Although Brazil produces enough food to feed its entire population, forty six million Brazilians aren't getting enough to eat. The reason is endemic poverty¹ and the fact that so many Brazilians have no access to water and/or land. Throughout Brazil there aren't enough jobs and the educational infrastructure is lacking. Moreover, the poor often can't afford to send their children to school.

Many people will say that hunger in Brazil isn't our problem, but it is. Human suffering, wherever it occurs, is a human problem. A thorough reading of global history reveals that Brazil's social problems are deeply rooted in dynamics that are much different from those which impacted the fledgling British colonies in North America. Squalid, sprawling urban slums ('favels' in Brazil), unforgiving semi-arid regions and dense tropical environments in places like Brazil, elsewhere in Latin America, and in India, Asia, and Africa are potential breeding grounds for many kinds of problems we cannot afford to ignore. And some problems will become much more severe in the decades to come. USA Today online, for example, posted an article on 06/24/2004 quoting an agricultural research center expert from the Middle East as saying that moving forward "... lack of water ... is going to be a threat to the United States".

The USA Today article (titled "World's land turning to desert at alarming speed ") also noted that "from the mid-1990s to 2000 ... an area about the size of Rhode Island" had dried up annually and asserted that "by 2025, two-thirds of arable land in Africa will disappear, along with one-third of Asia's and one-fifth of South America's". "Some 135 million people ... are at risk of being displaced" it concluded. But the news may be even worse because, at the same time, the world's population is continuing to grow. Population growth (as noted by former president and Nobel Prize laureate Jimmy Carter in the February, 2002 issue of National Geographic - Brazil edition) is expected to reach ten billion from the current six billion by the year 2100.

Preemptive Constructive Social Engagement targets the elimination of root causes prior to a time when severe impacts spawned by those causes may be realized. By addressing potential problems before the fact, preemptive constructive social engagement offers a prudent and more effective long-term alternative to policies which produce widespread destruction, casualties and loss of life.

Ballooning national budget deficits, leading to economic recessions, are much less likely to occur as a result of "proactive" policies since they are far less expensive to prosecute than are "reactive" policies. Preemptive constructive social engagement does not require us to project military force supported by billions of dollars of material, political, post-conflict reconstruction and human resource expenditures.

Provided it is undertaken in cooperation with the people and the governments being served, and not imposed contrary to their wishes, preemptive constructive social engagement may generate good will, enhance our global image, establish our credibility as honest brokers in pursuit of a better world, improve international relations and reduce the likelihood of future crisis.

Silas Cezar da Silva, Executive Director of Integrare, a center promoting the inclusion of groups historically excluded from the benefits of economic development has said that "Humanity and life are threatening instability in the coming decades". The image at left, of Novos Alagados in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil by Samuel Dominguez, testifies to that. But, he adds "we are changing our attitudes and behaviors relative to those factors ... principally in relation to the enormous social inequalities of (human) rights, income and quality of life. It can’t be hoped that only governments (will) regulate and control the market bringing social justice, ethics and sustainable development. This responsibility ... falls on all of us ... whether it is inconvenient or (not)".

Mr. da Silva notes that consumers are increasingly "conscious of the importance of ethics ... of justice, social responsibility, humanitarian values and sustainable development that ... guarantees a viable world for new generations". He also says that "In an increasingly global world, it is increasingly necessary for traditional businesses and multi-nationals to (offer) coherent, consistent postures and attitudes relative to social themes, ethics and citizenship".

How serious is the situation today?

The following information was extracted and edited down from "Protesters Vow a Red April in Brazil" by Rodolfo Espinoza - ref Brazzil Magazine at http://www.brazzil.com.

On 20 March of 2004, two thousand students marched through downtown Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais. Leaders of the National Students Federation (UNE) and the Brazilian Federation of Secondary School Students (UBES) said protest marches are also planned for the Recife, Fortaleza, Aracaju and Salvador, all state capitals in northeastern Brazil.

UNE's president said Brazilian social movements should "set fire to the country" and indicated that's what they could do. The coordinator of the Landless Peasants Movement in the state of Pernambuco announced there will be an increase in the number of property invasions, a traditional tactic employed by the organization, and threatened farm owners who might react violently. The president of the Rural Democratic Federation has encouraged farm owners to hire private security to protect their lands.

The national coordinator of the Landless Peasants Movement (MST) had already announced that April would be a red month in Brazil … and landless peasants are participating in a wave of land invasions throughout Brazil to commemorate the 1996 massacre of 19 landless workers by Brazilian military police.

Photo: from Paulo E. Pinto email of 4/14/2004.

The Brazilian Minister of Agrarian Development called April 17 "a kind of May Day" for the Landless Movement and on March 30 announced the release of US$ 600,000 to agrarian reform programs. He said the government will settle 115,000 families by year’s end although only 11,093 landless families received parcels in the first quarter.

A late March, 2004, news story on Brazilian national television aired something that should give us all pause for concern. Druglords in one well-known favela in Rio de Janeiro had openly posted a sign stating that "There are currently no vacancies" in their organization. The Druglords have consolidated their hold on the favela, and business is good. The organization is currently well staffed and, apparently, felt it was necessary to say so in order to discourage the many residents who, with such limited options available to them, had been lining up to ask for work.

While I was in Salvador in early to mid 2004 members of the MST occupied the Receita Federal, a government office and an abandoned sports complex in the city.

Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management, board member for the Center for Global Development, and Special Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was interviewed by Keith Porter on Common Ground, a national weekly radio program on world affairs regarding National security, global poverty and UN Millennium Development Goals on 16 December of 2003. Click HERE to view the transcript or listen to the interview.

Sitting on the sidelines accomplishes nothing. You may be amazed to discover, after making even the smallest effort to become involved, how many different things you can do to help. All the pages of my website, all the work I have done in Brazil, and also the Rhythm of Hope in Brazil ... all grew and grew and grew from a little effort I made to publicize the work of one selfless young man in Rio de Janeiro. If your interest is in Brazil you should be able to isolate some possibilities for getting involved on these web pages or at the Rhythm of Hope in Brazil site. But help is needed all over the globe. Make a little effort, it doesn't have to dominate your life - but we all need to be involved.

Write or call to encourage our national, state and local leaders to pursue and support constructive social engagement for addressing pressing problems here and abroad. Exercise your right to vote, and vote for candidates who unambiguously communicate a preference for proactive, rather than reactive, policies to address the ills of our nation and the world. .

Footnotes:

¹Anup Shah at Global Issues that Affect Everyone - Causes of Poverty affirms that "People are hungry not because of lack of availability of food, or 'over' population, but because they are too poor to afford food. Politics and economic conditions have led to poverty around the world".

Ironically (since Anup Shah is an anti-capitalist from England), two Bush supporters - Brett Schaefer and Aaron Schavey - agree. At America's International Development Agenda they assert that in order to ensure the effectiveness of U.S. aid, President Bush should ... allocate aid based on improvements in economic freedom, stress the benefits of economic freedom ... (and) administer foreign aid in the Millenium Challenge account in the form of grants rather than loans. Note that last statement, which uncharacteristically asserts, from a conservative perspective, that weighing down developing nations with development loans is not desirable.