International Conference of Agrarian Reform: Marabá Declaration
by La Vía Campesina
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF AGRARIAN REFORM: MARABÁ DECLARATION [1]
Published on Friday, 22 April 2016 22:11
WHO ARE WE? PEOPLE WHO STRUGGLE FOR TERRITORY
(Marabá, April 17 2016) We are more than 130 representatives of La Via
Campesina member organizations and allies from four continents, 10
regions and 28 countries of the world. We are here in Marabá, Pará,
Brazil, to analyze, reflect and continue our collective processes to
develop our ideas, proposals, and alternative projects for confronting
the offensive of global capital against the peoples and natural goods of
the countryside, coasts and seas. More than anything, we come together
to struggle for our territories, and for a different kind of society.
We are organizations of peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples,
landless, farm workers, herders, fisherfolk, collectors, forest
dwellers, rural women and youth, as well as allied organizations from
across the world. We are here to remember the massacre of rural workers
in El Dorado dos Carajás, Pará, which took place exactly 20 years ago
and led to the creation of the International Day of Peasant Struggle,
celebrated every year on April 17th. We are also here to demand that the
governments of the world follow through on their commitments to agrarian
reform, made 10 years ago at the FAO's International Conference on
Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in Porto Alegre, Brazil
THE CURRENT SITUATION: THE OFFENSIVE OF CAPITAL AGAINST OUR TERRITORIES
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AND THE ATTACKS ON DEMOCRACY
We have listened to our brothers and sisters from our organizations in
the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and we can see
that everywhere we are facing the same enemy and the same problems.
There are ever more cases of land-, forest- and water-grabbing, attacks
against democracy and popular will, political prisoners, etc. in Latin
America, Asia Africa, Europe and North America. In the current
historical period, we are witnessing the emergence of an alliance
between financial capital, transnational corporations, imperialism,
broad sectors within national states (almost without regard to their
purported ideology), particularly but not only judicial and public
security institutions, the private sectors in industrial agriculture,
fishing and food (including agribusiness and aquaculture), mining,
construction, forestry and other extractive sectors, and the mainstream
media. The members of this new alliance are promoting an avalanche of
privatizations, grabbing and taking over the commons and public goods,
such as land, water resources, forests, seeds, cattle raising,
fisheries, glaciers and entire territories. In order to achieve their
goals, they are using financialization to convert everything into
commodities, free trade and investment agreements, the corruption of our
politicians and leaders, control of the mass media and financial system,
and mergers and acquisitions of companies.
Lately we have noted, with increasing alarm, how this alliance--and
Capital in general--no longer tolerates the implementation by
democratically elected governments of public policies that show the
slightest independence, no matter how weak. This alliance has become the
main force behind a wave of coup d'état attempts, many of which are
taking place right now. These coups range from "soft," "technical,"
"parliamentary," and "judicial" coups, to the most "hard-core," military
and violent coups, all of which disregard the law, constitutions and
popular will. This is the case in Brazil, where we find ourselves
together now. We add our voices to the voices of the Brazilian people,
who struggle to defend democracy against an illegitimate coup attempt,
and try to push forward the political reforms needed so that democracy
can get out of the dead-end it is in toda
WHY WE STRUGGLE AGAINST AGRIBUSINESS
The offensive of Capital is threatening rural life and our entire
society, including our health, Mother Earth, the climate, biodiversity,
and our peoples and cultures. Mass migration, the destruction of the
social fabric of our communities, urban sprawl, insecurity,
agrochemicals, GMOs, junk food, the homogenization of diets, global
warming, the destruction of mangrove forests, the acidification of the
sea, the depletion of fish stocks, and the loss of anything that
resembles democracy, are all symptoms of what is taking place.
The emergence of this new alliance between financial capital,
agribusiness, the State and mass media--and its capacity to dispute
territories, public opinion and the State, even where the government is
"progressive"--has forced us once again carry out a process of
reflection and reformulation of our concepts and proposals, as well as
our strategies, forms and practices of struggle.
