Divided into four chapters, the first episode shows some of the impacts that one of the largest freight trains in the world leaves in the 28 cities and more than 100 towns it passes through. The large research report reveals how the wealth of mining contrasts with the misery and suffering of the residents of the Carajás railroad, how the lack of pedestrian bridges exposes residents to routine accidents at crossings, and how corruption scandals drain the public coffers of municipalities cut off by the CFE.
In this report we can see the reality of the communities affected by the problems of mining in the northeast of Brazil where the Comboni Family accompanies the communities. Our CLM community has been present for more than 25 years.
We leave this video (in Portuguese) from the Justice of the Roads channel of JnT*
* Justiça nos Trilhos works to strengthen communities in the Carajás Corridor in North Eastern Amazonian Brazil and denounce violations of human and environmental rights, holding the state and corporations accountable and preventing new human rights violations.
Today, October 29, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), together with Justiça nos Trilhos (Justice on the Rails), launched a campaign to alert the world’s citizens who unconsciously consume the products of mining and steel companies that for more than three decades have been deteriorating the health and polluting the environment of the community of Piquiá de Baixo, in the Brazilian Amazon.
The campaign marks the 30th anniversary of Grupo Ferroeste in the municipality of Açailândia and invites everyone to support the struggle for the rights of this community, to which the companies and the State have closed their eyes for so long.
The Rural Family House [Casa Familiar Rural (CFR)] of Açailândia, in the state of Maranhão, was constituted as an association in 2001 after a small group of social activists met and began to discuss ways to improve the issue of rural education for the local reality.
From the beginning, the entities that started the proposal of the family house entered the debate of this political and social project, such as the MST, which had just settled in the city, the institute of the Comboni Missionaries, the Center for the Defense of Life and Human Rights and the Union of Workers and Rural Workers of the city.
The experience of this type of school is already old in the world and in the state of Maranhão they are present in several different cities. In other parts of the world this type of school is known as “Family Agricultural School”.
From the first discussions, the interested organizations held several meetings, even in cities on the outskirts, as Xoan Carlos (CLM) reminds us. “We held a series of meetings in the communities. There were another 60 meetings in the municipalities of Açailândia, São Francisco do Brejão, Itinga, Bom Jesus das Selvas. And finally the association was formed”.
He continues: “From there we obtained a piece of land, given by the Catholic Church. But we could not afford to build the building or pay the employees. So it was a few more years of struggle and articulation in the search for projects, and where we got some international support”.
Later, in 2003, the organizations involved in the idea managed to start what they dreamed of for the city and its surroundings, in view of the large number of settlements and rural communities they had in the vicinity of the city, now with 110,000 inhabitants. It was a dream for the distant future.
The pioneers of the idea achieved, with much struggle, agreements with the city council, as Xoan Carlos states. “In 2005 we started the first activities of the CFR. We started with an elementary school course, we had managed to structure several productive units in agriculture, beekeeping, cattle raising, pigs… Governor Jackson Lago had the intention of doing a high school course integrated to professional education, and a new moment started for the CFR”, he concludes.
With these articulations, in 2006 the high school course started, which was better adapted to the needs of the youth in the countryside. Mainly because, in 2001, many communities only had young people with the fourth grade at most. This was the need they have: a school with different characteristics from the conventional ones, for the countryside.
Jarbe Firmino was a student in the first class of the Açailândia Rural Family House, and later entered the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA). He graduated in Education in countryside and returned to CFR, now as a monitor/teacher, and then took a position in the institution as general coordinator.
He tells about his experience criticizing the position of the public power: “This experience, to which I refer, of coordinator, as well as in other moments, was of great difficulty in terms of support from the public power. These were periods in which contracts were not honored by the State, which weakened the movement of which the CFR is a part,” he concludes.
After all this struggle, came the recognition and the conquests. The main one was the training of young people as agricultural technicians to work in the settlements with their families and in some state agencies. The Regional Council of Engineering and Agronomy, CREA, recognized them so that they could work officially providing technical assistance to the projects.
However, the desire of the coordination and the group that organizes the association and the CFR is that the students, trained, work with their families developing what they have learned, in family farms, as most of the settlements of the agrarian reform.
The CFR is managed by an association, and the president is currently Xoan Carlos. The coordination is chosen by the association and has ten teachers who are hired by the Maranhão State Education Secretariat.
History of the rural family houses
The Rural Family Houses originated in France in 1935, in a situation of strong rural exodus, when a group of families, with the support of the Catholic Church, met to rethink this situation. They called it “House” to differentiate it from the conventional school and because it began in the home of a family; “Family” because it was an organization of families and not of the government; and “Rural” because the object of the experience was in the rural environment as a whole: technical, human, cultural, etc.
Today, in France, there are 450 CFRs. Since the 1960s, the experience has spread to Spain and Italy under the name “Family Farm School”. There are about 1,000 CFRs in the five continents, in thirty countries.
In Brazil, the CFRs began to appear at the end of the 1960s, and today there are about 150 rural educational centers that operate with the “Pedagogy of Alternance”. In Maranhão there are approximately 27 schools with these formative principles. The pedagogy of alternation developed within the methods of Paulo Freire, in a construction of technical training, is united with training for life, in the case of Açailândia, expanded with the commitment to the struggles for a differentiated model of agriculture.
We finish this series of videos with which we have accompanied the 35 years of the martyrdom of Father Ezequiel Ramin. On this occasion, the Comboni Lay Missionaries of Brazil encourage us to cultivate and follow a dream in life as Fr Ezequiel encouraged.
Let us remain faithful to our vocation and be brave. May the example of Fr Ezequiel and other martyrs in Latin America give us strength and courage to change the injustices of the world by walking together with the peoples who suffer it.
Let us receive the candle in our hands and let it give us light in our path.
Este sitio web utiliza cookies para mejorar su experiencia. Si continúa navegando consideramos que acepta el uso de cookies, pero puede optar por lo contrario si lo desea.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. If you continue to browse we consider you accept the use of cookies, but you can opt-out if you wish. Acepto Puede obtener más información - You may have more information here
Politica y privacidad de Cookies - Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.