It would appear that difficult times are ahead, and this was another reason to visit the area now, to see for myself this ecologically important region before too much damage had been done. I also had more personal reasons for going off on my own again.
I had become increasingly sucked into Brazilian politics and it was beginning to take its toll on me. My normally calm academic life had been turned into a maelstrom of strikes, political meetings and empty rhetoric of both sides trying to calm the embittered professors who were threatening to strike again against their difficult working conditions and lack of pay.
I wanted to work, to teach and to do my research, but the political powers that be, were maneuvering me more and more away from my lab and into the political arena. Everything I did had to be seen in the light of a political gesture and was accordingly assessed. A more profound person might have found all this terribly exciting, but for me it was just a bore, and well beyond my comprehension. The tension most days was palatable. In Sao Paulo, a world away, the police opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets. ‘PROTEST’ and ‘REVOLUTION’ screamed the newspapers.
One day my normal bus ride to university was diverted due to a protest which had blocked the main street, and access to my favourite restaurant. This set the tone for the next month and the normally calm streets of Fortaleza were thick with talk of urban uprising, civil unrest and intrigue.
The landless people who had occupied the streets, setting up their camp outside the police station – which I thought was a nice touch, seemed nice enough and I spent an afternoon chatting with them about their issues and ideals. They told me that events had been building up nicely since a Brazilian court acquitted three senior military policemen of the massacre of 19 peasants – despite the jury’s belief that the men were responsible for one of the most violent episodes in the country’s recent history.
Television cameras had unfortunately captured the police officers firing into a crowd of poor rural workers, led by the Landless Movement (MST), who were demonstrating on a road at Eldorado do Carajas, a small town in the northern state of Para. The MST, which has been dubbed, amongst other things, Marxist revolutionaries, and is one of the largest and most effective grassroots movements in the world, responsible for securing land titles for about a million peasants, took this in the spirit it was intended and organised their own protests. In Fortaleza this took the form of camping across the main road and spending the day facing down the nervous looking police.
The jury of seven men told the judge that while they were convinced Colonel Mario Pantoja, Major Jose Maria Oliveira and Captain Raimundo Almendra were guilty; there was not enough evidence to convict them. The police officers were in charge of the troops who shot into the crowd of 2,500 landless farm workers to break up a peaceful demonstration.
Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Movement (MST), said the acquittal shamed the country. “The judge will have blood on his hands if more peasants are killed in Para,” he said, “He has declared impunity for those who commit crimes in the countryside.”
After the verdict hundreds of MST supporters chanted “murderers, murderers”, then charged through Belem (the capital of Para) throwing stones at police. The police responded with plastic bullets and brutality which to me seemed both heavy handed and politically naïve.
The whole situation seemed to be a tangled web of lies, exaggerated reporting and hyperbole. After making a nuisance of myself for a few weeks and asking everyone about this, and hearing 100 different stories, I decided that if I was ever to understand the situation, and if my life was to get back to normal, I would have to travel to the state where all this happened and try to learn some more. Perhaps, I thought, that if I went there and talked to the people and see the way they live then I would understand.
Read all five parts of Talkin’ About a Revolution
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5