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Lawsuit concerns deaths resulting from illegal work in cane harvest

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato for September 16. See original article here and related article here.]

The deputy labor division judge in Amambai, Antonio Arraes Branco Avelino, has ordered the companies Agrisul Agrícola Ltda and Companhia Brasileira de Açúcar e Álcool (CBAA) of Sidrolândia, known as the Santa Olinda mill, to pay compensation of five million reais [about 2.9 million US dollars] for personal injury and to stop contracting adolescent workers to harvest sugar cane. (more…)

“Brazil’s solutions won’t work for Mexico”

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for September 4. See original here.]

By Arturo Cano

The subject is Brazil, that “miracle” so admired by Mexicans of the left and the right, of the top and the bottom. And João Pedro Stédile, founder and leader of the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST – Landless Workers’ Movement) of Brazil talks about it: “Mexicans think that we have solved all our problems and we haven’t even solved the soccer problem.”

Stédile has been in Mexico for only a few days now but he knows this country well because he was here a few decades ago as a graduate student in the Universidad Nacional. With that familiarity, he is surprised that Mexican governors and intellectuals never tire of talking about Brazil and Petrobras as models. “Don’t take us as a model for anything. You are okay here with the Under-17 [World Cup soccer games],” this white bearded man says laughingly, looking like a university professor, the descendant of Italian immigrants, born in Rio Grande do Sul where Brazilians, he agrees, look like Argentines and Uruguayans. (more…)

Celso Amorim -- Agence France Presse photo

[Translation of an article from BBC Brasil for September 5. See original here and related articles here, here and here.]

By Marcia Carmo

Brazil needs to begin thinking about the gradual departure of its troops from Haiti, Defense Minister Celso Amorim said Monday in the Brazilian embassy in Buenos Aires.

In an interview, Amorim said that before the complete withdrawal there should first be a gradual reduction of troops in accordance with a schedule agreed to jointly by the countries of Unasur (Unión de Naciones Sudamericanos – Union of South American Nations) and the United Nations. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato for August 26. See original here.]

By Aline Scarso

Another leader of rural workers has been assassinated in the state of Pará. Valdemar Oliveira Barbosa, 54 years of age, was killed by gunshots to the face and neck at about 10:00 on Thursday, August 25, on Belém-Brasília Avenue in the São Felix neighborhood, on the outskirts of Marabá. Witnesses of the killing said that shots were fired by a gunmen who fled, with the help of another man, on the backseat of a motorcycle. Since they were wearing helmets, they could not be recognized.

Known as Piauí, Valdemar is the sixth leader of rural workers in the southern and southeastern region of the state killed by gunmen this year. In May he had contacted the Delegacia de Conflitos Agrários (DECA – a unit of the civil police dealing with agrarian conflicts) in Marabá and reported that his life had been threatened by Vicente Correa, owner of the Califórnia farm, located in a rural area of the community of Jacundá, where Valdemar had been leader of an occupation in 2010. (more…)

Demonstrations held in 15 Brazilian cities on Saturday, in 16 foreign cities on Monday

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato for August 22. See original here.]

By Aline Scarso

Minister of Planning Miriam Belchior said on Monday that anyone with a technical, rather than an ideological vision, will be convinced of the viability and the necessity for the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu River, in Pará. According to the minister, Belo Monte will be a model for the introduction of hydroelectric plants into the Amazonian region with social and environmental respect.

Her statements were made during an event on the subject “Hydroelectrics: The country’s needs and respect for sustainability,” promoted in São Paulo by the magazine Carta Capital. The minister also announced that the government will issue a decree in September for the purpose of accelerating the environmental licensing process for future hydroelectric plants. (more…)

Study shows the country has world’s highest rate of homophobic murders

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato for April 6. See original here.]

By Daniella Jinkings

In 2010, 260 gay men, transvestites and lesbians were murdered in Brazil. According to a report by the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) released on Monday, every day and a half a Brazilian homosexual is killed. In the past five years, there has been an increase of 113 percent in the number of murders of homosexuals. In the first three months of 2011 alone, there were 65 murders.

Among the victims, 54 percent were gay men, 42 percent were transvestites and four percent were lesbians. Luiz Mott, the anthropologist responsible for the survey, believes the statistics are smaller than the reality. “Those 260 documented murders are an underreported number, because there are no official hate crime statistics in Brazil. The situation for homosexuals is extremely troubling.” (more…)

To avoid a sizeable fine for failing to provide basic work conditions for its employees, McDonald’s has signed an agreement with the public ministry to finance a campaign against child labor.

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato of São Paulo for March 15. See original here.]

By Michelle Amaral

“Once I was holding a tray full of orders ready to serve and I slipped. As I was falling to the floor, my supervisor noticed, grabbed the tray, let me fall and said, ‘First the product, then the worker,’” says Kelly, who worked for the McDonald’s fast food chain for five months.

