By Chris Tilly, Marie Kennedy, and Tarso Luís Ramos

The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, which has mobilized more than a million Brazilians to occupy and farm large landholdings, was cautiously optimistic when Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva of the Workers Party won the presidency in 2002. “We campaign for Lula,” remarked MST organizer Jonas da Silva (no relation) during the campaign, “even though we are critical of him for shaping his discourse for the middle class.” In the country with perhaps the most unequal land distribution in the world, electing a pro-worker, pro-poor president marked a potential turning point.

The end of year is time to take stock of activities over the year now, assess the progress and the difficulties and begin planning for the coming next year.

2009 will be remembered in history as the year of the great capitalist crisis that hit financial markets around the world. A crisis that began in the U.S., but has swept many countries, rich and poor, breaking stock exchanges, banks, businesses, and especially collapsing the ideological hegemony and certainties of the big capitalists in their god - the Market; the so-called neo-liberalism.

Since the creation of the National Technical Commission (CTNBio) in 2005, biotech multinationals have benefited with consecutive approvals without exception of all of the petitions to release transgenic varieties in Brazil. Between 2005 and the end of 2009, CTNBio will give full reign to the commercial planting of two different varieties of soybean, ten varieties of corn, and six varieties of cotton, and will release a variety of rice of the multinational Bayer, which will put into risk the food security of the country, according to Embrapa.

On November 25th, the National Forum for Agrarian Reform and Land Justice attended a hearing in Brasília with the Federal Government, where it presented an overview of where land reform currently stands, and criticized an offensive by landowners. During the meeting, attending organizations - among them the MST, Contag, CNBB, MPA, and MAB - delivered a letter of demands to the Federal Government, represented by minister Luiz Dulci (Secretary-General of the Presidency), INCRA’s president, Rolf Hachbart, and by the Presidency’s Head of Staff, Gilberto Carvalho.

The Military Police took action on the Buriti homelands

Brasil do Fato, December 2, 2009

Today, 19 November, a group of landowners accompanied by armed security guards evicted without a court order the Terena (indigenous) community of 300 who had taken over part of the Buriti land in the municipality of Sidrolândia in Mato Grosso do Sul. A battalion of about 50 police participated in the military action.

Plots of the ruling class - sectors of the judiciary, the Congress, the national court of accounts, prosecutors and the media - are crafting another offensive against the MST and the workers. We can see that offensive in the creation of another CPI to investigate the movement, the third installed in the last four years. This offensive is also shown by the reaction of the media in the face of protests in Pará.