Here in Brazil, we have seen how financial capital has transformed the
old enemy of peasants and landless workers--the unproductive large
landholdings or latifúndios--into capitalized agribusinesses, mines,
industrial fishing and aquaculture, and energy projects. In reality, all
these so-called "productive" sectors are mostly "producing" extreme
poverty and environmental devastation. In this transformation,
capitalism no longer requires a "classical agrarian reform" to raise
productivity in rural areas. In the past, the landless peasantry formed
alliances in favour of this kind of agrarian reform, with factions
inside the parts of the State that represented the interests of
productive capital. But this change takes any alliance with a fraction
of capital off the table, leaving future agrarian reform squarely in the
domain of class struggle. It also reduces the usefulness of the old
argument for agrarian reform, that so much land in the hands of people
-who do not even use most of it- is an injustice in the face of so many
more people with no land at all. But at the same time it creates the
basis for a new call to all of society and to all working classes, both
rural and urban, to question the very basis of the project of Capital
for the countryside.
Any resistance by rural peoples is demonized by the mainstream media, as
organizations, their leaders and supporters face repression,
criminalization, persecution, assassinations, enforced disappearances,
illegitimate jailing, administrative detentions, sexual harassment and
rape. Laws are being changed to criminalize peasant and working class
struggles even more, as well as granting total impunity to perpetrators
of crimes against peasants, workers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and
all rights defenders.
Facing this terrible panorama, rural peoples, and our organizations,
movements, alliances and convergences, currently represent the best hope
for humanity and Mother Earth. We are on the front lines of the
territorial and political fight against this dark alliance. Our
proposals for food sovereignty, popular agrarian reform, the building of
agroecological food production territories, and peasant agriculture to
cool the planet, represent real alternatives and solutions to the
problems created by the capitalist system and by this barbaric alliance
in particular.
WHAT WE DEFEND AND CALL FOR: POPULAR AGRARIAN REFORM
In La Via Campesina and the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform we have
more than 20 years of history in the struggle for land and the defense
of land and territory. In 2012, in Bukit Tinggi, Indonesia, we took
stock of this history, how it has evolved in the context of a changing
world and our own accumulation of experiences and dialogues, and
identified key elements of a common strategy for agrarian reform. But in
2012 we were only beginning to see the scope of the ascendance of
financial capital and its growing dominance over other kinds of capital.
This changes the nature of the game, and how we approach society on the
question of rural territories.
Now we ask, which is better? Do we want a countryside without peasants,
trees or biodiversity? Do we want a countryside full of monocultures and
feedlots, agrochemicals and GMOs, producing exports and junk food,
causing climate change and undermining the adaptive capacity of
communities? Do we want pollution, illness, and massive migration to
cities? Or do we want a countryside made up of the food producing
territories of peasants, indigenous peoples, family farmers, artisanal
fisherfolk, and other rural peoples, based on human dignity and diverse
knowledges and cosmovisions, with trees, biodiversity, and the
agroecological production of healthy food, which cool the planet,
produce food sovereignty and take care of Mother Earth?
In this sense, we consider the proposal of our Brazilian comrades for a
Popular Agrarian Reform, an agrarian reform not only for landless
peasants, but for all of the working classes and for all of society.
This agroecological and territorial approach to agrarian reform can only
be won through class struggle and direct confrontation of the project of
Capital, including its profits, media outlets and its national and
international agents. This is an agrarian reform to maximize the
potential of peasant agriculture, economy and territory.
Throughout the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, our
organizations, movements and convergences are putting forth similar
proposals and territorial approaches in their dispute with the global
project of Capital. These include the convergence among our diverse
popular and traditional knowledges and ways of knowing the world in
agroecology, artisanal fishing, traditional herding, and in our diverse
strategies and ways of life. Our proposals, though similar, differ based
on the nature of our different realities. In places where land is
concentrated in few hands, we struggle for its redistribution. In some
countries, we speak of an "agrarian revolution." In places where our
peoples still hold onto their lands and territories, we struggle to
defend those territories, and prevent land and water grabbing.
Meanwhile, in places where land was nationalized and is now being
conceded to foreign entities by governments, we struggle for the return
of ancestral land rights to our communities. The fisherfolk among us
speak of the struggle for the recovery and defense of artisanal fishing
territories. In Europe we have once again taken up the strategy of land
occupations, and organized struggles against land use changes, making
clear to all that the problems of land grabbing and concentration are
also a growing problem in Northern countries. In Palestine we struggle
against a brutal occupation and we call to boycott Israeli products. And
everywhere, there are burning struggles by young people to access land
and other resources.
We have achieved great victories, such as the massive agrarian reform
carried out after peoples' land occupations and recuperations in
Zimbabwe, the "Education for and by the Countryside" policy in Brazil,
the cancellations of mining concessions and plantations in many parts of
Africa and Asia, and the permanence of Cuba's agrarian reform and its
successful "peasant-to-peasant" agroecology movement. We also have
partial but promising victories, such as the possibility of a large
scale agrarian reform in Indonesia, for which we must mobilize in order
to make our governments follow through on their promises.
