October 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally in Alcántara, Brazil

Marie Kennedy is Associate Dean of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Chris Tilly is a professor of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Their visit to northeast Brazil was arranged by Grassroots International, a nonprofit that provides aid and support to movements working for economic and social justice in Brazil and elsewhere in the global South.

Recent headlines about Brazil have zeroed in on two dramatic possibilities. Will Brazil elect an avowed socialist president (Lu's Inácio "Lula" da Silva, the candidate of the Workers' Party)? And will Brazil default on its debt? Though either event would shake South America's largest country--at 170 million, almost as large as the United States--an exclusive focus on these high profile issues is misleading. Much of the future of Brazil is being written not at the ballot box or in the banks, but in a thousand smaller community struggles, like the efforts of the community of Alcántara to keep their land from turning into a US military base.

Fisherman at work, Alcántara. Photo: Chris Tilly

Few in the United States have heard of Alcántara, a town on Brazil's Atlantic coast to the north. And why should they? Two hundred years ago, Alcántara was the wealthiest city in northern Brazil, but its riches collapsed when slavery ended. Today, descendants of African slaves and indigenous peoples make a living by fishing and farming amidst the ruins of the old colonial city. Alcántara, at the edge of Amazonia and just south of the equator, looks like a tropical paradise, from the lush green vegetation to the flamingo-like scarlet guará birds flying overhead.

But there is trouble in paradise--and, as is so often the case in Latin America, the United States is involved. Back in 1982, the dictatorship then holding power in Brazil seized over half the land area of Alcántara to set up a satellite launching base. The base displaced 2000 fishing and farming families to unsustainable "agro-villages," breaking up communities "without regard to culture or the structure of their lives," according to one activist. Many subsequently moved to the favelas (slums) of Alcántara and neighboring São Luis. The base threatens fish stocks and wetlands. But the Brazilian military has proven unable to get its space program off the ground, and is now arranging to lease the base to the United States. Alcántara's equatorial location makes it far easier to get payloads into orbit, and US companies are poised to snap up much of the base's business. The US military is insisting that all details of launch technology must remain secret from Brazil and that satellites and launch vehicles must enter the base in sealed containers, leading many Brazilians to fear that the US government is planning a "stealth" military base for the site.

It's taken a long time, but the thousands of displaced families and their supporters are starting to mount an effective mobilization to prevent further base expansion, oppose ceding the base to the United States, and win relief and access to some lands confiscated in 1982 for displaced families. Not long ago, representatives of impacted communities sat in the steamy meeting hall of the Alcántara Rural Worker's Union, while brass bands rehearsing for the Festival of the Holy Spirit marched by in the street outside. Since the agro-village land is so poor, "the people left on the coast have to fish for themselves and the agro-villages," said Maria Luzia Silva Diniz, president of Alcántara's Association of Rural Women Workers. "So they're catching the fish too young. The crabs, sururu fish, shrimp they're bringing in are too small--barely born--and this will have serious consequences."

Participants in the meeting returned over and over again to the theme of betrayal. Sevulo, head of the Rural Workers' Union, was promised training and a good job when construction for the base first began. He took the offer, flying to São Paulo thousands of miles away. Only when he got off the plane did he learn that he had joined the army--and that the "training" was for menial blue-collar work. Community advocates are also quick to point out that although the government confiscated the land in the name of "pressing national interest," it is difficult to justify leasing the base to the United States in the same terms. They hope that activists in the United States will join them in opposing the base deal.

Alcántara has a political importance in Brazil beyond the several thousand people directly affected by the base, because it resonates with three critical issues for the country. The first is access to productive land. With deindustrialization and factory farming wiping out people's livelihoods, more and more families are eking out a marginal existence in urban favelas. The government has failed to enforce laws requiring land-owners to put their land to productive use and obey labor regulations. But the Landless Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra, MST) has led two million Brazilians to claim unused rural land under those laws, building thriving agricultural communities. The MST has played a leading role in linking up land struggles across the country--including people occupying unused rural land, communities like Alcántara that have been displaced by ill-conceived public works projects, and urban homeless movements.

Alcántara also marks an important front in the war against corporate-dominated free trade--in this case, bartering Brazil's land and resources to US aerospace businesses. The Brazilian coalition battling free trade has publicly linked Alcántara to the ALCA--the Portuguese/Spanish initials for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)--noting that the phonetic coincidence points to a deeper connection. MST organizer Jonas Borges da Silva declared that if the FTAA goes into effect, "Brazil will become the quintal (back yard) of the United States," adding, "The fight against the FTAA is a fight in defense of our culture, our way of life--not just about trade." Brazil's anti-FTAA coalition organized an unofficial plebiscite against the free trade agreement September 1-7, and mobilized a phenomenal 10 million people to vote no in the face of a relentless pro-free-trade campaign by government. The coalition also placed the question of Alcántara on the referendum ballot, and the same 10 million voted against turning over the base to the United States.

Finally, Alcántara symbolizes the struggles of black and brown Brazilians--who make up almost half the country--for equal rights and respect. Despite the myth of racial democracy, Afro-Brazilians and indigenous people lag behind whites in every economic and social indicator. At a national level, Afro-descendant activists are pushing for affirmative action. They won a limited victory in 1988, when the government agreed to special protections for quilombos, historical communities of escaped and freed slaves. Like Brazil's land reform laws, these rules have largely remained a dead letter. So in Alcántara and around the country, communities with African roots are mobilizing to win the rights they have been promised.

By the time you read this article, the Workers' Party's da Silva will probably have placed first in the October presidential primary (winning the run-off will prove much more difficult). Most likely, nervous investors will be shifting more and more capital out of Brazil, further threatening the country's ability to pay its debt. But as you read the headlines, keep in mind the courageous families of Alcántara--and other groups like them across Brazil. Regardless of the election outcome, they are fighting for a better future for Brazil, one community at a time, and they could use some support from us.

How to support the people of Alcántara

People in the United States can bolster Alcántara's efforts to win back land rights and prevent the satellite base from being expanded and turned over to the United States.

• Send messages requesting that Brazilian Deputy (the equivalent of a Congressional representative) Zenaldo Coutinho reject the agreement with the United States. (Waldir Pires, the other Deputy for the Alcántara area, has vocally denounced the deal.) Deputado Zenaldo Coutinho, <dep.zenaldocoutinho@camara.gov.br>, fax 011-55-61-318-2266, mailing address Camara dos Deputados, Anexo 3, 70000 Bras'lia, DF, Brasil.
• Contribute financially to the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), which is rallying the resistance to the proposed transfer of the base to the United States. Send tax-deductible contributions (marked "for MST") to Grassroots International, www.grassrootsonline.org , 179 Boylston St., Jamaica Plain, MA 02130; or Global Exchange, 2017 Mission Street #303, San Francisco, California 94110.
• Keep up to date with Alcántara and other Brazilian land struggles by joining the Friends of the MST email list or visiting their website, www.mstbrazil.org.
  

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