Blood of the Wicked (26 page)
Brazil has a population of 180 million people occupying a land mass larger than the continental United States. It puts satellites into space, harnesses nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, boasts the world’s second largest fleet of private jets, exports automobiles, weaponry, aircraft, and consumer electronics. It has millions of acres of arable land, exports agricultural products to every continent, ranks ninth among the world’s economies—and has an unevenness of income distribution second only to Bangladesh.
The wealthiest 10 percent of the population enjoy more than 50 percent of the national income. Fifty-four million Brazilians live below the poverty line. A minuscule fraction of 1 percent of the population owns half the arable land. Twenty-five million agricultural workers survive on two dollars a day.
There is no organization called the Landowners’ Association, but there is an organization called the União Democrátiva Ruralista (UDR).
There is no organization called the Landless Workers’ League, but there is a Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) and a Movimento de Libertação dos Sem-Terra (MLST), now under the control of demagogues who have come to eschew peaceful means of protest and embrace violence.
No one really knows how many lives have been lost in Brazil’s land wars, but documented cases exceed 1,500. One of them was Dorothy Stang, an American nun, shot twice in the face on the twelfth of February, 2005, four months short of her seventy-fourth birthday.
