France’s top anti-globalization activist won a reprieve yesterday from being deported from Brazil for occupying a U.S. agribusiness farm, and he immediately set about planning his next protest. José Bové, a sheep farmer who shot to fame for hammering on the golden arches of a McDonald’s restaurant in Southern France, was handed a safe conduct document by a local court, protecting him from being deported. Bové had faced ejection from the country for his role in the occupation Friday of an experimental farm owned by Monsanto. Genetically engineered crops and seeds are illegal in Brazil, but Monsanto has said it had government authorization for the fields. Police held José Bové briefly late Monday and served him papers ordering him out of Brazil by midnight Tuesday, but then the Landless Workers’ Movement, which backed Bové and the occupation, appealed. After Tuesday’s reprieve, Bové said he would leave on schedule on Wednesday from Porto Alegre, where he was a star speaker at the World Social Forum, a gathering of more than 10,000 anti-globalization activists from around the world. Bové said an April summit in Quebec on a U.S.-sponsored plan to create a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, known as FTAA, would be the next target of protesters.
