By Wesley Lima and Anthony Luíz
The nine-degree cold at the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF) in Guararema (SP) hasn’t dampened the spirits of the movements and organizations from the countryside, waters and forests that have been holding the 4th LGBTI+ Seminar of La Via Campesina Brazil.
The seminar, which began last wednesday (17), aims to create a space for study, reflection, and the projection of a set of actions that will guide Via Campesina in building the struggles in the current political and economic context in Latin America.
The colorful flags, the drums, tambourines, maracas, and the popular dance steps of the people in struggle and resistance in Brazil set the tone for the opening of the training activities, which will continue until next sunday (20).
The event includes debates on topics such as “Body-Territory in Sexual and Gender Diversity”, “Challenges and Perspectives in the Construction of Public Policies” and “Ancestry and Good Living”. There will also be spaces for self-care and to encourage the self-organization of the LGBTQIA+ population, seeking to increase the visibility of the experiences and challenges faced by LGBTI+ people in the countryside, waters and forests.
Dê Silva, a member of La Via Campesina’s LGBTI+ Collective, explains that the main objective of the seminar is to build an exercise in study, reflection and planning of organizational actions within Via Campesina, which can continue to strengthen processes of struggle. “The steps we will take in structuring this debate within La Via will be the size of our capacity to organize,” she says.
The 1st National LGBTI+ Seminar in Via Campesina Brazil was held in July 2021, virtually, aiming to elaborate on the challenges of the struggle for territory, land and food sovereignty, through a common reading of the situation and its impacts on the lives of LGBTI+ people. Four years later, the challenges of organizing this debate in Via Campesina and the urgent need to defend bodies-territories are still on the agenda.
Violence and prospects for resistance
The Seminar’s first panel dealt with the theme “Analysis of the current situation and the challenges of the LGBTI+ struggle in national and international politics” and was mediated by Cássia Bechara, from the national leadership of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and the ENFF’s Political and Pedagogical Coordination. Also participated on the debate Cony Oviedo, from the Latin American Coordination of the Countryside (CLOC) – Via Campesina, and Alessandro Mariano, head of office at the National Secretariat for the Rights of LGBTQIA+ People, of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship.
Bechara explains that this moment of reflection on the conjuncture is important because the current social and political moment is being determined by structural elements at an international level that “cross us and combine”. “The elements aren’t necessarily new, but it’s important to take them into account in order to level them out,” explains.
According to her, Latin America is going through a set of crises that have acted in combination. The structural crisis of capitalism, an element of analysis that has already been signalled by the movements and organizations of Via Campesina for some time, structured the debate, taking into account the perspective of its production model, connected to the intensification of a social economic crisis, the environmental crisis and the geopolitical crisis.
In addition, a number of factors were highlighted that directly impact the working world today, with a focus on precariousness, overexploitation, the logic of entrepreneurship fragmenting the prospects for a process of class recognition, besides informality.
“Body-territory” and capitalism crises
These elements are the basis for understanding violence and its impact on the “body-territory”, taking into account the increase in hunger, the growth of fundamentalist thinking and the absence of a popular project for the country.
Cony Ovyedo draws attention to these crises, and how they drive coups d’état throughout Latin America. “These coups were fundamental to the rise of the extreme right on our continent,” explains.
“The way to contain the crises of capitalism is with extreme violence. Whether in territories or in bodies. And this violence has deepened in the territories, due to the advance of agribusiness, hydro-business and mining, which are positioned as the foundations of violence in peasant territories, as they represent the frontiers of exploitation of natural goods in capitalism”, analyzes.
She also points out that territorial violence criminalizes struggles, increases persecution, threats, arrests and murders. “The dispute in the territories is patriarchal, colonial, LGBT-phobic and sexist. And we are the organizations that have historically defended the territories. And we’ve been fighting the transnational companies that have been extracting our wealth,” evaluates.
Bechara points out that “the center of the class struggle today is the ideological struggle, with the central points being the non-amnesty for those who tried to carry out a coup d’état in Brazil, as well as planning the assassinations of President Lula, Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes; the end of the 6×1 scale; and tax reform and the taxation of large fortunes”.
Alessandro Mariano, looking at the Lula government and the challenges posed by the current political moment, points out that a “dismantling of public policies for the peoples of the countryside, waters and forests” is underway.
“Today we have a Congress that holds 51% of the Union’s budget, determined by the deputies where it is spent. The MDA has 80% less budget when compared to the period before the 2016 coup”, explains.
For him, “what we are building here has been historic and that is why we will continue to promote processes of self-organization through the public policies already underway for the LGBTQIA+ population of the countryside, waters and forests, so that the experience of full citizenship is an achievement for all people,” concluded.
Via Campesina
Via Campesina is an international organization that contributes to aligning a set of struggles with peasants, agricultural workers, rural women and indigenous and black communities in Asia, Africa, America and Europe, of which the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) is a member.
One of Via Campesina’s main strategic actions is the defense of food sovereignty, as the right of peoples to decide on their own agricultural and food policy. This includes: prioritizing the production of healthy, good quality and culturally appropriate food for the domestic market. It is therefore essential to maintain a diversified peasant production system (biodiversity, respect for the productive capacity of the land, cultural value, preservation of natural assets).
In Brazil, these struggles have taken shape in the strategies of various social movements and organizations, such as the MST, and other organizations such as: Small Farmers’ Movement (MPA), Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining (MAM), Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), Peasant Women’s Movement (MMC), Rural Youth Pastoral (PJR), National Coordination of the Articulation of Black Rural Quilombola Communities (CONAQ), among other popular organizations.
*Edited by Pamela Oliveira.
