Inside
NCR Internet bishop sets mouse on injustice
If the name of Bishop Herbert Hermes sounds
familiar, that may be because the Sept. 19, 1997, NCR carried a story
about his work with the destitute in Brazil.
The bishop, a Kansas-born Benedictine monk who has spent 35 years
in Brazil, is back, sort of out of the blue, via some surprise E-mail messages.
Hes excited about that.
Dear Ones All, he begins. With my E-mail I am
spreading the word to you in the states and also to friends and human rights
organizations in Brazil, Italy, Mexico and Nicaragua. Possibly I will be able
to get [my message] into our Human Rights Home Page and thus reach a wider
group of people.
What he is trying to reach us about is, once again,
seriously tragic. In Campos Lindos, in Brazils newest state,
Tocantins, a team of Japanese and Brazilian developers are planning soybean
production.
Theres just one problem. Before the forest can be
cleared, the people must be cleared off, Hermes said. Last May, the
governor, Jose Wilson Siqueira Campos, declared the entire area state property.
He paid 27 ranchers, who were in fact absentee landlords, money for their
so-called legal title to the land.
The governors purchase decree doesnt even mention more
than 100 families who have been living on and cultivating this land for
periods of up to 100 years. By Brazilian law they have a legal right to their
land. But Hermes presumes they will get nothing. They live in
isolated clusters of thatched huts, cultivate small patches of rice and beans
and cannot read or write. They feel helpless before the power of the governor
and his Japanese associates.
These injustices have an added topicality in light of the recent
Vatican document on land distribution and use (NCR, March 3).
One problem with such injustices has traditionally been the
inability of the oppressed to focus the worlds spotlight on their
problems. This is why Bishop Hermes is excited. With the Internet he can now
vault over the barriers with which oppressors, who owned the media, have always
kept the word from getting out. Monk that he is, he knows the power of the
word.
He wishes to ask and he wishes us to ask as well: Do the Japanese
people and government and banks know what is happening in the state of
Tocantins? And with E-mail he intends to let them know.
He asks, further, that all financing of the Tocantins State
Development be suspended until a just solution is found. The settlers aspire to
an equitable solution: compensation for loss of home and crops, and fertile
land with legal titles in another area nearby.
The next request is to us in the First World who can shine that
embarrassing spotlight on behalf of those who cant. We ask you to
show solidarity by communicating your disapproval to the Japanese and Brazilian
governments, directly or through their embassies, and to get more people,
especially those with political weight, to give their support to this
cause.
One can see history in the making here. With E-mail and such, the
exploiters can run but they cant hide. To ensure this, Bishop Hermes
supplies Gov. Siqueira Campos fax: 0055-63-2181091/2181092, and E-mail:
gabgov@nutecnet.com.br; and a fax for the Japanese embassy in Brazil:
0055-63-2420738; and the fax of local Bishop Dom Joao José Burke of
Miracema do Tocantins: 0055-63-8341654; and finally Bishop Hermes own
E-mail: heribert@brnet.com.br.
Go ahead, make a couple of calls.
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, April 10,
1998
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