Womens Movement to Access Babassu
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EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE PACK Brazil’s Warrior Women Women’s movement for access to Babassu oil COUNTRY - BRAZIL RELEASED SEPTEMBER 2014 COUNTRY: BRAZIL FILM DURATION: 7:33 YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/VGE0O-oxdSs WEBPAGE : http://ifnotusthenwho.me/film/womens- movement-access-babassu-oil/ AVAILABLE IN 4 LANGUAGES CONTENTS The Film • Threats to the Babassu Nut Breakers • Synopsis • Babassu Nut Breakers Organising • Screenplay & Sequencing • MIQCB: Interstate Movement of Babassu breakers • Presentation of Protagonists & Principal Speakers • Free Babassu Laws • The Filmmakers • Strengthening the Movement • Filming Intention & Context • New Threats Theme • Community Mapping • Keywords • Land Rights & Access • Key Facts • Women/gender About Brazil • Fair Trade • Agriculture • Scales of Production • Deforestation Preparing for Discussion • Land Tenure System Further Information Context & Current Situation • Characteristics of Babassu Palm • Babassu Palm Uses and Properties 1 Brazil’s Warrior Women 2 THE FILM SYNOPSIS The humble babassu palm provides a livelihood for Struggle for Access communities of women across North Eastern Brazil. 00:03:56 to 00:04:45 Bread, charcoal, oil and soap are produced from the The women started a grassroots movement to fight nut and husk; the surplus is sold on. But production these threats, gaining momentum at a regional has not always been so peaceful. Babassu: Brazil’s level. The long struggle of the women’s movement Warrior Women tells the story of the hard battle to established the “Free Babassu Law” in municipalities, maintain these communities’ way of life. In the face protecting the babassu forests and giving the landless of intimidation and threats from farmers for years, babassu nut gatherers free access. By uniting and Babassu women have negotiated their own terms; organising the women creative power, together they creating a grassroots movement and establishing achieve social change. the ‘Free Babassu Law’ in seven states. The law gives landless coconut gatherers rights to collect from palm Growing their Business groves. These inspiring women are now able to plan 00:04:46 to 00:06:56 for the long-term, diversifying their business and With the security of the Free Babassu Law, the women securing their future. They fight for their families, can now develop their fair trade business, diversifying their forests and the Amazon as a whole. production to sell juice to school lunch providers. They are providing for their families and protecting the forests in this borderland between the Cerrado SCREENPLAY & SEQUENCING and the Amazon, as well benefiting the Amazon basin as a whole. Brazil’s Warrior Women Nut Breakers Introduce the Babassu Nut 00:00:00 to 00:02:15 Who are the Babassu nut breakers? What do they use this nut for? What is at stake in their fight for access to the Babassu forests? The film begins showing the women at work breaking the babassu nuts and describing its health benefits and culinary uses. Rosa Barbosa De Sousa emphasises the importance the babassu nut has had to her and her family through her entire life. Maria de Jesus Ferreira Bringelo roasts babassu oil for food in her home; the rest is used for cleaning products and sold. Threats to the Nut Breakers 00:02.28 to 00:03:55 There have been many threats to the women’s access to the Babassu forests. They were threatened and attacked by those wanting to stop them and their way of life. Maria Do Socorro tells of a community destroyed; attackers raped a woman and then left her to be eaten by animals. 3 PROTAGONISTS & PRINCIPAL SPEAKERS THE FILMMAKERS Babassu breakers from the Interstate Movement of Director: Paul Redman Babassu Breakers (MIQCB): Producer: Tim Lewis; • Maria do Socorro - Financial Coordinator at Paul Redman is an award winning documentary MIQCB filmmaker whose films have covered issues including • Emmile de Costa the trade in tiger parts, whale and dolphin trade, illegal • Maria de Jesus Ferreira Bringelo, ‘Dona Tije’ - logging and the ivory trade. He has worked extensively Vice-Coordinator at MIQCB in hazardous environments, using both open and • Rosa Barbosa de Sousa covert filming techniques, and has trained activists • Ide Pereisa de Sousa media-based campaigning techniques in Indonesia, • Eunice Costa - Communications Secretary at Papua, India and Tanzania. In 2006 he founded the MIQCB production company Handcrafted Films with Tim • Helena dos Santos Salagat Lewis, which has produced a number of award- • Tonilda de Araujo da Cunha winning films for major development funders (UK • Maria Helena de Jesus Moura DFID, European Forestry Institute, Ford Foundation, CLUA) and non-governmental organisations (Amnesty, WSPA, EIA, Eco Storm). Paul