The Cry of the Poor

typical flora of the sertao

Yesterday (Saturday) was a day spent mostly in our 15 seater van, with our expert driver Andre at the wheel. We travelled for ten hours from Santa Maria de Boa Vista through the semi-arid sertao region of Pernambuco, through the agreste (the lush cool plateau) and back to our home base on the coast.  

Before leaving on our longest trek, at breakfast we had an encounter with a local politician (former mayor) of Santa Maria who heard from the hotel owner about our group and wanted to see what we were up to. He arrived with an entourage of attendants and asked a lot of questions about our purpose and our perspectives on what we had seen. He claimed to be sympathetic to the plight of the people of the quilombos we had met the previous day, the people whose communities and culture are jeopardized by the massive hydro-electric dams that are planned for the San Francisco River. The politician thought we should not just be hearing from MAB, the D and P partner who showed us around, but should be hearing from other groups in the area as well. Sounds good (if we had lots of time). But I could tell from his attitude that this was not a politician who listened... he was one who knew all the answers before waiting to hear other's opinions. His attitude was such a stark contrast to that of the D and P partners - EQUIP, FASE, the CPT, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the MAB (Movement of those affected by dams) we have met over the past 10 days - all these groups wanted us to hear directly from the poor about their lives, their aspirations, their struggles, their joys. The staff from these partner groups sat with us in each of these meetings and listened, learned and took pride in hearing the poor find  their own voices.

While we drove across the state of Pernambuco, we called ahead to hear from the MST staff about the community of Fazenda Jabuticaba which we visited Thursday, the one that was preparing to be evicted from their acampamento. We found out that they indeed had been evicted. They had left peacefully and had been able to negotiate, with MST's support, a deal whereby their crops and their ramshackle houses would not be destroyed. The bishop of the diocese also agreed to let them stay on his land. They will be able to return to the encampment in 48 hours and again begin to till their crops and petition the government so that they can expropriate the land they have occupied for six years and through twelve evictions.

Later as we passed through the agreste within just a few miles of these evicted and desperately poor people, it began to rain. I thought of them huddled close to the bishop´s outbuildings and trying to keep warm. The rain, harsh as it was for them, seemed to me to be the tears of our God who weeps for these suffering people who continue to have faith that the Lord hears the cry of the poor.

Danny