Boletim Agosto 05 English

NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR REGULARIZATION OF QUILOMBO LAND

QUILOMBOL@ www.cohre.org/quilombos

No.6 August 2005

Master Plan - Territorial planning and the quilombos The identification, recognition and titling of lands occupied

by Quilombos is the responsibility of the Ministry of Agrarian Development and the INCRA, but the municipalities may play an important role in the inclusion of Quilombo lands in the plans for territorial and urban development in cities.

The Master Plan is defined by the Federal Constitution (article 182) and the City Statute (Federal Law 10.257/ 2001) as the basic political instrument for sustainable urban development. It serves to regulate the use and occupation of the land in all of the municipal territory. This means that the health and ecological balance of the environment will be guaranteed for current and future generations.

The City Statute (article 40) establishes that the Master Plan must encompass the municipal territory as a whole, as the policies for urban development must promote the integration and interaction of urban and rural activities.

Therefore, Quilombo lands, including rural lands, must be included in the Master Plans in order for land regularization and the implementation of basic services to be achieved.

This inclusion can be done through the definition of the Areas or Zones of Special Interest (ZEIS), where they set their own rules for the use and occupation of land, which can be instituted by specific municipal laws or by the Master Plan itself.

Among their objectives, the ZEIS institution plans to allow the inclusion of parts of the municipality that were not included before due to the impossibility of following the general rules of urban land occupation, as well as the introduction of services and infrastructure. The ZEIS can also regulate the real-estate market with the introduction of standards for differentiated occupations, which are capable of lowering property values and increasing offers for real-estate in low-income markets. Besides the introduction of mechanisms for the direct participation of the residents in the processes of land regularization and the

definition public investments in infrastructure, the mechanism can increase revenues in the municipality since it better regulates tax collection in these areas.

This is a relevant matter and deserves the attention of popular movements, since all cities with more than 20 thousand inhabitants have a deadline set for October 10, 2006 to elaborate or improve their Master Plans to fit the rules established by the City Statute.

As a result of this deadline, the City Council, from the Minister of Cities, approved Resolution 34 on July 1, 2005, in which recommendations were established as to the minimum content of the Master Plan. Therefore, the Master Plan must provide for: actions and measures to assure the fulfillment of the social function of the city, as much in rural areas as in urban; measures to assure the social function of urban property, public and private; the objectives, priorities and strategies for development and territorial re-organization in the city; the instruments of urban policies previewed in Article 42 of the City Statute, together with the objectives and strategies established in the Master Plan.

With reference to the institution of Zones of Special Interest, the Resolution establishes that the municipality must demarcate the territories occupied by traditional communities, such as indigenous and Quilombo communities, in a way that guarantees the protection of their rights (Article 5o, II) and “to demarcate those areas for the protection, preservation and recuperation of the environment, natural or man-made, from cultural, historical, artistic, natural and archeological heritage sites� (Article 5o, VII).

The ZEIS are an important instrument for the recognition, regularization and inclusion of Quilombo communities into municipal territories and public policies on social, economic, and environmental development, guaranteeing access to services and infrastructure and respect for their cultures and ways of life.

Quilombol@, august 2005

Alcântara

The impasse on the necessity for new relocations continues Authorities and representatives from the government promoted new meetings to discuss the impasse generated by the plans for the expansion of the Alcântara Space Launching Center (CLA) with the affected Quilombo communities. In the meetings, held in July, the community leaders reaffirmed their opposition against the possibility of new relocations and argued that the official proposals are still not sufficiently clear.

“The government needs to be clearer about what they want. The proposal is not clear. We don’t want to be relocated and all the government talks about is possible relocation,” explained Sérvulo Borges, resident of Alcântara and representative of the Affected by the Base Movement (MABE).

Members of the Subgroup for Land Regularization, a part of the Inter-Ministerial Executive Group (GEI), had been in Alcântara between the 18th and the 21st of July, and participated in three meetings with representatives from the communities of Mamuninha, Itapera, Canelatiua, Uru, UruMirim, Bom Viver and Santa Maria, all of which are under the threat of displacement due to the expansion plans of the CLA. According to Borges, the authorities “listened, but had very little to say”. In their evaluation, the government seems to be cautious due to the resistance and the level of organization within the communities.

Borges remembers some negative experiences with official negotiations, ever since the expansion of the military base began 20 years ago; there were displacements and the signature of a registered agreement that was never fulfilled by the government.

“Everything that was said about the project bringing benefits to the community didn’t happen and left us in process of impoverishment” explained Borges.

Experiences with relocations that have already been carried out with some of the communities that were removed from their native lands and sent to agrovilas by the government have not been viewed well by the Quilombos. The residents argue that the land is insufficient for traditional cultures and that there is no possibility for the construction of new homes for their children. Since the people now know what happened to their relatives who had been relocated, they have shown a unanimous refusal of the idea for future relocations in the three meetings promoted by the Subgroup.

According to Borges, there is not enough space to construct the 900-hectare launch sites without relocating the residents there. By his hypothesis, “the proposed sites, with a non-continuous profile, would be located within ethnic Quilombo territory, which the law guarantees is ours”.

Borges still remembers that the representative of the Ministry of Agrarian Development,

Mozart Dietrich, committed himself to compiling a report on the decisions of the community that do not accept being relocated and to taking it to be reviewed by the GEI. “We are waiting for an answer from the GEI in relation to the positioning of the communities.

Why don’t they build in the present site of CLA, where they have 8 thousand hectares being hardly used? The communities want the ethnic territory in Alcântara to be regularized,” said Borges.

