Brazil's landless peasants protest U.S. wars http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN1446650820070614?sp=true
Thu Jun 14, 2007
By Raymond Colitt
BRASILIA, June 14 (Reuters) - More than 15,000 activists of Brazil's largest landless peasant movement protested in the capital on Thursday against U.S. military interventions and called for more social justice.
The Landless Rural Workers' Movement, or MST, left 20 coffins at the U.S. Embassy to protest deaths from major conflicts with U.S. involvement, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
"These are all the deaths caused by the United States and other imperialist nations," Joao Paulo Rodrigues, one of the MST leaders, told Reuters. About 16,000 people attended the peaceful march, police said. Many wore red baseball caps and shirts and waved red flags with the group's logo -- a peasant couple holding a machete in the air against the backdrop of a Brazilian flag.
One banner read: "Beware Imperialism, the Revolution is coming." "Bush is a big Satan, our big battle is also for peace," protesters chanted in a refrain rhyming in Portuguese.
At Brazil's Foreign Ministry, they protested against a Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
"It's also a military intervention that we condemn," an MST spokesman said. The MST has strong left-wing roots, including ties to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's ruling Workers' party as well as to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro sent a letter to the MST on Wednesday, calling it "one of the most outstanding and combative social movements to fight for a better world."
Beating Samba drums made from old soap canisters and singing regional folk tunes, protesters gathered on the Square of the Three Powers, the heart of the government district.
They denounced as insufficient land reform by Lula and delays in Congress in cracking down on slave-like working conditions in Brazil. At the Supreme Court they demanded the 1997 privatization of Brazil's mining giant CVRD (VALE5.SA: Quote, Profile, Research) be reversed.
For more than two decades the MST has been pushing Brazilian governments to expropriate land and settle poor peasants. Now it says the peasants must create their own agribusinesses with government aid.
The MST is also looking to broaden its agenda to push for changes in economic policy, including increased income distribution.
The Venezuelan government is paying MST farm experts to help reproduce seeds for crops and thereby reduce the Caribbean country's food imports, MST leader Joao Pedro Stedile said earlier this week.
Cuba is training MST physicians and helping with education programs, Castro said in his letter.
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