Débora Nunes Lino da Silva: Brazilian Peasants Risking their Lives for Change
posted by brooklynfoodconference, on May 26, 2009
Débora Nunes da Silva lives in Alagoas in Brazil’s northeastern region. She is a sociologist and key leader in the Movimento dos Trabalhadaroes Rurai Sem Terra (MST, the Landless Workers Movement) in the sector of Production, Cooperation, and Environment. In Alagoas, a poor state dependent on extensive sugar cane monoculture, Ms. da Silva has organized landless workers for over ten years. She has been involved in the mobilization of families to occupy land, and in the management of encampments and settlements. Ms. da Silva is also active in the political education and training of the movement’s leaders and organizers, particularly women and youth.
- Debora Nunes Lino da Silva. Photo by Saulo Araujo, Grassroots International
Translator: Saulo Araújo from Grassroots International [Read Saulo's interview with da Silva]
I’m going to try to speak slowly because in the region I come from in Brazil, we speak really fast. I want to start off by saying that I’m really happy to be here with you folks who share my values and also with organizations doing the same kind of work. I want to thank those who invited us here: Christina Schiavoni from World Hunger Year, Nancy Romer, Friends of MST, the Small Planet Institute, and others. I’m here to reaffirm the commitment of the workers to defend our right to the land and their work against those policies that have been affecting them. So let’s go.
For a long, long time, the issue of food sovereignty has been debated throughout the globe. That discussion started within organizations committed to food sovereignty and food justice. This debate doesn’t happen by itself. It happens because we have been in a food crisis for a long time. This food crisis has increased the number of people who go hungry every day. People don’t go hungry every day because there is not enough food. As the population has doubled, food production has tripled. Within the last 40 years, the number of hungry people jumped from 80 million to 950 million people. That data is from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
So 100,000 people die (from hunger or its immediate effects) every day. Besides being outraged by that information, we need to learn the root causes:
- The domination of international capital, the corporations’ capital in the global economy, that increases the concentration of land and also production of food. It is concentrated in the hands of a few corporations that control most of our food. These multi-nationals are Monsanto, Cargill and ADM (Archers Daniels Midland). They control seed production, fertilizer, the use of machines and distribution of the food. Food production is a very profitable business, and there is no concern about the people who eat those products that they are calling food.
- GMOs and agrichemicals that contaminate our soil and our water. The issue of agrichemicals is very serious. In Brazil, tests show the milk of women who are breast-feeding is contaminated by agrichemicals. This is more than an issue of money, people’s cultures are being destroyed.
- The policies of international agencies: the World Trade Organization , the World Bank and the IMF. For example, there is a WTO agreement that a country has to import at least 5% of its food needs. The IMF and the World Bank also press governments to accept similar agreements. The first policies in those governments should be permitted in those countries. Those policies of the IMF and the World Bank destroy the possibility of people making agrarian reform.
- The speculation of the markets. The next four harvest seasons are already sold on the market.
- The extension of the agribusiness plantation, plantations for agro-fuels: sugar cane and other crops to produce ethanol and bio-diesel. That pressure to use land to grow crops for non-food uses is increasing the competition in the market, driving the price of food up. And also right now we are using marginal lands and areas of forest reserves.
That is the first piece I wanted to present. Now I want to talk about the MFT, what the Landless Workers Movement is doing.
One lesson we learned is that we cannot wait for the government to implement the policies that we need. That’s why the struggle has to be permanent. Our task is to organize the poor in the rural areas and those who have been expelled from the rural areas. And also to organize those who have remained in rural areas but who have been pushed into the industrial model. Our struggle right now is not only about the large land owners, the oligarchy. It’s also about the trans-national corporations who are occupying our land. The conflict is deeper and more complex.
One of our tactics is to occupy land. We occupy land to push the government to:
- implement our constitutional rights that say that all land in Brazil has a social function and should be used for the good of the community,
- denounce the agribusinesses and the global food system that are creating more hunger and misery.
We make sure that the lands we occupy are models of agrarian reform as well as states of resistance. We investigate production activities and implement a different agricultural model that respects the environment and protects the local culture.
This hasn’t been easy. And the local communities in Brazil have learned that we don’t own the land. So what we want is to extend the rights of power to the people who have been expelled from the land and lost their rights. This is very explicit in our policy—extend our land rights. The struggle for agrarian reform also includes education and health care. The goal is to change the society. We don’t want to live in a society that values financial profit over life.
Because of our work, we have been persecuted not only by the elites but also by the government. We have been persecuted and criminalized but also murdered as our comrade Keno [Valmir Mota de Oliveira] who was assassinated by the private forces of Syngenta.
I’m going to talk a little about what our proposals mean as an alternative to what we have today. Every policy has been guided by three major principles:
- Food is not a commodity, so food should not be managed and defined by the market but by the people. Food should be healthy and should be produced in a way that’s sustainable.
- We should respect the food habits, the food culture, of every region because this is critical and fundamental for the health of everybody. We should strengthen local economies. Restitution of local economies will also protect the food sovereignty of the people.
- We must create a new model of food sovereignty, which should include agrarian reform so that everybody who wants to work the land should have access to it. We need to also think about structuring a system that can process and distribute the food in the form of coops. We should have rural education on all levels, including university and college levels. And we should also develop new agricultural technologies. We need to support the protection of pure seeds. Our top priority should be healthy food.
We need to put more regulation on how the global food system operates. We should be more vigorous in the control of production and export of biofuels, and also the production of agrichemicals by governments.
To wrap up, I want to say we should replace the current model with a model that protects the diversity of production, peasant agriculture, and that respects life. To accomplish that we need to struggle together and that should not be limited to (only) healthy food. We should face the capitalist model that implements all those ideas and has exploited the world and humanity.
That’s it. I want to thank you. I am sorry for the need for translation.
Workshop Description: Food Sovereignty North and South Workshop: People’s Control over their Own Food. Food sovereignty—a people’s right to decide their agricultural and food policy—has become a guiding concept of farmers’ efforts to transform the world food system. Learn about organizations that are leading these efforts internationally.
Other Speakers: the Reverend DeVanie Jackson (Brooklyn Rescue Mission), John Kinsman (Family Farm Defenders and National Family Farm Coalition), Thomas Forster (The New School). Moderator: Christina Schiavoni (World Hunger Year)
Related Links
- The City That Ended Hunger. To write Hope’s Edge, Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé visited the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil. In 1993, a new mayor declared food a right of citizenship for all 2.5 million of the city’s residents. Frances Moore Lappé describes what she and Anna found in Belo. more
- A Brazilian Activist in Brooklyn. Pre-conference blog on Débora and the MST. more
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Other BFC Speeches
Patel (Keynote) (Wksp) | Redmond | Prof. Louie | Lappé | D. Jackson
—Transcribed and compiled by Paige Churchman
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