Alternative Agriculture Center of Northern Minas – CAANM
Community consulting and land rights of traditional Minas communities
Minas Gerais
Objetivos e público prioritário
To guarantee the land rights of traditional communities in the Serra do Espinhaço and Vale do Jequitinhonha regions through direct action with local families who traditionally make their living through small-scale cultivation, animal husbandry and collection of local natural resources.
Main activities
• A social mapping of rural Minas and self-declaration as a traditional community with the self-demarcation of traditional lands;
• Exchanges with COPAE (Peace and Ecology Commission) and CPO (Peoples Council) of Guatemala;
• Community consulting;
• Legal assistance to aide in the structuring of advocacy and legal actions;
• Training of popular teachers and development of media actions to spread the word on social networks, radio stations and in print and television media.
About the organization
The Alternative Agriculture Center of Northern Minas – CAANM is an organization of family cultivators from northern Minas Gerais whose mission is to develop proposals for a solidarity-based, just and democratic society, based on the principles of agro-ecology and sustainability.
Results
The organization supports, through the Rosalino Network of Traditional Peoples and Communities and the Gerazeiros Movement, the territorial rights of the traditional communities of Serra do Espinhaço, in the northern part of Minas Gerais and the Jequitinhonha Valley. These communities are struggling against the expropriation of their lands promoted by large corporate eucalyptus planters, now joining with mining companies, who are advancing into the region of Grão Mogol and Alto Rio Pardo in Minas. The traditional Gerazeiros communities were informed about their ethnic rights, held assemblies to declare themselves as traditional communities and demarcated their territorial borders; strategies to advocate for and defend the traditional territories were improved and qualified based on the exchanges with peasant organizations from Guatemala; consultations were held regarding mining projects and monocultural eucalyptus plantations; a litigation case was mounted to sue, and advocate, for the rights declared in ILO Convention 169; the regional, national and international society was informed about rights violations against the traditional Gerazeiros communities in northern Minas Gerais.
Funding Line
Strategic Litigation (2014)
Year
-
Total Granted
R$ 102,960.00
Duration
18 months
Main Themes
Rights of Maroon and Traditional Populations
