Piñeiro was one of the panelists at the peasant training seminar held on April 19 ahead of the 5th National Native Seed Festival of the Small Peasants’ Movement of Brazil, which is a member of La Via Campesina.

The event, which took place in Anchieta, Santa Catarina state, focused on the concept of “food sovereignty”, while several conferences on agro-biodiversity were held on Friday.

Several folk musicians performed, including Ze Ramalho, at the inauguration of the event where thousands of peasants from all over Brazil exchanged seeds with international peasant delegations.

Piñeiro analyzes the current global scenario where States tend to disappear not because of the global communications and markets, but because the electoral political systems are being replaced with transnational corporations.

“We need to look at the present, the past and the future and make a projection 100 years from now. Capitalism is bountiful, it has advertisement, it has laws, people, corruption and greed. So working with the peasants, by educating the children and reinstating peasant wisdom we will be able to resist capitalism on an equal basis”, says Piñeiro.

“Capitalism does not allow countries to implement social policies, that is really perverse. If a country carries out a constitutional reform in defense of water, the World Trade Organization will prevent it from coming into effect and the government will not be able to do anything about it”.

Piñeiro said the main challenge for the ones who confront capital and its logic of plunder is to study China as an emerging power that could potentially imitate the decadent empires like the US and Europe.

In the logic of capital, the people displaced by the system are the ones who can provide ethical alternatives not provided by the market, says Piñeiro. He rejects identifying “value” with “price”.

Piñeiro proposes a peaceful peasant rebellion through a thorough study of capitalism in order to be able to confront it.

Photo: Radio Mundo Real