Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil

1. Engendering the Grassroots

1 1 ENGENDERING THE GRASSROOTS Our greatest asset in Kenya is our land. This is the heritage we received from our forefathers. In land lies our salvation and survival. It was in this knowledge that we fought for the freedom of our country. Jomo Kenyatta, 1964 speech in Suffering without Bitterness I saw in Chicago, on the street where I was visiting my sisterin -law, this “Urban Renewal” and it means one thing: “Negro removal.” But they want to tear the homes down and put a parking lot there. Where are those people going? Where will they go? And as soon as the Negroes take to the street demonstrating, one hears people say, “they shouldn’t have done it.” Fannie Lou Hamer, 1965 interview in “Life in Mississippi: An Interview with Fannie Lou Hamer” Uma Mulher (One Woman) On Saturday, May 3, 2003, the front cover of the Brazilian newspaper A Tarde showed a photo of fifty-three-year-old Amilton dos Santos sitting on top of a yellow bulldozer. His left hand covered his face, which was hidden by a blue Firestone baseball cap that matched his uniform, and Senhor Amilton was crying. The headline read, “Um Homem” (One Man), and the accompanying caption described the dramatic scene as follows: “The screams of revolt and pain were stronger than the 20 policemen armed even with rifles.” The day before, in Palestina, a predominantly poor black neighborhood located on the periphery of Brazil’s northeastern city of Salvador in the state of Bahia, six police cars with more than twenty fully armed military policemen, some with machine guns and rifles, stopped in front of the two adjoining homes of Telma Sueli dos Santos Sena and AnaCéliaGomesConceição.Accompanyingabulldozerandamoving 2 ENGENDERING THE GRASSROOTS truck, the military police had arrived in Palestina tocarry out orders to remove the residents and their belongings from their homes, demolish the houses, and clear the land where Dona Telma lived with her husband , seven children, two grandchildren, and a daughter-in-law. Ana Célia lived with her husband, Edmilson Neves (Dona Telma’s brotherin -law); daughter; mother-in-law; and brother. The two families were home when the police and demolition squad arrived, and their neighbors immediately reacted with alarm. Uponseeingthefamiliesinsidethehouses,thethreemenwhowere in charge of moving the residents refused to follow through with the job. The police told the movers that if they did not carry out their duties , they would be arrested. The men then reluctantly worked to load the families’ belongings into the truck parked in front of the houses, where a crowd of neighborhood residents, primarily women, had begun to gather and vocalize their indignation. Dona Telma cried uncontrollably as she pleaded with the police and the driver of the bulldozer. Dona Antônia, Telma’s aunt, showed the police officers legal documents certifying that the land had passed from the original owner, already deceased, to Telma’s grandmother almost two decades earlier. According to the family, they had always lived on the land. After Dona Telma’s grandmother died, the land was bequeathed to her children and grandchildren. Before Dona Telma built her house on the property , the land was undeveloped, and other families occupied adjacent plots,wheretheybuilttheirhousesandraisedtheirchildren.Recently, a Bahian engineer, Adolfo Stelmach, had claimed ownership of the land, saying that he had inherited it. With the support of the courts, he ordered the families to buy the land from him or vacate immediately. Even with documents supporting Dona Telma’s claims to ownership, the two families lost all legal battles to secure the land. Since they had no resources to buy the land and they refused to move, Stelmach ordered that both houses be demolished. The families were unable to meet his demand that they pay more than R$25,000 (approximately $15,000) for the land. They not only did not want to pay the exorbitant amount but simply could not afford it on their meager salaries. Dona Telma asked, “But how am I going to pay if I only earn R$200 per month and the money is not even enough to eat on?” In addition, Dona Telma asserted that they were the rightful owners of ENGENDERING THE GRASSROOTS 3 the land and that the man who ordered their eviction was a speculator and a thief. The president of the neighborhood association supported the families’ claims, and as the crowd gathered around the bulldozer...