Western Producer reporter Ed White travelled to Brazil recently to research a series on Brazil’s growing agricultural might. He also filed this report on a growing disparity between rich and poor in that country.
FOZ DO IGUACU, Brazil – Like a lot of Brazilians, Virginia Brustolin de Oliveira has trouble explaining the great wealth and great poverty of her country.
“We don’t consider ourselves a third world country,” said de Oliveira, who as a tour guide is part of Brazil’s small middle class.
“Brazil is a rich country. But we have many, many poor people who need help. It is our biggest concern as a country.”
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Brazil is growing richer as a nation, as its urban industries develop quickly and its agricultural production explodes. Brazil produces some of the best regional jets in the world, in tight competition with Canada’s Bombardier, has poultry production facilities that are the most advanced in the world, builds cars and farm machinery and is using the biggest machinery and newest technology to open up and farm its tens of millions of acres of uncropped land.
But this rising tide of development has not lifted all the boats of the poor. As agriculture has industrialized, millions of small farmers and farm workers have been displaced, causing the city slums to swell and leading to the widespread phenomenon of the “landless workers movement,” or “squatters.”
Strung along highways throughout Brazil, poor people have built flimsy homes in the 50-metre wide government road allowances, a practice that the federal government allows and supports.
These people use the land to try to sustain their needs, but also want the government to give them larger parcels of farmland.
Under Brazilian law, if landless people can prove to the government that nearby farmland is not being used, or not used to its full potential, the government can expropriate it and give it to the landless people.
In some states, the government will buy or take farmland, build houses on it and relocate poor people there.
This has led to conflicts with commercial farmers living across the fence line from the squatters. Some farmers claim the landless people are trying to intimidate them to give up their land. Others find they cannot sell their farmland because squatters live beside it.
Many large Brazilian farmers are cynical about the movement, considering it an extortion racket and believing its leaders are wealthy manipulators of the poor.
For the squatters, life on the road allowance can be dangerous. Two men living in an encampment were killed last year by a group of armed men that some Brazilian social organizations believe was working for an angry farmer. The organizations claim large farmers have committed many acts of violence and intimidation against squatters.
The conflict between large farmers and squatters is just one symptom of the problems Brazil faces because of its huge gap between rich and poor – the largest such chasm in the world. In the large cities, squalid slums, jerrybuilt by poor people who have no running water or electricity, exist near areas of expensive boutiques and restaurants. The country has a proportionately small middle class, a problem that is holding back development and crippling attempts to bridge the divide of rich and poor.
“My top tractor driver cannot read a map,” mused Luiz Marcos Suplicy Hafers, a wealthy, large farmer who believes illiteracy and a lack of education leave many good jobs unfilled while millions are underemployed and underpaid.
De Oliveira agreed illiteracy is a widespread problem.
“We have jobs, but we don’t have people prepared for the jobs,” she said.
The children of those who live on small farms and in city slums are often encouraged to leave school early or not attend at all by parents who need their children’s labour on the farm or need the money they can earn at a job in the city.
To counteract this tendency, the government gives free bus passes to children so it doesn’t cost them much to attend school. Some areas also offer free school lunches, an important incentive for poor families who can’t afford nutritious food.
The government is also paying people who send their children to school. Parents receive a small amount of money plus a card for the “sesta basica,” or basic basket of food.
Brazil has an enormous number of social problems blighting what could be a prosperous future, but de Oliveira believes that if the government can help families send their children to school, those problems will begin to lessen.
“Once the kids get to school, they don’t want to give up,” said de Oliveira, a mother of two.
“Once you have an education and a computer you can use, the world is in your hand.”
