News and Updates: Agrarian Reform
In 1984, our country was going through an intense period of social struggles. A context of popular struggles for the end of the military dictatorship, with widespread mobilizations. After being suffocated for so long, the peasant movement once again started to challenge the latifúndio and use land occupations as a form of concrete and...
João Pedro Stedile In January 1984, there was a process of re-ascension of mass movements in Brazil. The working class was reorganizing, accumulating organic forces. Underground parties, such as the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Communist Party of Brazil, etc., were in the streets. We had achieved a partial amnesty, but the majority of...
In 2008, we wrote yet another chapter about the struggle between the two disputing projects in Brazilian agriculture. On one side, small and mid-sized agriculture that produces food for the Brazilian family table. On the other, the big national and transnational corporations and finance capital that produce soy, eucalyptus, sugar cane, and...
We of the MST along with the central unions, student organizations, peoples’ movements, and groups from civil society, are putting together a document with concerns around the country’s current social and economic picture and proposals to overcome the worldwide economic crisis. We demand that the country change the macroeconomic policy of...
Maputo, the capital of Mozambique was the site of the 5th International Conference of La Via Campesina. More than 600 men and women peasants and small farmers from 60 countries met from October 16 to the 23rd to discuss the situation in agriculture, emphasizing that the solution to the problem of hunger is Food Sovereignty. In contrast to the...
Agrarian Reform has reached a standstill all over Brazil. It was for this reason that, in July, MST workers from 12 Brazilian states protested in the streets, at INCRA (National Institute of Agrarian Colonization and Reform) headquarters, and farms, demanding the settlement of the 140,000 encamped families and public funding for the already...
The Associated Press Tuesday, June 10, 2008 SAO PAULO, Brazil: Thousands of landless rural workers invaded dams, railways, plantations and corporate headquarters in a wave of protests across eight Brazilian states on Tuesday. Rogerio Homm, a coordinator with the Via Campesina activist group, said the protests are aimed at large corporations...
Esteemed friends of the MST, The approval of Provisionary Measure 422, Medida Provisória (MP) 422, by the federal deputies on Tuesday night, May 27, a few hours after the resignation of Marina Silva, the Ministry of the Environment, confirms that the defense of biodiversity is losing the battle against deforestation and development at whatever...
Inter-Press Service (IPS) By Walter Sotomayor BRASILIA, Apr 17 (IPS) - An urgent call to speed up the land reform process in Latin America was issued Thursday by rural activists at the 30th FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, who also sharply criticised agribusiness interests and large estates in the region.
"We...
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) — Rural landless workers in Brazil stepped up their campaign for agricultural reform Thursday by holding several demonstrations and occupying a hydroelectric plant and freeway toll stations, their organization said. The protests were part of the Landless Farmworkers Movement's "Red April" operation to force the government...