It all goes as it should, whether we know it or not...

It has been some time since I've written anything in english, so here goes a little 'catch up'. When I arrived from the States, briefly visited with friends and family in Brasilia and left again - and I have yet to return. I went to the Florestan Fernandes National School of the Landless Movement again, this time to work as interpreter for a meeting of communicators of all regions of Via Campesina. That is something that could use an entire entry on its own, which I might do sometime these next few days... In short, it went very well. It is not a 'merely logistical' or 'technical' issue - communication - but one of the key fronts of the class struggle.

After about a week there, I went to Curitiba to be with Xiao Ta. She showed me around the city, we enjoyed the wonderful Oscar Niemeyer Museum and other places, and - ahh - rested for some time after so much traveling. Yet, after about one week we hit the road again. We went into the countryside, to COPAVI, one of the most consolidated socialist experiments in Brazil. The twenty two families have controlled that territory since 1993, holding a concession from the State (their position is that land should remain public property) and producing a vegetable garden and fruit orchard for their own use, as well as milk cattle for themselves and for the local markets (including the production of yogurt and cheese) and a substantial production of organic sugar cane for brown sugar, cachaça, and other products like rapadura. It is interesting to witness such a different production of the same crop that chokes and desertifies the entire region in monocultures and slave-like labor.

So much more could and should be said about COPAVI, but again, that should wait another occasion. From there, across the river to Presidente Prudente, where I went to meet with Bernardo Mançano and others around him. This remarkable Marxist geographer was the person who brought me into the fold of the movements in Brazil, and remains actively engaged with me in my continuing and future endeavors. We traded guanxi - he presented me with contacts in Goiania and elsewhere, in academia and the Movement, and he presented me with the challenge of orchestrating stronger ties between UNESP (São Paulo State University) and my own soon-to-be Berkeley. His students were great people, and one of them in particular introduced me to another friend in the Ministério Público (an independent branch of our Judicial system akin to Ombudsmen). That contact is especially exciting, for they are currently starting up a working group to harmonize the various conflicting means of evaluating environmental costs of properties to be expropriated for compensation purposes. And the state and federal offices are working with academics on the area - the door through which I intend to put my foot into the State.

From Prudente, back to São Paulo, for meetings with the international relations folk of the Movement. Since I will be going back to Berkeley for school, I will work with the committee of Friends of the MST - in addition to shifting from the translators/interpreters network of Via Campesina Sudamerica to North America. This, then, represents a third (or fourth) front on which I will continue my share of the struggle. This seems, at the moment, the most complicated and delicate situation - and I cannot write more about it now. In fact, I remain in São Paulo now in order to finish setting up this process.

And on a more personal note, my mother's younger sister had come to São Paulo for a health exam and ended up staying for surgery - which went well and she is now recovering in a hotel; a hotel at which I will be staying this week to accompany and help out my aunt and grandmother. This was unexpected - it was unexpected by them that I would be here - who knows - it all goes as it should, whether we knot it or not...