Protesters end blockade of Brazil mining railroad

Jun 13, 2008
SAO PAULO — Hun­dreds of Brazil­ian pro­test­ers end­ed a block­ade of a rail­way line that trans­ports iron ore for min­ing com­pa­ny Vale, the com­pa­ny said late on Thurs­day.

It was the lat­est in a series of protests this week, some of them vio­lent, by land­less peas­ant groups tar­get­ing large com­pa­nies and multi­na­tion­als in Brazil.

Jun 13, 2008
SAO PAULO — Hun­dreds of Brazil­ian pro­test­ers end­ed a block­ade of a rail­way line that trans­ports iron ore for min­ing com­pa­ny Vale, the com­pa­ny said late on Thurs­day.

It was the lat­est in a series of protests this week, some of them vio­lent, by land­less peas­ant groups tar­get­ing large com­pa­nies and multi­na­tion­als in Brazil.

Pro­test­ers left peace­ful­ly after the Minas Gerais state’s jus­tice depart­ment ordered them to leave the tracks ear­li­er on Thurs­day or risk being removed by police or fined 30,000 reais ($18,000) for every day they remained, Vale said in a note.

“It start­ed around 6 a.m. this morn­ing,” a Vale spokes­woman said, adding more than 30 trains were delayed in the 10 hours that pro­test­ers had stopped traf­fic on the rail­way.

Trains on the line each car­ry around 14,000 tonnes of ore from the com­pa­ny’s net­work of mines in the state to ports but Vale could not imme­di­ate­ly con­firm how many were trans­port­ing the com­mod­i­ty. It said around 70 trains a day car­ry iron ore and oth­er car­go down the line.

One pas­sen­ger train was stopped by the protest as well as trains car­ry­ing goods for oth­er firms, Vale said.

The Via Campesina peas­ant move­ment said about 1,500 peo­ple were occu­py­ing the rail­way to pres­sure Vale to nego­ti­ate with 500 fam­i­lies who will be dis­lodged by the con­struc­tion of a hydro-elec­tric dam in which the com­pa­ny is involved.

Pro­test­ers occu­pied prop­er­ties of indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate Votoran­tim and a super­mar­ket belong­ing to the Wal-Mart group on Wednes­day.

The peas­ant groups are demon­strat­ing against the advance of one-crop farms they say harm the envi­ron­ment and small farm­ers. They are also protest­ing high food prices, the grow­ing use of bio­fu­els and the influ­ence of multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in Brazil.

Via Campesina said in a state­ment it was hold­ing anoth­er protest in front of Goias state’s elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny over price increas­es.