“You can’t stand still there, and sitting down will get you yelled at,” says 16-year-old Lúcio, who has been working in one of the chain’s establishments in São Paulo. “You don’t even have time to take a drink of water,” adds 17-year-old José. “Once I burned my hand, I told the supervisor and she told me to keep working,” the teenager recalls. Maria, who is 16, says that despite the hard work at the restaurant, she gets only 2.38 reais [about US$0.83] an hour for working there. (more…)

An interview with Oswaldo Sevá

[Translation of an interview from Brasil de Fato for Feburary 25. See original here.]

By Spensy Pimentel and Joana Moncau

An engineer with a doctorate in geography, Professor Oswaldo Sevá has been one of the principal allies in Brazilian universities of the social movements in their struggle against large development projects, like hydroelectric plants, mines and highways. These are efforts that he, in his courses at the Universidade de Campinas, calls “current conflicts of primitive accumulation.” The struggle he is most involved in currently is against the Belo Monte mega-plant on the Xingu River, a paradise of bio- and socio-diversity in the middle of the Amazon, now threatened by that project, which dates from the times of the civilian-military dictatorship and was resumed and brought up to date by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since the ‘80s, Sevá has been publishing studies critical of the project, demonstrating its faults and inconsistencies. In the following interview, the professor shows that the current scenario of socio-environmental conflicts has, in reality, a global significance, representing a challenge for the social movements of the entire world. And he warns, “The threat is very serious as well where intellectuals and politicians considered leftists recite prayers from capital’s missal, repeat the ideological mantras of capitalism and use their political and cultural capital to suppress critics and to make those who think independently more tractable, in order to isolate those who simply continue resisting expropriation.” (more…)

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato for February 7. See original article here and related article here.]

By Luana Lourenço

The process of constructing the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu river [in the state of Pará] has not taken into account the rights and the voices of the indigenous peoples and the traditional communities of the region. That criticism comes from anthropologists and the indigenous leadership.

One hundred ethnic Kayapó people will attempt tomorrow to deliver to the president a manifesto against the hydroelectric plant with more than half a million signatures. (more…)

US diplomat says president opposes country’s permanent membership and will avoid topic during March visit

[Translation of an article from Estadão of São Paulo for February 6. See original here and related articles here and here.]

By Denise Chrispim Marin

United States President Barack Obama is not likely to bring up support for Brazil’s membership in the UN Security Council during his visit to the country in March. The White House and US diplomats are working to skirt inevitable embarassing questions [on the topic] from the press in order to avoid damage to their project of relaunching bilateral relations…

According to a State Department source, any change in Washington’s position is a remote possibility. It would be a “miracle.” As far as the US government is concerned, Brazil committed a “mortal sin” in June when it voted against a Security Council resolution on new sanctions against Iran.

The Brazilian action was more serious than its insistent attempts to reach a nuclear accord with Iran because “it compromised the very credibility of the system” and revealed signs of interference by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former Chancellor Celso Amorim in the most sensitve foreign policy decisions. “It was a blunder,” the source said.

It is still not clear to the State Department whether the administration of Dilma Rousseff, as a continuation of the Lula administration, will continue on the same path in foreign affairs.

The doubt will be resolved on the 23rd when Foreign Minister Antônio Patriota will make his first visit to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.

This will be the first opportunity for dialogue between the US and Brazil on restructuring the Security Council, which is still pending in the UN.

[Translation of an article from A Gazeta of Vitória, Brazil, for January 12. See original here.]

In charge of troops from the 19 countries making up the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH), including Brazil, General Luiz Guilherme Paul Cruz declared in an interview that at this time it is not possible to predict when the reduction of the international military presence in Haiti will begin.

Last year, Brazil increased its military contingent in the country from 1,300 to 2,600. Expectations that a gradual withdrawal of military forces would begin in 2011, as planned before the earthquake, will not be fulfilled, according to Paul Cruz.

“The (UN) Security Council resolution requires me to make an evaluation on the question of security and stability in order to propose a possible reduction of troops here.” (more…)

As solidarity grows among  South American nations

Three articles

[Translations of articles from Clarín of Buenos Aires for January 4 and January 8 and from Folha of São Paulo for January 11.  See original Clarín articles here and here, Folha article here. Related article from the British Daily Telegraph is here, related article on this site is here, related article from Sartma of the disputed islands is here.]

Foreign office hardens position on Malvinas
Says English military maneuvers hinder cooperation

[From Clarín]

By Natasha Niebieskikwiat

Every January 3, on the occasion of another anniversary of the British occupation of the Malvinas, which began in 1833, making this anniversary number 178, successive Argentine governments have customarily unleashed, with more or less acrimony, their claim of sovereignty over the islands. In the one unleashed yesterday, the Foreign Office declared that unilateral actions by the United Kingdom regarding natural resources, like the exploitation of petroleum, or military exercises on the archipelago, are an “unbridgeable obstacle” to the continuation and the development of “bilateral cooperation” under the “provisional understandings” signed by London and Buenos Aires, which are currently being completely disregarded.
(more…)