We have organized our struggles by providing political and
agroecological training for both leaders and grassroots members of our
organizations. We have built training centers and peasant agroecology
schools in all continents, and provided educational alternatives for our
children. We have learned from the indigenous peoples of our movements
that "the life of people and nature are one." We have old and new
tactics, such as occupation and recovery of land and territory,
solidarity, caravans--such as in East Africa and in Bangladesh--as well
as alternative media outlets, art and culture. We continue to develop
our popular peasant feminist, humanist, environmentalist and socialist
values, youth mobilization and creativity, new rural-urban alliances,
the voluntary guidelines of the FAO, the Peasant Rights Charter, and
other efforts. We need to continue to adjust and innovate new tactics,
especially since the enemy quickly evolves new ways of taking our
territories. We need new approaches and strategies, such as the
construction of autonomous spaces and self-provisioning, as well as the
scaling-up of peoples' agroecology.
OUR CHALLENGES
- We will transform the struggle for land into the struggle for
territory, along with developing a new productive model for food
sovereignty, based on a more "independent" agroecology by using our own
local resources and inputs and recovering our ancestral knowledges.
- We will organize the struggle for public policies supporting peasant
and small farmer production as well as health, education, culture and
sports in our communities.
- We will carry out our political and ideological training on a mass
scale, fortify our work with our membership and our work with the
masses, in order to improve the internal structure and operation of our
organizations, and progressively integrate the leadership and
participation of woman and youth.
- We will confront the ways by which the mass media demonize our
movements and promote the culture of consumption and the hollowing out
of democracy. We will work hard to build our own media, which foster
dialogues with our membership as well as with the working class and the
entire society.
- We will oppose more effectively the criminalization and repression of
our movements as well as militarization, and organize an international
struggle in support of our political prisoners. We will organize an
ongoing solidarity campaign that will be based on the principle of
sharing what we have rather than on sharing only what we don't need.
- We will continue to carry out our permanent task of building class
alliances, without dependencies, between the country and the city,
between food producers and consumers, and with progressive researchers,
academics and support organisations that share our vision.
- We will denounce and oppose so-called "anti-terrorist" laws and their
use against our legitimate struggles.
- We will increase our solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian
and Kurdish peoples as well as other peoples that are subjected to
military aggression. We condemn military occupations and the
militarisation of lands and territories.
- We will develop an analysis of the role played by drug trafficking in
the destabilization of our territories with the complicity of capital
and governments, as well as a strategy to fight this problem more
effectively.
- We will take on corporate concentration in different sectors of the
economy, especially agro-industrial farming, fishing and food, media and
financial systems, as well as the frontal attacks against democracy. We
shall create forms of struggle that generate economic losses for
capital, transnational corporations, banks and other agents of capital.
- We will build convergences and greater unity based on common
objectives and our diversity (women and men, peasants, workers,
fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, urban populations,
consumers, etc.).
- We will oppose the ascendance of conservative and right-wing religious
fundamentalism, racism and cultural discrimination. We will fight the
new wave of neoliberal privatization laws and treaties.
- We will rethink the relation between our popular movements, the State,
political parties and electoral processes, taking into account the
specific history and context of each country, and fight the generalized
undermining of international and national human rights mechanisms.
- We will fight against US imperialism, and while we recognize the
importance of multi-polarity in the world, we sound the alert about the
emergence of new economic, political and military imperialisms.
- Through our organizations, we will strive to build convergence
movements around alternative popular projects developed through
collective constructions; we will also work to improve the organization
of production, such as cooperatives, promote small- and medium-sized
agro-industries in order to add value to our products, and we will work
to achieve more and improved short and medium marketing circuits, and
promote cooperation.
- We will struggle to address the issue of credit: how to obtain more
credit for the peasantry and at the same time produce without credit and
with less debt.
- We will oppose the institutional tendency (for example by the World
Bank, FAO, and some academia and NGOs) to try to dilute the content of
concepts such as "agrarian reform" and "agroecology", by launching
"light" versions of these concepts, as in "access to land", "corporate
social responsibility" and "industrial organic" food production in
monocultures, with the objective of green-washing agribusiness.
- We will struggle to achieve international mechanisms to defend and
support our visions and strategies that are not "voluntary" but rather
compulsory and actionable.
