The last section of it is political as I paid a visit to the MST, so if things like that bore you then tough, cos you need to read about it!

All the stuff about birds, booze, drugs, gigs and the other aspects of my holiday that went on entirely in my own mind can be found earlier on.

Finally, but by no means leastly, thanks you to my main man Gibby: host, translator, agent, manager, photographer, man with the game plan, INSPIRATION and then some!!! I know it’s cissy shit but luv ya bro!

My main blog is here.
]]> http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/brazil-blog/feed/ 0 Cosmo http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/playing-at-a-soiree-in-sao-paulo/ http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/playing-at-a-soiree-in-sao-paulo/#comments Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:02:00 +0000 cosmoakacitizensmith http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/playing-at-a-soiree-in-sao-paulo/ ]]> Like I said, Brazil is a land of contrasts.

Top time was had that night…..!! Particular thanks to our hosts Jesse and Roberto, and also to the dancers!

Big thanks to everyone we met and who helped us out. Words cannot express. That’s the first thing.

Next up: well, well, well.

The MST is an organistation that empowers landless people to have land, status, education, healthcare, self-respect….

It’s one that takes direct action against the government and has survived 20 years of being a pain in its backside.

It’s one that organises according to collectivist principles.

Hmmmm…..

Maybe I’m just a naive Westerner who’s been shown around in a whirlwind few days, seen just what he wants to see and taken off back to my decadent, privileged life. But…..

There’s a book you should get if you are interested in the MST. It’s called Cutting the Wire: the story of the landless movement in Brazil, by Sue Banford and Jan Rocha.

In it, there is a quote that would be well worth including here. Only thing is I haven’t got a copy to hand.

The sense of it is something like this: the MST take action, occupy land, do what they do and we’re happy.

We’re happy because we can then go on with our lives, do our little projects, work, pay off our debts/mortgage, whatever, and give them all a big pat on the back for being more revolutionary than we ever dare.

Catch my drift?

I’m writing this sat back home on my computer, planning my next few gigs, getting ratted with my mates and moaning about being back at work. I go off to the odd anarchist meeting and stuff but…..

My concluding thoughts are: fuck knows. This is a blog, not an academic paper or opinion piece.

You write some!

Some alternative views of the MST are available here.There are other articles about it here.

And there are some interesting views on NGOs and Latin American revolutionary organisations including the MST here.
]]> http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/this-movement-needs-you/feed/ 0 Cosmo http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/revolutionary-education-iv/ http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/revolutionary-education-iv/#comments Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:19:00 +0000 cosmoakacitizensmith http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/revolutionary-education-iv/ ]]> This mural at the school was made in memory of a young MST militante who was killed by the government on an action.

You can find more info about the Florestan Fernandez National School here.

One of the things they were discussing was the effectiveness of the action against Aracruz, (see below).

There are also regular exhibitions on matters South American and global….

When we arrived, many students from nearby colleges were helping to catalogue the books in the library.

Revolutionary school, to be exact…. otherwise known as the Florestan Fernandes National School in the municipality of Guararema, 65km from Sao Paulo.

It took 5 years to build by various brigades of MST volunteers and was opened in January 2005.

That’s right, folks, time for some real education!

She comes from a favela in Sâo Paulo. She left there and joined the MST a few years ago. She says she misses her family and friends and the favela, but she made the right decision to come here.

Like I said, many of those who got displaced from the countryside in the 60s and 70s went to the cities to find work and ended up in favelas, where all the drug gangs are.

Maria Helena, whom we spoke to earlier, says that the MST is trying to get people out of the favelas and back in the countryside, away from that kind of lifestyle.
]]> http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/binha/feed/ 0 Cosmo http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/matters-of-the-revolution-or-revolution-matters/ http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/matters-of-the-revolution-or-revolution-matters/#comments Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:51:00 +0000 cosmoakacitizensmith http://brazilbloginnit.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/matters-of-the-revolution-or-revolution-matters/ ]]> The good times were rolling, and during a break in the gig, I caught sight of this banner just outside the house where we were partying. It’s a rogues’ gallery of Communist leaders.

I have never been too gone on Communism. My father came from Hungary to the UK during the Cold War, and I visited the place during the 1980s and became aware of how it worked there.

Waldir, Carmen’s boyfriend, who is sitting just to my left in the picture in the previous post, is a dirigente and I asked him about it.

I said my piece and told him that I mainly come from an anarchist perspective. I said I thought that the structures and organisation of the MST seemed to be in line with this way of doing things as they don’t involve having a state or government, unlike Communism or Socialism, which does.

He told me that in his view leftist groups and anarchists have a lot of common ground, and many of the leaders depicted on the banner had betrayed a lot of these revolutionary ideals.

He said that uniting on common ground is important and used the example of the Spanish Civil War. Anarchists, socialists and communists gained a lot of control at that time but they ultimately lost out to fascism because groups that should have been united against Franco were not.

Gibby and I explained our frustration with the left back home, particularly with the SWP and its hijacking of grassroots campaigns.

There followed a big discussion about politics. Gibby, fair play to him, was acting as the simultaneous interpreter, UN stylee!!! Most impressive!

I was interested in the relationship between the MST and the Brazilian government. Waldir told me that the MST does not support any party or government and hasn’t done since its inception. However, when Lula came to power many of them in the organisation were hoping for land reform, but Lula’s party, the PT, has been dragging its heels and not bothering.

He also told us that the state oil company, Petrobras, has done a deal with the MST. They will pay them money for any plants they grow that can be used for biodiesel.

It seems like a kind of one foot in the establishment, one foot out situation.

We talked about technology. One of the advantages of capitalism is that it can make huge leaps in technological development very quickly. Technology solves so many problems but can come at a high environmental and social cost. We discussed whether it was possible to make it more answerable in this respect. In the end we agreed that capitalism is here whether we like it or not and we have to work alongside it.

Waldir also explained that the MST were not interested in replacing the government, rather it wants to be a kind of parallel power.

I noticed people had started to drift off from the party as the music had stopped. I laughed and said to Waldir that we were driving everyone away by talking politics. He looked at me strangely and I wondered if I had offended him

I looked around me and a strange feeling came over me. Aside from the obvious cultural differences, there was something so familar to this situation. Sitting around playing guitar in the pissing rain in a camp full of politically-inclined people with scant resources trying make a stand. It could have been a protest camp back home.

Only it wasn’t. In this situation, people didn’t have homes or government handouts or jobs to go back to if babylon came in and cleared everyone off the land. This wasn’t some pissed up, hypothetical conversation I was having with a bunch of mates in a boozer in the UK.

This was about people’s lives, the only way they could make a difference and have some dignity and respect. We had been showered with so much kindness since we arrived that this basic fact hadn’t quite sunk in for me.

I felt very humble and overwhelmed the rest of day. Blimey……….