is currently Project Director for ‘If Not Us Then Who?’, an on-going series of films about forest peoples and their battle to protect their lives, their cultures and our forests. Working as a producer, sound recordist, video editor, photographer and writer, Tim Lewis has produced documentary films for international charities and government agencies, as well as broadcast and corporate pieces. His work has taken him to many difficult, challenging and diverse locations. Filming indigenous communities in the rainforests of Indonesia, Brazil, Central America and Africa; interviewing refugees on the Thai-Burma border, survivors in the debris of Tacloban in the Philippines, following civil rights campaigners through war torn Liberia and the Congo, climbing volcanoes and glaciers in Iceland or filming in the cockpit of Concorde. He is a co-director of Handcrafted Films Ltd and Producer for ‘If Not Us Then Who?’. 4 FILMING INTENTION & CONTEXT The overall intention was to demonstrate the unique struggle of the Babassu women and show their immense resolve and courage as a grassroots women’s movement. As a group of women they were specifically targeted and intimidated but their strength and their unity has created a powerful success story which needed to be captured and shared. 5 THEME KEYWORDS Babassu palm; babassu oil; babassu forests; Attalea martiana; Attalea oleifera; Attalea speciosa; civil society movement; North Eastern Brazil; Maranhão; Pará; Tocantins; Piauí; Free Babassu Law; women’s resistance; babassu cooperative; agro-extractivist; Interstate Movement of Babassu Breakers (MIQCB); Matopiba; traditional communities; quilombola communities; land access; community mapping 6 COUNTRY CONCERNED: BRAZIL 4 KEY FACTS • 400,000 women extract babassu palm in Brazil with ¾ of them in the states of Maranhão, Piauí, Tocantins and Pará. • Community mapping has now shown that the babassu palm trees cover, with different densities, more than 25 million hectares across four states. 1 • The babassu palm grows up to 20 or 30 m tall and can be 30-40 cm in width. Their fruits are like small, 6-15 cm long, pointed coconuts. • The fruits may contain between two and five almonds and their contents have the following percentage composition by weight: 11% epicarp (the first outer layer of fibers), 23% mesocarp (starch) and endocarp (woody inner layer) 59%, 7% almond. 2 • Babassu palm trees begin to produce fruit after 7-10 years and end at 35, with a productivity of 2.2-15.6 tons of fruit per ha/year.3 1. Movimento Interestadual das Quebradeiras de Coco Babaçu www.miqcb.org/ 2. Baruque Filho, et al. (1998) ‘Ethanol from Babassu Coco- nut starch’. Applied Bio chemistry & Biotechnology, Vol 70-72 3. Nogueira L, Lora E. (2003) Dendroenergia: Fundamentos E Aplicações. Rio de Janeiro: Interciência 4. CIFOR (2005) Forest products, livelihoods and conserva- tion: Case Studies of Non-timber Forest Product Systems volume 3 - Latin America. Eds. Miguel N. Alexiades and Patricia Shanley www.cifor.org/Publications/pdf_files/ Books/BAlexiades0701.pdf 7 ABOUT BRAZIL AGRICULTURE Southern Brazil has traditionally been the centre of Soy and cattle production are major drivers of Brazilian agriculture, with its fertile soils and semi- deforestation in Brazil. While there has been a temperate climate, however there has been huge moratorium on soy production in the Amazon region agricultural expansion in the central area within the since 2006, this is not the case in the Cerrado biome, Cerrado biome. While the northeast region is prone where much of the babassu groves are located. Soya to drought, parts of it have been called the “new expansion has been a significant factor in deforestation agricultural frontier” by Brazil’s president, Dilma of the Cerrado or savannah, a biodiversity hotspot Rousseff.5 larger than Mexico. A recent survey suggested that nearly half the original vegetation cover had been lost Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee6 and by 2008, and that it is disappearing considerably faster second largest of beef7 and soya8. Its other most than the Amazon forest.13 61% of Brazil is covered by significant products are wheat, rice, corn, sugarcane, forests while 31% is cropland. cocoa and citrus. Agriculture accounts for more than 5% of the Brazilian economy9 and was the only part of the Brazilian economy to grow during 2015, due LAND TENURE SYSTEM mainly to soybean crops, which grew 11.9% and corn production which increased by 7.3%.10 In Brazil there is very unequal land distribution, with many large, family-owned properties and little access to land for the poor. This inequality and insecure DEFORESTATION tenure is a large contributing factor to destruction of forests, rural poverty and migration to violent favelas In 1964 a law was passed that assisted developers to gain in urban areas. A federal