- We will stop the approval and proliferation of dangerous new
technologies, such as "terminator" seeds and synthetic biology.
- We will strengthen the participation of women and youth in our social
movements. We will develop mechanisms to increase the number of youth
who remain in the countryside. We will struggle against the dominant
model of patriarchy in the capitalist system, and demand the full rights
of peasant and indigenous women to land, water and territory.
- We will carry out ever more unified international struggles to oppose
our common enemies.
DEFENDING THE LAND AND HONOURING LIFE
On this 17th of April, International Day of Peasant Struggles, 20 years
after the El Dorado dos Carajás massacre in the State of Pará, Brazil,
we are meeting once again, inspired by the thousands of men and women
who defend the right to life itself, who fight for a more just society
through a permanent struggle for peoples' rights to land and territory,
for the promotion of food sovereignty and agroecological production, to
end hunger and poverty.
GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE! GLOBALIZE HOPE!
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR AGRARIAN REFORM OF LA VÍA CAMPESINA
DELEGATES FROM 4 CONTINENTS AND 10 REGIONS, UNITED TO DEFEND LAND AND
HONOUR LIFE.
Links:
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[1]
http://www.viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/1...
8 years, 8 months
17th April: Peasants mobilize to mark two decades of struggle to defend land and life
by La Vía Campesina
17th April: Peasants mobilize to mark two decades of struggle to defend
land and life [1]
Published on Friday, 15 April 2016 17:39
PRESS RELEASE: LA VIA CAMPESINA
(Harare, 15 April 2016): On April 17, The International Day of Peasant's
Struggle - millions of peasants and their allies - women and men -
around the world are uniting in action to commemorate the massacre of 19
landless farmers in 1996 [2][1]in Brazil and to continue the struggle
for land and life. Two decades after that despicable incident took place
in Eldorado dos Carajás, peasants and peasant leaders continue to be
assaulted and killed for defending their rights. The killing of Honduras
activist, Berta Caceres, and other peasants in Columbia, Philippines and
Brazil in recent weeks and the criminalization of social protest and
many other forms of human rights abuses continue.
La Via Campesina denounces all forms of injustices that affect the
peasant way of life, an important heritage of the people at the service
of humanity.
Constant attempts are being made to push forth an agro-business model
that imposes the practice of monoculture which privatizes land and
natural resources in order to increase profit, denying their
appropriation by the society for common good. It destroys biodiversity,
uses more and more toxic inputs, drives peasants off their land, and
forces governments and nation states to bow to its will.
Unlike many governments, which continue to build repressive alliances
with big businesses to promote profit maximisation, La Via Campesina
believes the time has come to build an economy based on equity that will
restore the balance between humanity and nature founded on peoples' Food
Sovereignty principles.
_"It's unacceptable that in 2016 farmers are still being killed for
defending the very basis of life: the nature and the right to grow
food"_ said Elizabeth Mpofu, General coordinator of La Via Campesina.
With hundreds of actions taking placed in all continents [3] peasants
and their allies are united in solidarity to defend their land and to
push back the frontal assault on their fellow people in all parts of the
world. The actions, led locally by peasant organisations who are members
of La Via Campesina and by many other groups, collectives and
organisations, involve reclaiming grabbed lands, demonstrations against
agro-business models, food sovereignty fairs, seed exchanges, video
screenings, conferences and more.
_Press Contact:_
Viviana Rojas Flores: (55) 6199299536
_Spokespeople:_
Marina Dos Santos (Spanish, Portuguese)
Federico Pacheco (French)
Elizabeth Mpofu (English): +263 772 443 716
Register your actions by sending us information about the planned events
to our mail:lvcweb@viacampesina.org
Please also send us pictures, videos, posters, flyers etc. We will
publish them together with a map of all actions on www.viacampesina.org
[4]
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[5][1]On April 17th 1996, in the Amazonian state of Pará, at Eldorado
dos Carajás, the state military police massacred peasants organized in
the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), killing 19 individuals and
injuring 69. That day, 1500 women and men organized in the MST occupied
and blocked the BR-150 highway in Eldorado dos Carajás, with the aim of
bringing pressure to bear on the State and Federal governments to
implement agrarian reform. State authorities, the police, the army and
powerful local landowners were involved in the planning and executing of
the massacre.
Links:
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[1]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/17-ap...
