Joe Higgins TD Writes: Brazil is known as one of the countries with the greatest inequality in ownership of wealth on the face of the earth. It is one thing to read or hear this statistic. It is however quite a shocking experience to be confronted with the reality of what this means.

Mato Grosso do Sul is one of Brazil’s 26 states, situated in the southwest of the country. It is four times the size of the island of Ireland but has a population of only two million. It has millions of hectares of very fertile land, home at the moment to 24 million of the fattest cattle you will find. It has some of the richest ranchers on earth, some owning farms of up to 40,000 acres. Yet a report published in January 2005 by a state health organisation, FUNASA, found that children in some indigenous Indian villages were dying of malnutrition and related diseases.

Before going on to the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre this January 2005, I spent six days visiting remote Indian villages discussing with the inhabitants and seeing at first hand their conditions of life. My guides and interpreters were members of a small but very dedicated Indian support group, The Technical/ Juridical Educational Institute (ITJE). They work to assist the Indians reclaim their fundamental rights including advising the Indians on their land rights and assisting them in the process of trying to reclaim lands from which they or their ancestors were expelled.