Environmentalists and residents of rural areas say President Rousseff’s nine vetoes of Brazil’s new Forest Code last Thursday do not go far enough in protecting Amazonian wilderness.

Leader of the Brazilian branch of Vía Campesina, a farmers’ rights advocacy organisation, Luiz Zarref, said that although “the vetoes were important and they are a signal that society should continue mobilising to pressure the government,” they are nevertheless insufficient.

On the one hand, she doubted that legislators had established that land could remain completely uncultivated for forest recovery every five years. This “means the creation of unproductive large estates”, she said. On the other, she did recognise that the president’s move would defend protection of riverside land slated for exotic fruit monocultures.

The new law allows a sliding scale of riverbank reforestation depending mainly on the size of the property owner’s agricultural production.

“The suspended articles benefited large agricultural producers,” asserted Brazilian Minister of the Environment Izabella Teixeira last week. “We do not believe the government should cut back environmental protection requirements for large and medium landowners… There is a balance, and we found that balance.”

She added that the vetoes eliminate all chances of amnesty for those responsible for illegal forestry clearings, another controversial issue.

Over the weekend, 300 representatives from farmers’, indigenous peoples’, and rural workers’ rights groups convened in Managua, Nicaragua for the first ever Continental Assembly of the Vía Campesina (“Farmer’s Way”). During the three-day conference, members from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and even as far as Asia, Africa, and Europe discussed the defence of international farmers’ rights.

Issues such as food sovereignty, agrarian reform, education of agricultural workers, and criminalisation of social protests ran at the top of the agenda. The situation of young people and women in rural areas and indigenous communities was a major topic of interest as well as how to accumulate power in the face of large transnational agricultural corporations.

“Our movement,” explained organiser Edgardo García, “is based on its anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, and anti-imperialist character, and supports socialism as a shared vision.”

The three-day forum ended yesterday with a ceremony in solidarity with farmers’ and indigenous peoples’ struggles in Honduras and Guatemala at the Che Monument in downtown Managua.

Farmer’s Way was founded in 1994 as a global alliance that resists capitalism and neoliberalism. They have not yet issued a statement regarding the assembly’s conclusions, which could have implications for recent land rights struggles, many of them violent, in Northern Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, and Brazil.

Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar, the AMARC-ALC news agency. 

Social organisation Vía Campesina Brazil said today that the partial veto of the Forestry Code by Dilma Rousseff is insufficient. Yet they still declared the decision represents a defeat for the big landowners and haciendas.

The member of Via Campesina Brazil, Luis Zareff, said that the vetos are a defeat for “the most backward landowners who expected complete and total amnesty” for their past wrongdoings.

Zareff stated that Rousseff’s decision “does not meet the requirements for healthy food production or environmental conservation.

The activist said Rousseff’s veto is a consolidation of what he calls the ‘agri-business’ represented by the Confederation of Agriculture of Brazil.

According to the analysis of Vía Campesina Brazil, the presence of coalition government and the tense relations between Rousseff and Congress put the president in a difficult opposition to make a full vote on the Forestry Code.

The Brazilian congress ha s a period of four months to analyse the vetoes. To oppose them they need the support of the absolute majority of parliamentarians in the Senate and in the Chamber of Deputies.

On Friday, Rousseff vetoed 12 articles from the new Forest Code and adopted 31 amendments.

Environmentalist groups and farmers demanded the complete veto of the rule, because they believe it represents a threat to national forests.

Translated from Pulsar.

Indigenous workers and African descendants in Honduras have launched an initiative with Vía Campesina to secure women’s access to land and strengthen their rights in the country.

With International Women’s Day as their platform, at least 100 indigenous workers and peasants of African descent marched in the capital of Tegucigalpa last Thursday.

The primary demands of the new campaign are access to land tenancy among rural workers and a new legal framework regarding gender.

“We, women, need land,” said Leoncia Solórzano, spokesperson for Thursday’s protest. “We don’t have access to it because the Honduran legislation has always tried to make us invisible, as if women didn’t exist in Honduras.”

In front of the building of the National Agrarian Institute (INA), protesters denounced evictions faced by rural communities and called for a new, comprehensive agrarian reform law, with 15% of the national budget allocated to a trust.

Participating women also held a special event at the doors of the INA, demanding the cessation of violence against women and punishment for their attackers.

Continuing their push for further rights, the women of Vía Campesina Central America plan to expand their campaign throughout the region.

About 500 thousand demonstrators gathered in the organization Vía Campesina and held a demonstration in the Mexican city of Cancún. It was in the framework of the Summit on Climate Change of the United Nations (UNO).

Indigenous peoples and small farmers toured the main route of the city. They recalled Korea’s Lee Kyung Hae, who sacrificed himself in this tourist destination during the meeting of the World Trade Organization in September 2003.

During the ceremony, member of Vía Campesina Central America, Rafael Alegría, called the suicide of the Korean, “heroic”. He noted that Kyung Hae “sacrificed for peoples of the world, especially in defense of small and medium-scale agriculture.”

In a conversation with Púlsar, he said he was hopeful about the activities undertaken by the anti-globalization groups and yes, there is no repression of freedom expression to demand an end to the damage to Mother Earth.

At the end of the event the demonstrators went to the local government building. In the headquarters they expressed their rejection of the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference. At the same time they demanded a halt to the environmental degradation.

Story Courtesy of Agencia Pulsar, a news agency run by AMARC-ALC network of community radios.