[2]
file:///C:/Users/nyoni/Downloads/2016-%2017%20avril%20EN%20Final.docx#_ftn1
[3] http://viacampesina.org/map/17april/2016/map.html
[4] http://viacampesina.org/
[5]
file:///C:/Users/nyoni/Downloads/2016-%2017%20avril%20EN%20Final.docx#_ftnref1
8 years, 8 months
MST: Call for International Mobilizations on April 15
by La Vía Campesina
MST: Call for International Mobilizations on April 15 [1]
Published on Monday, 11 April 2016 21:48
[2]_APRIL 11, 2016_
On behalf of MST we thank you for all the messages of support and
solidarity for the brutal murder of our comrades Vilmar Bordim and
Leomar Bhorbak.
We made a beautiful act in Quedas do Iguaçu (city where they were
murdered) with about 5,000 comrades from all over the country, who
occupied the city to protest against the violence, in solidarity with
the families of the dead, and for agrarian reform.
In Brasilia we made a vigil in honor of the comrades murdered and
demanding the investigation and punishment of the perpetrators.
We live in difficult times and we know that repression and violence may
intensify.
Our response will be in the streets, in the land occupations, in the
blockade of roads, strengthening our National Day of Struggle for
Agrarian Reform and the mobilizations against the coup.
We have a camp set up in Brasilia with 2,000 militants from MST and
several other popular movements to monitor the process of the coup in
the House and Senate.
April 15, all popular movements of the Brazil Popular Front will hold a
big national strike in protest against the impunity of Carajas, the
murders of Paraná and against the coup.
On 17 April, the day of the impeachment vote in the Parlament and
International Day of Struggles for Agrarian Reform, there will be
demonstrations in every capital of the country and a major mobilization
in Brasilia.
So we urge all POPULAR MOVEMENTS AND FRIENDS OF MST TO JOIN US IN THIS
PERIOD OF INTENSE STRUGGLES AND ORGANIZE DEMONSTRATIONS IN FRONT OF
BRAZILIAN EMBASSIES IN SUPPORT FOR THE DEMONSTRATIONS IN BRAZIL ON THIS
DAY APRIL 15: AGAINST THE COUP AND IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY, AGAINST THE
VIOLENCE AND IN PROTEST FOR THE MURDER OF OUR MST COMRADES
We once again count with the international solidarity of the working
class!
INTERNATIONALIZE THE STRUGGLE! INTERNATIONALIZE HOPE!
In solidarity and struggle
MST
Links:
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[1]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/2024-...
[2]
http://viacampesina.org/en/images/2016-04-12-LOGO%20MST%20OFICIAL.jpg
8 years, 9 months
Military police and gunmen attack Landless families, murder two workers
by La Vía Campesina
Military police and gunmen attack Landless families, murder two workers
[1]
Published on Monday, 11 April 2016 15:06
[2]MST COMMUNIQUÉ
April 8 2016
Last Thursday afternoon, families of the Landless Workers' Movement
(MST) organized in the Dom Tomás Balduino Camp, were victims of an
ambush by the State Military Police and private security forces of the
logging company Araupel.
In this cowardly attack, promoted by the Military Police and Araupel's
private security, were murdered rural workers Vilmar Bordim, 44, married
with three children, and Leomar Bhorbak, 25, who left behind his wife
who is nine-months pregnant. At least seven workers were also wounded,
and two more were detained by the police to obtain declarations, and
have already been released.
The camp, located in the municipality of Quedas do Iguaçu, in the state
of Paraná, began being inhabited by approximately 1,5 thousand families
in May 2015. It's located in the Río Dos Cobras property, which
previously had been illegally occupied by the logging company. Justice
declared, because of this fraud, that those lands were public and had to
be destined to agrarian reform.
According to statements by the victims of the attack, there was no
previous confrontation. When the ambush occurred, approximately 25
Landless Workers were traveling in a pickup truck, 6 kilometers away
from the camp, within the perimeter that was declared public by the
Brazilian justice. They were surprised by the police and security forces
that were hiding.
Upon seeing them aggressively approach the vehicle, the Landless Workers
ran towards the camp, running away from the endless shooting, to protect
themselves.
The place where the ambush occurred was isolated by the police, who
prevented the families of the victims, lawyers and journalists, to
access the location, and threatening them. This behavior allows the
police to destroy any sort of proof that may reveal the truth of these
serious events.
The Military Police has created a climate of terror in the city of
Quadas do Iguaçu, by appropriating the streets, fencing the police
station and the hospitals of Quedas do Iguaçu and Cascavel where the
wounded are being treated, and preventing the victims from making any
type of contact with their families, lawyers or journalists.