During the 57th reunion of the SBPC, in Fortaleza, the president of the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), Sergio Gaudenzi, announced an investment of R$ 600 million over five years for the construction of infrastructure at the CLA. This package includes the construction of a port to receive rockets from the Ukraine, new launch ramps and also new houses, roads, trash collection and wastewater treatment centers. By the president of the AEB’s estimates, the population of Alcântara could reach 15,000 people.

Gaudenzi also announced that of the 620 square km designated for the launch base, more than half would be returned to the people. The information was sent by the State Agency on July 21st.

The fact that the location where these installations will be made has still not been announced has left the residents apprehensive, mainly the ones that have already lived through the disastrous relocations that took place in the 80’s for the creation of the CLA. The bidding for the job contracts is set for August and the construction of the first foundations is expected to begin in December.

On July 30th, a meeting was held among representatives from the GEI and entities such as the MABE, the National Coordination for the Articulation of Rural Quilombo Communities (CONAQ), the Association of Rural Quilombo Communities in Maranhão (ACONERUQ), the mayor of Alcântara and the president of the Chamber of Councilmen. The objective was to discuss the draft proposed by the above entities for the “Technical Cooperation Agreement” that must be signed by the federal, state and municipal governments and civilian entities. The coordinator of the meeting and representative of the Civil House of the President of the Republic, Celso Correa, affirmed that the “Agreement” is not a “blank piece of paper being signed by the communities” and will not imply the acceptance of new evictions or relocations on the part of the community, but will guarantee the implementation of public policies in the municipality. The proposal of the draft presented by the communities was submitted to debates within the GEI during a meeting held on August 5th. On August 10th the final proposal for the construction of the AeroSpace Sites was analyzed in Brasilia, during a meeting of members of the GEI with the president of the AEB.

Quilombol@, july 2005

Community Itapera is one of 107 Quilombo communities in Alcântara located in an area which was appropriated for the installation of the Alcântara Launching Center (CLA) in the 1980’s. It is situated in a location which is considered to be a “security area” by the Ministry of Aeronautics. The community has existed for more than 200 years and is under threat of displacement from its ancestral lands in order to make way for the expansion of the Alcântara Space Center.

Cíntia Sebastiana Cerejo, president of the Itapera Community Residents Association, gives her report on the situation of the community.

“The community has no school, electricity, health clinic or telephone. There are no pay phones, so we have to go to neighboring communities, five to seven km away. We go there by canoe, bicycle or motorcycle.

Canelatiua is the closest one, and the most practical way to get there is by canoe. The children study in Canelatiua. They go and return by canoe. Itapera is in the relocation program. The people think like this: no one is going to leave; it will be a daily struggle. I use to say, so many people fight for land because they have no land. Here, we fight so that we don’t have to leave our land. The difference between the landless workers and us is that they fight to have land, we fight to keep it. It is a big difference. I will never leave the place where I was born, where I grew up, where I have my family and where I am raising my children. With all the problems I have, I still want to stay here. I will stay here. I use to say, I’m not going anywhere, and no one can make me go. The oldest person in the community is my mother, who is 83 years old, her brother is 75. There are others who are 74, 60 and 70 years old. For them the possibility of relocation is a great sadness.

My mother wasn’t born here, but she has lived here for 50 some years. She thinks that if you build a family here, you have everything, you plant crops. Why leave? She said that in her case it is more difficult, because she will never achieve all the things she already has today.

If she plants crops over there, you she never harvest the fruits because she is at the end of her life. So, what will she harvest? Nothing! I am 35, and I already think I won’t be able to harvest anything, imagine a person who is 83 or 84. What is she going to harvest?

Here, we survive by farming and fishing; we plant manioc, corn, beans, rice, melons and vinagreira. We have everything. The way things are, life is very good. We just need peace. At the moment, we just need to be left alone. If they could just give us a little peace. There was a time when the children got married and lived together with their parents, because they weren’t allowed to build any houses. They decided that no one could build any more homes. The community hasn’t grown for this reason. Many families live in their parents’ houses even today! Today, everyone has spread out, they plant wherever they want and build houses wherever they want. This prohibition is from around 1983 or 1984.

The area where we live, they call it “the relocation area”. Here, we have a beach, but they want to stick us in a mud puddle in an Igarapé. ‘So if we leave the beach and go to Igarapé we will die swollen. I think they already have enough of a security area; they don’t need to mess with us. If the agrovilas are still here it is because we are still here.

If we leave here, we will suffer and so will the people in the agrovilas. Instead of building the agrovilas, they should have expanded the city in Alcântara to have an open market where people could plant and sell what they planted, and not this. The ones in the agrovilas plant crops, but they still buy from the people in the relocation area and don’t sell anything.

That’s because the area they were given to work with is full of weeds, it is a jungle that unfortunately only cuts you, as if it were a razor.”

Staff Letícia Osório, Sebastian Tedeschi, Emily Walsh, Cíntia Beatriz Muller e Sinara Sandri If you have any comments, or wish to subscribe to the mailing list for Quilombol@, please contact : quilombo@cohre.org If you have more information about National Campaign for Promotion of Ownership Regularization of Quilombos Territories or about other programmes and activities of Cohre Americas, please contact cohreamericas@cohre.org

Center on Housing Rights and Evictions Demétrio Ribeiro 990 / 202 Porto Alegre (RS) Cep - 90.010-313 Tel (x) - (51) 3212.1904 This publication has been made possible with the support of :