Geography Archives: Brazil

MST leader João Pedro Stédile says Lula’s imprisonment is “yet another chapter in the coup”

The largest rural movements in Brazil, representing well over a million farmers, are protesting a new Brazilian regulation that would allow release of gene drives, the controversial genetic extinction technology, into Brazil’s ecosystems and farms.

Brazil has just taken another step toward the dismantling of its democracy. On January 24, an appeals court confirmed a previous ruling against former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party), sentencing him to over 12 years in jail.

Juan Orlando Hernández, who was “elected” president in Honduras as a result of fraud and corruption, will hold his swearing in ceremony on January 27 in what may be the first closed-door inauguration (although his government has purposely not shared details about the ceremony).

In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Brazilian professor and researcher Sabrina Fernandes discusses former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s Jan. 24 corruption trial and forthcoming elections in the South American country.

Some are calling it the Coup’s endgame, others the “final battle” for Brasil’s next decade.

One of the main issues of Michel Temer’s government is the surrender of Brazilian natural resources to national and foreign economic groups.

Cosmas Musumali participated in a seminar on Pan-African Thought at the Florestan Fernandes National School, which is famous in Brazil for its social and political commitment.

The fall of 2017 will witness the most brutal assault on working and middle class living standards since the end of World War II. Three presidents and their congressional allies will ‘revise’ labor legislation, progressive income tax laws and regulations and effectively end the mixed economy in France, the US and Brazil.

The implementation of austerity measures in the Brazilian countryside, then, casts a long shadow on the potential of farming and land reform to provide the next generation with a sustainable future. It threatens decades of progress made by land justice warriors.

In the wake of the sentencing of Workers Party leader President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to more than 9 years in prison for alleged corruption charges, former President Dilma Rousseff has joined masses of supporters in denouncing the charges and declaring the popular leader’s innocence.

Leader of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), Joao Pedro Stedile, on the Brazilian political scenario, the role of the O Globo media network, the internal divisions among the putschists, and the need of building a transition government and the people’s project of Brazil.

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is a social movement founded in 1984.  For more information, contact Cassia Bechara at cassia@mst.org.br>.

  On May 31, Valdir Misnerovicz, an important and effective organizer of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, was arrested while teaching a class on agricultural coops in Veranópolis, a city in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.  The arrest did not stem from his lectures, but from his activism.  To organize […]

The judicial coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for 50 years. Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis.  The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked.  Brazil is living through […]

  The political crisis that began after the re-election of Dilma Rousseff and the offensive by the opposition and the most conservative sectors of the country has put some warnings on the agenda again. Given the national and international political conjuncture, one of the main warnings is not to equate political struggle with electoral struggle […]

Perfil dos manifestantes do dia 15. Via @jornalSul21 pic.twitter.com/ere3lIVhGZ — Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) March 17, 2015 Hundreds of thousands of chiefly white middle-class protesters took to the streets in Brazil on 15 March in an organized upsurge of hatred against the federal administration led by President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, […]

  On 10 June 2014 FIFA released a “Frequently Asked Questions” pamphlet “Setting the Record Straight” on what it purports to be some misconceptions about FIFA’s role and the socio-economic impact of the FIFA World Cup.  The release of the pamphlet is significant as it is the first time that FIFA has been forced by […]

This article reviews the background and the implications of two transitions in Brazil: the political transition from a military regime (1964-85) to democracy (1985-present), and the economic transition from import-substituting industrialization (ISI, 1930-80) to neoliberalism (1990-present). It subsequently examines how neoliberal economic policies were implemented in a democracy, under the centre-right administrations led by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-98, 1998-2002), and the centre-left administrations led by Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula, 2003-06, 2007-10) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-present). The article concludes with a reflection about the limitations of these policies and of neoliberal democracy more generally.

Introduction The 2008 report of the Competition Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the construction sector found that “[u]nfortunately the construction industry has tended to suffer from cartel activity, as shown by the spate of well-publicized recent matters around the world.”  There were 19 countries included in this OECD roundtable, […]