not been paid and together with some families from the surrounding areas, right? So those families have been living there for 22 years. They have built their lives there. They have their house. They have their crops. They have their school. They are one of the biggest organic coffee producers in the region. As well as coffee, they produce cattle, chicken, vegetables, like many other things. They have a cooperative for the production of organic coffee. So for 22 years, they have been raising their kids and living their lives there. But this is one of the oldest land conflicts in Brazil because during these 22 years, there has been a judicial battle between this new owner of the land and the landless, right? Because there is an expropriation official order from 2014, decreeing that the area should be expropriated for a grant reform. But this new owner. Who is this new owner? I mean, who is requesting this expulsion and talk to us about that is a businessman behind all this. And also, what are the interests of the governor of the area and Bolsonaro and all this? Yeah, the new owner, as he calls himself, is called Giovanni Souza Moreira. He is a businessman, but he is also a politician. From the same party as the governor Zema and a political ally of Bolsonaro. So this is the political aspect behind it. Also, this guy, Giovanni, he is in a partnership with another businessman, very powerful, called João Faria, who is the biggest coffee producer in Brazil, who produces the coffee for his claim, for example. So there is a lot of economic and political issues behind this land conflict. And yeah. So that's why we understand that on the eviction order of August 12, even though there is an issue that there shouldn't be any evictions during the pandemic. Because in this regard of anything else, I mean, we know that the families have the right to the land and all of this, but we have a condemnation. And just putting all those things in the streets is just inhuman in those times, right? Where most of the governors of Brazil have decided not to authorize any kind of eviction, rural or urban, because of a humanitarian issue, right? Putting all those families in the streets in the middle of the pandemic. But even though governors, they might closed any channel of negotiations with MSP. I mean, it was something really strange if you didn't know the political aspect behind it, because he received a lot of pressure, parliamentarian pressure, national and international solidarity asking him to please stop the eviction, at least until the end of the pandemic. And he just closed any kind, any channel of negotiation and sent 250 police officers to the area. And even worse, police officers from different cities that came to a very small city carrying the virus to a very small city, which is Campo de Mayo, and carrying back to their families as well. So it's not only the landless families, but also the police officers' families were exposed to the virus with this eviction order. Yeah, so the military police arrived to Campo Grande. And I mean, they intimidated these families. They destroyed property. Even the school, the Eduardo Galliano School, where teenagers and adults and children studied. And is this legal? And if it's not, has the MSD or those families have used a legal resource, taken this to the legal grounds? What have you done in the legal aspect? The eviction order was for a very small part of the camp. The whole camp has 4,000 hectares of land. The eviction order was for only 52 hectares of the land. Those are the areas where legally the police could evict the families. But we need to remember also, Michelle, that before the police could advance, the families took a very brave resistance. It was 56 hours of resistance from the families, trying to stop making barriers, trying to stop the police from advancing. And only after 56 hours, when the police started burning the crops and sending the bombs over the families, or when they could advance to that 52 hectares of land. What was illegal about that is that, well, in that 52 hectares of land was located in the school. Eduardo Galliano School was located at the collective shacks for production of the coffee. And seven houses. So they destroyed all those facilities. But they advanced towards more than the legal area that they could evict. In fact, until today, the police is there. So after they evicted the 52 hectares that was in the official order of the eviction, they expanded the eviction towards a territory where they were not allowed at all to evict the families. So until now, destroying crops, burning the, if you see the pictures, I will talk to the comrades in the area now. If you see the pictures where before, were like beautiful coffee crops. Now it's like all burned. There is nothing anymore. And so what we understand is that first, they illegality committed by police or the way they advanced towards the families with a lot of violence, the fact that they went over the area where the judicial order authorized them to do the action. And apart from the judicial illegalities, we understand that there is an inhumanity behind it all. To do such a thing with families who lived there for 22 years, who raised their kids there, who destroyed this school where the kids studied, where adults learned how to read and write, adults who had no opportunities to do that before that school was built, to burn crops that were producing food, to be donated. This camp was producing food for donations in the areas where people were not being able to get food because of the pandemic. So there is an inhumanity behind it all, that it's bigger than any judicial order could allow. It's heartbreaking. It is. So what is the legal process that you are doing? So right now, we are in a judicial battle for this area that is bigger than the area that the judicial order of eviction allowed the policemen. So they are entering an area that is not in that court order. But there is still another legal process for the whole area that the owner is asking for the eviction of the whole 400 acres. This is still being in the process of the tribunal. So this is the main judicial battle that we need to take now. We cannot allow a judicial order of eviction for the whole camp, for the whole 4,000 acres of land, where the rest of the families need. So far, only 14 families were evicted. They are now living in the house of the other 430 families. I was going to ask, that was my next question, like what happened with these families? What are they doing right now? And if any has the government or has done something to help them during the pandemic, how are they being arranged right now? No, the other families took them into their house and they are now organizing collective work to build new house for them in the territory of the other families, since they have a collective area. So they are collectively building the new. And they are now starting probably on next Monday to rebuild the school. So what the family said, brick by brick, whatever they tried, you will build. And this is something very beautiful. You can see that those families, they are not going to give up that land. It's 22 years. It's not two years or two months, right? And what is the position of other organizations in the country? What is the position of Lula's workers' party about this whole conflict? Tell us a little bit about the situation in the country, the public opinion. Yeah, we have to say that we received a very, very big solidarity from individuals, organizations, political parties, people like calling the governor, calling the police to stop the eviction. Even the media at some point was against the eviction. I think the situation that we are living in the country, I mean, you'll know with that in the US as well. You as in Brazil, you are the epicenter of the pandemic. We are seeing so many people dying every day. And I think that makes people more sensitive to see, OK, instead of taking care of the people who are dying, this government is just like victim people from their homes to make even more people die. So I think this also brought a lot of solidarity, also from individuals in Brazil and internationally. We received a lot of videos, messages, people writing to the governor. So there was a very intense solidarity chain around Quilombo, Campo Grande. And we understand that this is something that almost as if part of the Brazilian society is kind of awakening for this kind of injustice during the pandemic. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. We will think that in a moment like this, there were, I don't know, the money that is used for police or military police will be used to feed the people, to try to help in this struggle that we are all going through. And it's the country. I mean, what they're doing, evicting these families and leaving them with nothing, destroying the things that they built with such work and time, years, it's just heartbreaking. It doesn't make sense. So please tell us, how can we help in the international solidarity? What's the best strategy? What is the most successful way that we can do something to help? Let's see, during those 56 hours of resistance, we are sure that one of the things that helped the families to stand for such a long time was the international and national solidarity. Like on August 12th, we wore like the word trains of Twitter against Zema, calling Zema to stop eviction. So all this has helped a lot, not in the negotiation with the government, because the government didn't want to hear about it, but it gave a lot of strength to the families. And it made also the Brazilian society to get to know what was happening. So now we are going, our strategy is still to make pressure on the social medias and we are going to keep coping informed of all the next steps. But also probably we are going to open another campaign to write to the military police and to the agrarian court, making them responsible to what's happening to those families. And also to what's happening to the population of that region that was very exposed to the dissemination of the virus because of the eviction of the order. Well, thank you so much for all this. And of course you can count on us. All our listeners and our viewers are going to be with you and support you in any way. I know this and also coping of course. And I really, I wanna thank you for all the time that you've given us today and explaining the situation. And I hope we will maybe not do another webinar sometimes so we can, I don't know, share the good news that you want, that we want, the people want. Okay. So thank you very much. And we see the hub of the families of Quilombo Campo Grande for your solidarity and for keeping struggling with them. Thank you.