Our Earth
The ICBIE Meets the Sem Terra Movement
(…) You, too are a hill
and a rocky pathway
and play in the reeds,
and you know the vines
that are silent in the night.
You don’t speak words.
There is a land that is silent
and it’s not your land.”
Cesare Pavese – The Land and Death
Return to feel the earth under your feet, in an institutional hall.
More than a spell, what happened at Palazzo Marini last October 30th was the sensation of a naturalness reclaimed through a simple, restored order of words: the land belongs to the people.
This interesting initiative, promoted by Adriano Zaccagnini, vice-president of the Agricultural Commission of the House of Deputies and Serena Romagnoli of Amig@s MST Italia, wants to promote ties between various representatives of Italian agriculture and the Movimento dos Trabalhdores Rurais Sem Terra (Sem Terra Movement of Rural Workers) that is celebrating its first 30 years of life and struggle.
Francisca Rodriguez is the voice of La Via Campesina, another international organization that intervened to testify regarding the transversality of the action of farmers and farmhands, landless people and migrants. “Capital – she proclaims with an embattled calm – infringes upon all the laws of nature. The “semilla” (seed) is a symbol of resistance against those who profit and poison our fields.”
Representing the Sem Terra Movement was Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the national directors of the MST and author of various publications regarding the movement and agrarian reform. The Sem Terra, present in almost all the states of Brazil (24 of a total of 26), can count upon large numbers: a million and a half people are involved, with more than 35,000 land holdings released to families. The movement abides by the principles of agro-ecology, promotes biodiversity and polyculture; it fights for the abolition of slavery under the multinational corporations that control the cultivation and the marketing of agricultural products, a highly relevant theme, considering the movements that are currently opposing the mega-treaties such as the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), which in practice configures a plan of deregulation for standards of security and protection of basic citizens’ rights, all in the name of profits..
Acting as a small delegation from the ICBIE, we feel profoundly involved, in particular with the second axis that has, throughout history, represented a field of battle: education. Stedile told us that the process of liberation of the Sem Terra necessarily comes through access to knowledge, a motive for which, on the heels of the important heredity sown by the pedagogy of the oppressed of Paulo Friere, a big slice of the work is done inside schools and itinerant universities.
The process of formation, always following along the long path of Freire, cannot be separated from the practice, where theory and action form a partnership, a key to stimulate reflexion, conscience, mobilization and concrete struggle. Every member of the movement is engaged in some way, as shown by the periodical “Jornal da criança MST” (Journal of MST Children), edited by boys and girls of the movement.
In fact, in the pages of the edition dedicated to Dandara and Zumbi, two symbolic characters of the liberation struggle of the African people of Brazil, I find a confirmation that, judging by the precious encounters, the ICBIE warship continues to sail in propitious waters and its legions tread on fruitful lands.
Loona
