Brazil Celebrates 500th Birthday Amid Protests Filed at 1:51 p.m. ET By Reuters
PORTO SEGURO (Reuters) - Brazil marked on Saturday the 500th anniversary of its discovery by Portuguese explorers, with official celebrations of its rich cultural diversity tempered by angry protests against centuries of ill treatment of Indians, blacks and peasants.
Up to 60,000 people gathered in Porto Seguro, a palm-lined beach town about 600 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, where Portuguese adventurer Pedro Alvares Cabral first dropped anchor on April 22, 1500, nearly eight years after Christopher Columbus made his first landing in the Americas.
Police said they arrested about 40 protesters on the outskirts of Porto Seguro who were trying to break through a police barricade. About 10,000 workers, peasants and Indians planned to disrupt official celebrations hosted by the presidents of Brazil and Portugal later Saturday.
A regatta of nearly 60 vessels awaited the heads of state in the harbor, after replicating the long voyage across the Atlantic to commemorate the birth of Latin America's largest and most ethnically diverse nations.
Official celebrations planned for the day included dances by Indian groups, the signing of a cooperation agreement between Portugal and Brazil and the planting of a Brazil tree, the source of the red dye which Portuguese colonizers traded in Europe and which ultimately gave the country its name. But heavy rain threatened to call off some of the events, organizers said.
Not all visitors to Porto Seguro were ready to join the festivities. More than 2,500 of Brazil's Indians were expected to march and voice their opposition to celebrations they say ignore the racial killings, forced labor and disease that slashed their population from an estimated 6 million before the Portuguese arrived to just 350,000 today.
``This is a country where there is still murder of indigenous people, where there is still no justice. I don't understand why I should celebrate,'' said Marilene Jesus dos Santos, from the Pataxo Ha, Ha, Hae tribe.
Her brother, Galdino, was murdered three years ago this weekend by middle-class teenagers who doused him with alcohol and set him ablaze while he slept at a bus-stop in the nation's capital, Brasilia. Indians complain the high-profile case brought only short-lived attention to the plight of Brazil's indigenous population.
``To us, he is not dead. In the fight, he lives. He will march with us,'' Santos said.
While Indian protests were expected to be non-violent, officials expressed some concern over Brazil's landless peasant movement, known as the MST. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said late Friday the MST was ``trying to make a mess'' of the celebration.
The landless movement, which encourages peasants to invade unused farm land to press their demands for land reform, have stepped up their activity ahead of the 500th year anniversary.
Their goal is to draw attention to the gross inequalities in Brazil, where more than half the nation's 165 million people live in poverty and 2 percent of the population owns about half the nation's arable land.
The government is leaving little to chance and has assembled a security contingent of 5,000 police officers, two Navy warships and a fleet of helicopters to patrol Porto Seguro's tropical coast.
New York Times / International / April 22, 2000 Argentina Holds 14 Officers in Beating of Labor Demonstrators By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
BUENOS AIRES, April 21 -- Fourteen police officers have been arrested for beating 35 union supporters and shooting another during a crackdown on a demonstration this week that has jeopardized the centerpiece of President Fernando de la Rúa's economic policy.
The incident on Wednesday, in which the officers bludgeoned demonstrators as they lay on the ground, was televised live, stunning the country and deeply embarrassing Mr. de la Rúa.
It was one of the worst cases of police brutality here since civilians retook power from a military dictatorship in 1983.
Several hundred labor supporters demonstrated to block access to the Congress building to impede the start of a Senate debate on a new labor code. The change is intended to lower labor costs and make businesses more competitive on world markets, with measures like reducing the power of national unions to set wages in local businesses.
Leaders of the opposition Justicialist Party, who control the Senate, responded by putting off the debate until next Wednesday. Union leaders say they will demonstrate then to halt the bill.
The police crackdown put the government on the defensive. The top law enforcement official, Interior Minister Federico Storani, conceded that the beatings represented "a political bill the government will have to pay."
"The police who exceeded their powers will be severely punished," Mr. Storani added.
Before a federal judge ordered the officers' arrests on Thursday night, Mr. de la Rúa echoed press speculation that the harsh measures of the police might have been planned to embarrass his government and stymie the changes in the labor law.
"It could have been lack of professional skill on the part of the police or something else," he told reporters. "We are investigating."
When Mr. de la Rúa ran for president last year, he made cleaning up police corruption and brutality a campaign issue. Since he took office in December, he has purged the civilian government and military intelligence branches of hundreds of officials suspected of wrongdoing.
Government officials suggested that the violent officers might have been trying to embarrass the new chief of the federal police, Rubén Santos, whom the new government appointed to improve crime fighting and conduct.
Forty-nine demonstrators were arrested in the demonstration. Nine officers were reportedly injured. A union leader was seriously injured by a rubber bullet that struck him in the groin.
The demonstration put the Justicialists, who have been associated with big labor since their party was founded by Gen. Juan D. Perón a half-century ago, in a difficult position with regard to supporting Mr. de la Rúa's proposal.
That has raised the likelihood that the bill could be watered down.
The bill is being delayed as Mr. de la Rúa struggles to show progress in reinvigorating an economy that has been in recession for two years. Tax receipts last month fell 3.3 percent below the total for March 1999, despite an increase in rates, suggesting that domestic demand is still suffering. Meanwhile, the 14 percent unemployment rate is creeping up.
But officials say they still believe that the economy will grow 4 percent this year, after a 3 percent decline last year. They cite the 9.4 percent growth in industrial output in the first quarter over the same period last year as evidence that a pickup has begun and will gain momentum in the second half of the year.
Still, Mr. de la Rúa has said he needs the labor bill to cut the unemployment rate. The bill appeared to be sailing to enactment six weeks ago, after a planned national labor strike had failed and the lower house of Congress passed it overwhelmingly in late February.
When former President Carlos SauÀl Menem joined crucial Justicialist governors in backing the legislation, Senate passage looked certain. But a dissident faction of the national Peronist labor confederation has sworn to continue resistance to the bill, and opposition senators are calling for amendments that government officials say are unacceptable.
Some Peronist senators are now thought to favor enactment of the labor bill by presidential decree, so that they do not have to vote for the measure and anger organized labor. But others appear willing to continue negotiations with the government. [end]