February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
This year, the Mayo Society of New York is giving a substantial proportion of its journal proceeds to help buy Keveny a four-by-four truck, which will give him greater mobility in the dirt tracks that turn to mud in the rainy season.
Operating from the small town of Colinas, Keveny travels to 22 outlying settlements where modern-day pioneers farm land that until recently belonged to a handful of unproductive ranchers
Keveny has been a priest with the Killala diocese since 1967, which covers much of Counties Mayo and Sligo, but for two decades he has worked abroad in its missionary program.
His district, covering a 100-mile radius, is in that part of the country where the grasslands transition to the rain forest.
“There are just two seasons here,” Keveny said of Northern Brazil’s tropical climate. “We’re in the rainy season now. But this year, we’ve had very little rain. . . . During the dry season, from April to September, there’s no rain whatsoever.”
The district, which is racially diverse, has a population of about 35,000 people.
“Our job is to minister to them spiritually as well as socially, and to help with education too,” he said.
He believes that the Killala mission can help people to help themselves.
“Unless they fight for their rights, they won’t get them. And we’re on their side,” he said.
Colinas and its outlying scattered communities are in the relatively new state of Tocantins.
“It was created 14 years ago in the interior to try to develop it,” Keveny said. “And in time I’ve been here, I’ve seen vast improvement with regard to infrastructure, but it still lacks in industry. The land question is the main issue here.”
Indeed, for decades landless rural workers have battled ranchers in Brazil, a country where a tiny percentage of the population owns most of the arable land.
Although his Workers Party ran on a moderate program in order to win broad support, the election of the leftist union leader Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva to the nation’s presidency in 2003 has raised expectations for reform,
Agrarian tensions have increased and the big farmers have been organizing into militias to resist “invasions.” Many landless workers have been killed.
But Keveny’s area has passed that stage to a large extent, as landless workers colonized the estates there back in 1996.
Gerard Mulherin, who was a lay member of the Killala mission to Brazil from 1994 to 1996, said that while there is a law allowing for the breaking up of large, unproductive estates, the power of the ranchers is such that the poor have to occupy them physically to make it a reality.
“On one farm in the area, there are now 280 families, each with roughly 100 acres,” Mulherin said. “So you can get a sense of how big these farms were.
“Many of the people were hungry before they had this land. The land has given them dignity and self-respect.”
Nonetheless, it hasn’t been easy. The new farmers have no electricity or schools for their children. And Keveny explained that while the former owners are reimbursed, money for seed or cattle is scarce for those who’ve taken over.
“It takes a lot of work; most of it was cleared it by hand,” he said of land that in some areas was virgin forest.
“One man told me, ‘My people haven’t had land for 500 years.’ His dream was to grow crops to feed his children. And now he can. The people grow rice, beans and corn. And they have access to wild fruit trees.”
A natural connection
He sees parallels with the situation in Mayo in the 19th century, a time when land was also concentrated in the hands of a few.
And so do many members of the Mayo Society of New York, which was established in 1879 to help people back in their native county, the cradle of the Land War, which had just begun. In the same year, Mayo native Michael Davitt, founded the Land League in Dublin. At its first meeting, a member of parliament with a growing reputation, Charles Stewart Parnell, became its president.
For the society’s Teresa Gilmartin, though, it’s personal and not because her maiden name is Davitt. (A family link has not been established with the great land agitator. “But, we like to think there is one,” she said.)
Rather, she’s spearheading this fundraising effort because of Keveny, whom she said was a “wonderful priest” in her youth in Belmullet.
“That was before the Celtic Tiger; there was a lot of poverty,” she said. “He organized things for the young teenagers to do.”
Gilmartin recalled that the priest was the moving force behind socials and dances, sometimes organized under the auspices of Macra na Feirme, a national association for rural youth. She also remembered that Keveny would ferry young people to and from such events in his car.
He’s still in the transport business. Gilmartin, who emigrated in 1980, said that money raised for the truck will go directly to its purchase. “It all goes to the cause,” she said.
“The truck is used for weddings, funerals and things like the transport of building materials,” she said.
It’s also used to get Keveny around his district. “He covers about four communities a day, and they’re very long days,” Mulherin said. “But he’s always smiling.”
Keveny said that ideally a qualified nurse, or nurses, should also be traveling the district.
“We take in the children and weigh them, and take them to the doctor, if necessary,” he said. “We also give people nutritional advice.”
He’s passionate on the question of the high cost of medicines and is looking at ways to make cheaper alternatives more available.
“Education is a big problem; we’re trying to develop schools,” he said.
The Killala mission has developed a program that allows a group of children stay at school in Colinas for a week.
“Then they go home and another group comes,” he said.
Keveny has the support of the Rev. Eddie Rogan, from Ardnaree in Ballina, Co. Mayo, who has just arrived. Two lay missionaries in the Killala program have also joined them: Aine Sheridan, from Kilmain, Co. Mayo, will run computer classes in the technical school established by Keveny, and Fiona Dunne, a native of Lanesborough, Co. Longford, will be involved with the pastoral care of children.
The people know little about his native country, Keveny said but are grateful for the support they’ve received from the Irish people they’ve met and from the Irish government, which donated a tractor.
But it’s Keveny himself who is the local hero, it seems.
“He’s a tireless campaigner for the people and they really love him,” said Mulherin, who has made several trips back to Brazil since 1996. “If he ran for mayor, he’d be elected easily.”
For his part, the 63-year-old Keveny is not considering retiring any time soon. In any case, he said, Brazil’s retirement plans aren’t so good.
(To make donations toward the purchase of the truck, or find out more about the Mayo Society journal, call Teresa Davitt Gilmartin at (845) 735-9452 or Eileen Sheridan at (718) 981-1310, or visit the society’s website: www.mayosocietyofny.org.)