Page 77 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

country, poverty has destroyed families and children starve on a daily basis, as a
consequence of the climate and the lack of any policy to overcome the problems
brought by the drought. The Projeto Nordeste [Northeast Project] was launched, a
revolutionary idea, whose ¤rst pole, the Fazenda Nova Canaã [New Canaan Farm],
is proving that if subsoil water is used, the rough land of the sertão becomes very
fertile.
Bishop Crivela is presented in both the religious and secular media as the person
responsible for creating and running a project claimed to be one of the best
prospects for the country: the New Canaan Farm, part of the Northeast Proj-
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ect. According to the information in the media and the accompanying video
(for sale in the church), the Northeast Project realizes the greatest dream, his-
torically associated with peasant land reform movements: the transformation
of land devastated by drought and poverty into a prosperous estate, with ver-
dant ¤elds, modern machinery, and high-tech irrigation-systems. The video
depicts people in a condition of absolute poverty in melodramatic scenes, por-
trayed in black and white—the popular aesthetics of starvation—who are sub-
sequently depicted in a state of bliss, belonging to a prosperous community, liv-
ing and working at the New Canaan Farm.
To turn this dream into reality, Bishop Crivela brought the necessary social
and economic knowledge from Israel—how to organize a kibbutz—along with
irrigation technology. The communitarian and religious resonance of these im-
ages acquires even more force when applied to the clearest symbol of poverty
in the country: the Nordeste, a region of drought and starvation, with Brazil’s
highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality.
The dream of “giving land to those who work,” deeply anchored in the po-
litical and religious imaginary of the peasant movements, is thus rechanneled.
When supported in the past by the Church of Liberation, this dream was little
more than a messianic vision for the popular movements; it was the struggle
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against the agrarian oligarchies and an unjust social structure, to realize one
of God’s wishes, disrespected by the greed of men. But from now on, the tri-
umph of the “oppressed people” had to be accomplished through other means.
The biblical image of the right to the land would be attained through a concrete
development project: the practical and ¤nancial mobilization of the community
directed by the UCKG was to be the new route to social integration.
The video tells us it was Bishop Crivela’s initiative to create the New Canaan
Farm; likewise it was he who left Brazil to learn about the Israeli technology in
order to organize a kibbutz and construct an irrigation system. Israel, the na-
tion built in a desert, prospered in the hands of a “chosen people, the people
of Israel,” and can now offer Brazil—to those who belong to the same biblical
community—a model of work, sociability, and technology.
According to the video, Bishop Crivela was able to raise the means to buy the
hectares in this wretched desert by becoming an evangelical singer: he made a
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CD and sold millions of copies. Buying the CD, a romantic gospel, is also ad-
vertised as a way of participating in the project’s development. Followers inter-
ested in collaborating can become part of this campaign by donating money in

66 Patricia Birman