Venturing beyond the Wire: The Sem Terra’s Dream (Brazil)

Abstract

At the start of the new millennium we find the rural world everywhere to be in a state of crisis. The historical origins of this crisis, in the nations of the South, can be found in colonial land grabs and the displacement of farming peoples from fertile lands with adequate rainfall, toward steep, rocky slopes, desert margins, and infertile rainforest soils, and the progressive incorporation of these displaced peoples into poorly paid seasonal labor forces for export agriculture. As a result of this legacy, only slightly modified in the post colonial period, the landless and near landless have long made up the poorest of the poor.

This statement made by the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina (VC) in a joint paper with the International NGO/CSO Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) at the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in January 2006 (VC and IPC, 2006: 6), tells us about an ongoing state of affairs: the problem of landlessness and the conflicts over the land are pervasive features of the new millennium.