News and Updates: Agrarian Reform
One hundred years ago, Clara Zetkin, director of the German Social Democrat Party, successfully proposed the establishment of March 8th as International Womens Day. This historic reference alone would be enough to mark the date in its primary sense: struggle. It was on this path that women so often went out into the streets in every part of the...
Join the International Day of Peasant Struggle: Say ‘No!’ to Corporate Control of Agriculture and Food!
To commemorate the International Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17th 2010, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina calls upon member organisations, allies and supporters to unite against transnational corporations...
La Via Campesina launched a petition suggesting that the Mixed Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) recently installed to criminalize the fight for agrarian reform and the MST should be used to investigate agribusiness crimes. The text states, “the restriction of the CPMI’s work to investigate only the agreements of the groups that...
Small farmer Juarez Vieira Reis goes up in Court against one of the leaders of Congress' Rural Bench, who took his lands seven years ago. by Eduardo Sales de Lima of the Sem Terra Editorial Staff
The farmer Juarez Vieira Reis was expelled in 2003 from the land where he had lived since he was born, in Tocantins, due to a legal...
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...
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...
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 -...
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...
We would like to thank everyone who has shown their solidarity with our movement and contributed towards the denunciations against the attack on democracy, promoted by the reactionary sectors of the country. The announcement of the dismissal of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry against the MST is a sign of the isolation of rural parties,...
We have demonstrated throughout the whole country and set up a pre-land occupation encampment in Brasilia in defence of Agrarian Reform, accomplishing important successes regarding solutions to the problems that agrarian workers have. The day of struggle brought about a series of fundamental measures granted by the government, even though we...