This attack of the Military Police to the Landless, occurred two days
after the visit of the Secretary of State, Valdir Rossoni, and the
representative of the leadership of the Paraná police, on April 1, to
Quedas do Iguaçu, where they issued the order to send a contingent of
more than 60 police officers to the municipality.
The MST has been in the region for more than 20 years, and always acted
in an organized and peaceful way to advance towards the agrarian reform,
and claiming that the land should serve a social role. Only in the great
estate that Arapuel had occupied, 3 thousand families were able to make
a living.
The MST demands:
* Immediate investigation, and imprisonment of the policemen and
private security forces involved, and sentences for all of those
responsible (executors and intellectual authors) of the crime against
the Landless Workers
* Immediate retreat of the military police and the security forces
hired by Araupel.
* Guarantees for the security and protection of the lives of all
workers of the movement that are living in camps in the region.
* That all of the land fraudulently appropriated by Araupel are
destined to Agrarian Reform and occupied by the families.
_To struggle, to build Popular Agrarian Reform!_
Links:
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[1]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/human-rights...
[2]
http://viacampesina.org/en/images/2016-04-11-violencia_campo_rondonia1_ms...
8 years, 9 months
La Via Campesina organizes the International Conference of Agrarian Reform in Brazil
by La Vía Campesina
17 APRIL : DAY OF PEASANT'S STRUGGLE
LA VIA CAMPESINA ORGANIZES THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF AGRARIAN
REFORM IN BRAZIL [1]
Published on Wednesday, 06 April 2016 17:57
PRESS RELEASE – LA VIA CAMPESINA
_THE STRUGGLES FOR LAND, WATER, AND TERRITORY ARE CENTRAL TO THE
STRUGGLE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY._
(Harare, 6 April 2016) This year marks the 20th anniversary of the
Eldorado dos Carajás massacre. On April 17th, 1996, nineteen peasants -
women and men members of the Landless Movement - were assassinated while
they were taking part in a legitímate struggle to obtain land. Since
that time, La Vía Campesina has declared April 17th to be the
International Day of Peasants' Struggle. It is in this context of memory
and resistance that La Via Campesina, together with its members and
allies such as the World March of Women, the World Forum of Fisher
People, the Organisation of Indigenous Peoples, the International
Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), FIAN International,
GRAIN, ETC Group, LRAN, and Friends of the Earth International, is
organising this International Conference in order to renew and bring up
to date the discussion of Agrarian Reform.
The Conference will take place in Pará, Brazil, from April 13th to April
17th. Topics for the main discussion panels include: capitalism and
agribusiness; the project for popular agrarian reform; and the
challenges faced by the peasants' and small-scale farmers' and workers'
movements in developing a common plan of action. It is expected that the
Conference will be attended by 200 women and men delegates from Africa,
Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The delegates will also
take part in a closing international ceremony of solidarity, mística
(celebration of the ideals that inspire our movement), and justice,
which will be held in very same place where the Eldorado dos Carajás
massacre was perpetrated, on the same date and at the same time of day.
For La Via Campesina, the question of land is central to the struggle
for Food Sovereignty. That is why La Via Campesina finds it important to
have this occasion for collective reflection and planning, at a moment
in time when peasants and small-scale farmers struggling to have, or to
maintain, access to land are being subjected to landgrabbing,
dispossession, hunger, and criminalisation.
>From this perspective, the Agrarian Reform model that La Via Campesina
is putting forward should not only ensure access to, and control over,
land for those who work it. It should also ensure Food Sovereignty
through the provision of healthy food produced by agroecological
methods. In addition, it should guarantee decent living conditions and
basic rights to health care, education, technology, and culture for all
of the rural population. It is a social project that not only concerns
peasants and small-scale farmers, but that should rather be seen as an
alternative solution to problems in the social structure, both in the
countryside and in the society as a whole.In this light, it is crucial
for a world-wide movement like La Via Campesina to construct a shared
platform in order to influence public policies, and, additionally, to
strengthen unity and solidarity in the struggles in the territories.
PRESS CONTACTS:
Viviana Rojas Flores (55) 6199299536
SPOKESPEOPLE:
Marina Dos Santos, Moviment landless People, MST, Brazil. Spanish,
Portuguese.
Federico Pacheco, European Coordination Vía Campesina, French.
Links:
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[1]
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/17-ap...
8 years, 9 months
