São Paulo – A group of 30 to 40 people in the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST, in the Portuguese acronym) is going to participate in the harvest of olives in Palestine in October this year. The information was supplied by Marcelo Buzetto, of the international relations sector of the organization, who travelled to the Arab country to attend a conference of leftist movements early this month. According to Buzetto, the MST is going to aid the growers during the period.
He explains that the MST representatives will actually engage in the harvest, working the land, and will stay at Palestinian peasants’ houses. Last year, according to Buzetto, two people from the movement took part in the harvest. Besides, the organization is also working to enable the tarde of products from the Arab country, including olives. He mentions that Brazil, for instance, imports olive oil from regions such as Europe and could buy from Palestine instead. Members of the movement have discussed the matter with Brazilian and Venezuelan diplomats in the region.
According to Buzetto, the MST maintains relations with the Palestinians for nearly ten years now. It all started in 2002, when a member of the movement, Mário Lill, stayed with Yasser Arafat for 22 days, as he was surrounded by the Israeli army, in Ramallah. On the occasion, he handed the Palestinian leader a flag of the movement, as a token of solidarity to the country. Afterwards, representatives of the organization have returned to Palestine on other occasions, such as the Palestinian Social Forum, in 2003, and last year, when the MST helped harvest olives for the first time.
The MST, alongside Via Campesina (International Peasant Movement), a global rural workers movement the Brazilian group has helped establish, wants to establish Via Campesina in the Arab country. As a matter of fact, Palestine already maintains a series of organized movements, such as the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Alternative Information Centre, and the idea is to join them all together, providing them with a common ground, so that they will work to support peasants, rural workers and fishermen, which is the purpose of the organization.
Buzetto explains that the goal of Via Campesina is to fight so that land, water, seeds and natural resources are not controlled by a few. “And there, these are controlled by Israeli companies,” he says. Some of the leading social groups in Palestine, such as the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, are already engaged in actions by Via Campesina. The organization, by the way, should promote an international conference in November, shortly after the harvesting of olives, to which members of the group in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas will be invited.
During Buzetto’s trip to Palestine early this month, the MST was paid a tribute. The conference for leftist movements that the Brazilian attended, in Hebron, was entitled “A joint struggle for an end to the occupation and racism,” and was funded by the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation (ACCD), by means of the non-government organization Sodepau. “We paid a tribute to them (by handing them the Brazilian and MST flags) and we were also paid tribute for being an organization whose presence is growing each year,” says Buzetto. In late November, the MST promotes, in Brazil, a national meeting for solidarity to the Palestinian people.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
