By Phillip Wagner
Rancharia is 1 of 49 special projects in the state of Bahia supporting 2,250 families. The majority of land is worked communally. Pers0nal responsibility is reinforced by requiring each family to finance their own portion of the land through repayment of low interest government loans over a 20-year period.
Arismario Dias de Oliveira is a 52-year-old proud, but worried husband and father to six children. A son and one daughter live in the sprawling metropolis of São Paulo, far from the semi-arid caatinga where Arismario has always lived and now aspires to build a dream. Another daughter is married and lives nearby, while a son and two daughters remain at home. After 29 years of marriage, he and his wife Olga would already have had two grandchildren, except that one did not survive. Arismario's characteristic features, thoughtful expressions and serious manner reflect the mixed bloodlines, ever-present concerns and self sufficiency of people struggling to survive in one of Brazil's most inhospitable regions.
Arismario is clearly the product of Latin and indigenous miscegenation, while Olga is a direct descendant of African slaves. Their union symbolizes the history that forged their nation. A legacy of that history is the extraordinarily inequitable distribution of land in Brazil. In Brazil, inequitable distribution of land resulted from the establishment of "captaincies" under the Portuguese crown, and the importation of great numbers of African slaves to sustain their economies. Each captaincy was comprised of a vast tract of territory governed by a powerful administrator who ruled with impunity.
Few individuals owned any land, and virtually all enterprise revolved around the cultivation, processing and export of labor-intensive agricultural products. This was particularly true in the Northeast, where sugar was king and tobacco was grown. Farther south, coffee and tea also became major cash crops. This economic and social "class" structure was replicated in the Chapada Diamantina region covering parts of the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais where the discovery of gold likewise mandated labor-intensive economic development.
Eight times as many Africans were transported to Brazil in chains as to the United States. The social and economic marginalization of a post abolition African majority combined with indigenous and miscegenated others has become problematic to the future of Brazil. It is now generally accepted that inequitable land distribution has been, and continues to be, a primary factor contributing to the retardation of economic and social progress in Brazil.
Significant support for land redistribution had first begun to appear in the 1930s. A "Land and Settlement Division", or DTC, was established within the Agriculture Ministry in 1938, but remained relatively inert. It's been suggested that "the agrarian question resurfaced as an issue" after the Second World War. The Land and Settlement Division was replaced in 1954 by the National Immigration and Settlement Institute, or INIC.
Although another office within the Agriculture Ministry, it had been "set up as a technical agency suitably structured to carry out settlement activities". But INIC driven agrarian reform was outpaced in the drought stricken northeast by formation of "peasant leagues" and the emerging activism of Catholic priests. Pressure continued to mount for more aggressive government expropriation and redistribution of land. In 1962 the Superintendência de Política Agrária, or SUPRA, was created and "made responsible for the implementation of agrarian reform".
Brazil was, by then, led by leftist-leaning president João Goulart who, on March 13th, 1964, issued a decree that "authorized the expropriation of 10 kilometer strips of land contiguous to federally constructed highways, railways and dams". The military deposed him two weeks later, but deliberations on agrarian reform continued and on Nov 30, 1964 the military government passed the Land Statute Bill.
Some authorities on Latin American land reform differentiate between "disappropriation" and "expropriation" of land by suggesting that disappropriation involves compensation and expropriation does not. I do not make that distinction. References: SECOM, a Brazilian government site and FAO Rural Development Division. FAO stands for the Food and Agricultural Office of the United Nations.
Agrarian Reform
The Land Statute Bill of 1964 made it legal for the federal government to expropriate land for redistribution to the poor and/or landless. What evolved was an agrarian reform approach focusing on three criteria. 
An agency known as the Delegacia Regional do Trabalho (DRT) determines whether the land is being worked by persons who are not being compensated for their labor. If this is determined to be the case then the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA), steps in to see if the land is being used in such a way as to be "sufficiently productive".
INCRA was only established in 1969, according to the World Bank. This may, in part, be accounted for by the fact that the agrarian reform portion of the Land Statute Bill was largely overlooked at first (ref: SECOM). A more significant contributing factor, though, may have been that the government initially emphasized increasing agricultural production capabilities.
