Grassroots International has heard from our grantee Movimento Quilombola no Maranhão (MOQUIBOM) about a Quilombola territory in Maranhão, Brazil, that's been invaded by armed men. But the community has resisted.
Our struggles are connected. This Black August, Grassroots International is proud to restate our solidarity with Black lives, here and around the world.
Piper Carter, a member of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and photographer, joined our delegation to Brazil. Her photoblog shows off our partners' joy, hope, and strength amid dark times.
From Brazilian mass movement building to pinpoint alternatives and retain the countryside, to Honduran reclamation of natural resources through food sovereignty, agroecology, and climate justice, to relentless Palestinian efforts of upholding international law and defending human rights, people are challenging destructive political orders. Doing so is a collective act of resilience and resistance, ‘grabbing back’ in order to move forward in uncertain times.
In September 2017 a delegation of 30 human rights, land, and food experts traveled around the Matopiba region of Brazil on a fact-finding mission supported by Grassroots International and ally organizations. The delegation found “high levels of agrochemical pollution, diminishing natural resources, land grabbing, as well as significant impact on the health of traditional communities, resulting from increasing soy plantations.”
The new government in Brazil is unrolling austerity policies that are eroding working families’ political gains. In this interview, a member of the MST reflects on the danger and potential of this current moment, highlighting opportunities to build alternatives to capitalism as the current economic system flounders.
The Brazilian political crisis and ensuing violence have intensified rapidly since the institutional coup of August 31, 2016. At Grassroots, we are receiving regular reports from our partners in Brazil listing incidents of attacks, arrests and even assassinations of land rights activists in a wave of right-wing aggression
Grassroots International supported an international learning exchange with our partners and allies, including: We Are the Solution (WAS) in Senegal, Guinea, Ghana; La Via Campesina’s Women’s Commission in Honduras; and IDEX partners from the Surplus People Project in South Africa, Ñepi Behña in Mexico and AFEDES in Guatemala. The purpose of the exchange was to learn and exchange experiences with movements in Brazil.
The long-standing Afro-Brazilian, or Quilombola, village of Tambor, Amazonia received a nasty surprise last year. A federal judge sent notice, from his office 3,600 kilometers away in Brazil’s capital, to these descendants of fugitive slaves that their village wasn’t actually Quilombola, and therefore the entire village needed to be evicted.
This was in spite of the fact that the Quilombola families have lived and raised their families there for over 100 years. They had also applied for and secured official recognition and status as a protected Quilombola village, which gave them the legal right to the territory on which the village stands.
“There are thousands upon thousands who weren’t as lucky as I was—I survived hunger....I probably would not have survived had it not been for the support and solidarity of groups like Grassroots International.” Janaina Stronzake, an internationally known woman leader in the Brazilian land rights movement
Roughly the size of New Jersey, Belize is one of the smallest countries in Central America. The country is also in the epicenter of the Mayan territory. More than half of Belize’s population of 300,000 are Mayan indigenous and Afro-descendants, known as Garifunas.
Last month, Honduras passed legislation to allow the construction of charter cities in the ancestral land of Afro-descendant Garifunas and peasant communities.
Maranhão is one of the poorest Brazilian states. Despite its wealth of natural resources, 62.3 percent of the population lives below the poverty index defined by the World Health Organization, with the poorest families living in rural areas. Landlessness is...
Leaders of the Guarani Kaiowá boldly announced that the entire community would rather die in their land defending from businesses and corporations. Their assertion is more than a war declaration. For us, the buyers of “clean energy,” their pronouncement is a jarring wake-up call that the “Green Economy” actually promotes genocide of indigenous people and Afro-descendent communities –whether in the form of a slow die off of disposed peoples or a quicker resistance.
Before becoming Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Roussef helped to engineer an ambitious development plan that would change the country. Known as the Accelerated Growth Plan and the Ten-year Energy Plan, it would build 134 dams by the year of 2020 in the Amazon alone. Among the losers in the plan: thousands of acres of forest; habitat for endangered species; and thousands of families unfortunate enough to have ancestors who chose to settle these lands. According to Grassroots International’s partner, the Brazilian Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), the ambitious development plan failed to include any funding to offset hunger and unemployment, or to revamp public services for those displaced populations whose livelihoods will be wiped.
They left San Vicente searching for a peaceful place to live, free of the oppressive British colonial powers. Three thousand women, men and children sailing atop the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea were thirsty and hungry. The sun over their heads was abrasive. Many perished before reaching the island of Roatan, Honduras, their new home. Today, many of their Garifuna heirs, an Afro-descendant population in the Caribbean coast of Central America, are still struggling for days of peace, like their ancestors envisioned some 213 years ago.
As part of a larger campaign to support the right to land, this week Grassroots International provided a $10,000 grant to boost education and organizing around a powerful national referendum in Brazil. The referendum, being organized by social movements for the first week of September, probes public opinion regarding the size of land holdings.
Although non-binding, the referendum provides an opportunity for land rights activists to educate voters about the growing problem of landlessness in the countryside caused by the expansion of agribusinesses in peasant and indigenous communities.