Finally, an assessment will be conducted to discover if the land is being used in a manner supportive of the natural environment. This last issue is pursued by Coordenação de Recursos Ambientais (CRA), on behalf of the state government and the Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA) on behalf of the federal government. Although other agrarian reform programs are being developed, the three criteria approach continues to exist. Funding for execution of land expropriation and redistribution under the three criteria approach is secured by the Companhia de Desenvolvimento e Ação Regional (CAR). CAR, however, is not exclusively connected with land expropriation and redistribution efforts.
Today, INCRA has overall responsibility for oversight of this three criteria approach. But it can take years to expropriate and redistribute land in this way. And doing so in the proscribed manner exacerbates tensions in what can already be a dangerously polarized and highly charged environment. Advocates for the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST), or "landless peasants movement", have described to me the need they felt some years ago to traverse stretches of road between the coastal city of Salvador and the outlying caatinga cautiously. They traveled then with heads held as low as possible, for fear of being shot at by landowners who might recognize them.
The pilot for a program known as Cédula da Terra, or Certificate of Land, was established in 1997. The Cédula da Terra program name may soon be changed to the Programa de Crédito Fundiário para Combater a Pobreza Rural, or the "Program to Fund Credit to Combat Rural Poverty". Rumor has it that pressure has come from social movements who interpret the current name to suggest that there should be a more intense focus on social issues.
Arismario is president of an associated local project, named Rancharia, 15 kilometers beyond the little town of Senhor do Bonfim. Bonfim, believed to be home to the most authentic and intense Festa de São João (Festival of Saint John) in Brazil, is a six-hour (only one stop along the way) ride from the city of Salvador by ônibus executivo. Salvador, on the coast, is capital of the state of Bahia, and was the first capital of Brazil.
Arismario has always lived in the caatinga, near to Bonfim, and has no resources to travel. He lives on, and manages, four to five hectares of marginally productive land owned by his mother-in-law two kilometers nearer Bonfim. Morros, which have the appearance of being actual mountains although they're not, can be seen from the open door of Arismario's small stucco house. The morros create a barrier, which are responsible for a microclimate producing more suitable lands for farming; but those lands are unavailable to Arismario and his neighbors.
Electricity and running water are also unavailable to them but, surprisingly, the Spartan dwelling shared by Arismario and his extended family has an indoor toilet emptying into a septic system; a rare luxury in the region. Local children attend a small municipal school and there is access to a federal medical program in Bonfim. But the facility's resources, and the medical services provided there, are minimal. A distant windmill provides well water, but the aquifer, even so far from the coast, is highly salinated. Bottled water has to be trucked in for human consumption. None of this seems to inhibit the hospitality of people struggling to carve out an existence in the region. Arismario's family insisted we join them for a nice meal, which included goat meat, beans, rice, and toasted manioc flour; all staples in the region.
Rancharia is 1 of 49 Cédula da Terra projects in the state of Bahia supporting 2,250 families. In each project 20 to 130 families participate in an association involving 10 to 35 hectares of land per family. Other Cédula da Terra pilot projects are being conducted in the states of Ceará, Maranhão, Minas Gerais and Pernambuco.
Data taken from the monthly Situação de Projetos por Estado report, Maio (May) 2000 [essentially a Cédula da Terra monthly status report by state] included:
Bahia - 49 projects serving 2250 families on 42,135.49 hectares of land acquired at a cost of 9,779,961.00 reais. Another 14,529,669.00 reais have been allocated for, or expended on, infrastructure investment.
Ceará - 148 projects serving 2513 families on 93,295.57 hectares of land acquired at a cost of 13,419,764.00 reais. Another 15,218,499.00 reais have been allocated for, or expended on, infrastructure investment.
Maranhão - 50 projects serving 1588 families on 43,438.48 hectares of land acquired at a cost of 5,431,001.00 reais. Another 10,306,030.00 reais have been allocated for, or expended on, infrastructure investment.
Minas Gerais (northern portion) - 31 projects serving 1119 families on 26,843.57 hectares of acquired land at a cost of 5,458,169.00 reais. Another 7,577,545.00 reais have been allocated for, or expended on, infrastructure investment.
Pernambuco - 28 projects serving 800 families on 17,484.88 hectares of acquired land at a cost of 6,500,628.00 reais. Another 4,197,956.00 reais have been allocated for, or expended on, infrastructure investment.
Rancharia Project
The majority of land is worked communally. Personal responsibility is reinforced by requiring each family to finance their own portion of the land through repayment of low interest government loans over a 20-year period. Beneficiaries of the previously mentioned and already existing three criteria approach have only 10 years to repay their loans. The associations managed as part of the pilot program are under the Coordenação Desenvolvimento Agrícola, or CDA, oversight and have been established on land purchased by the government.
The Rancharia project began with discussions between Arismario and other locals, who believed they could successfully raise livestock in the caatinga. After becoming aware that there were government programs for land redistribution, they made contact with an agency known as Empresa Baiana Desenvolvimento Agro-pecuário, or the Enterprise in Bahia for Development (of) Agro-cattle Breeding. The term "cattle" in northeastern Brazil is often interpreted to mean "livestock".
Their inquiry was redirected to CDA. CDA worked with Arismario's family and 24 others to establish Rancharia on 780 hectares of land purchased by the government for 155,937 reais. Another 130,620 reais was provided for infrastructure & investment. Infrastructure capitalization is spent on community facilities, habitations, wells, water filtration equipment, livestock, seedlings (not seeds), and so on. Infrastructure & investment capitalization does not have to be repaid by Cédula da Terra project participants; only funding for the land.
The amount of funding CDA provided Rancharia for infrastructure & investment was determined by subtracting 1/2 the total cost of land for the project from the product of the number of families involved and the per-hectare cost of land. This is a standard formula for CDA Cédula da Terra projects. In Bahia, 13 CDA technical consultants provide services similar to those provided by agricultural extension agents in the United States.
The CDA consultant for Rancharia is Jacira Sá, whose degree is in agricultural engineering. Jacira's name means "daughter of the moon" in Tupi-Guarani language, and her face reveals the strength of her Indian heritage. It was she who first met with Arismario and 50 or so other people to discuss the possibility of establishing a CDA sponsored project. Only 25 families initially decided to participate. This is, coincidentally, the maximum number of families that CDA had concluded could be accommodated in this case.
Jacira guided Arismario and his 24 neighbors through the project start up and planning process. Although Jacira consults Rancharia on behalf of CDA, her primary occupation is with Banco do Brasil. Banco do Brasil established a Programa Nacional de Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF) to 
fund investments in "collectives" associated with agricultural reform. Participants in the Rancharia project may apply for PRONAF-A program loans to address needs that exceed the land, and investment & infrastructure, capitalization provided by CDA.
This is actually only one flavor of PRONAF program funding. There are also funding programs known as PRONAF-B, PRONAF-C, and so on. PRONAF program loans are capitalized at a maximum of 9,500 reais ($5280) per family. PRONAF-A assumes that only 70 percent of PRONAF funded capitalization will go for investment & infrastructure development, and 30 percent will be dedicated to ongoing maintenance needs.
Today there are only 21 families in the Rancharia project because 4 dropped out soon after it was initiated. This may be a decision that the departing families will live to regret. The association, which was formed in February of 1998 and acquired land in June of that year, has focused on raising goats to produce milk. They adopted a strategy of supplementing the natural vegetation on which their goats feed with cultivated palmas, a form of cactus with very short needles so named because each "leaf" has the appearance of the palm of a hand.
The palmas offer a less nutritious diet for the goats than native vegetation, but are extremely resistant to drought. Unusually frequent rains this year are allowing the palmas to establish themselves more quickly. If climatic conditions in subsequent years revert to their normal cycles, the project will be in much better shape than might have been expected to sustain its precious livestock. Although the primary focus of their efforts is producing milk, about 100 goats are slaughtered annually for meat. The association has tried their hand at making cheese, which was apparently of exceptional quality; but this proved to be economically unfeasible. Only 50 to 60 of the 1,000 or so goats that are female are at the required level of maturity to produce milk and are lactating at any one time. These produce about 121 liters of milk over a 6-day workweek.
When one considers how little income this generates, the magnitude of the struggle to survive in the caatinga of northeastern Brazil becomes apparent. The association receives approximately 50 centavos (27+ cents) per liter. This means that the entire community of 21 families, with an average family size of 6, generates a collective $1,872.00 US dollars of annual income; 28+ cents per inhabitant per week. A single US citizen probably spends more on lunches over a comparable period.
Phillip Wagner - copyright 09/01/2000
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