Regarding the latest reports that have reverberated in the media, the MST national directorate would like to make the following public announcement. 1. Our struggle is for the democratization of property, which is constantly becoming more and more concentrated in our country. The 2006 census, disclosed this past week, revealed that Brazil has the highest concentration of land in the world. There are lefewer than 15 thousand large landowners with estates of over 2,500 hectares and who...
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Occupy Brazil: The Landless Dig In
Brazilian Government | General | Agrarian Reform | Oppression of MST and Social Movements | MST Informas
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, represented by Senator Kátia Abreu (DEM-TO) and the federal deputies Ronaldo Caiado (DEM-GO) and Onyx Lorenzoni (DEM-RS). Frightened by the...
MST Victories | Brazilian Politics Society and Economy | Oppression of MST and Social Movements | MST Informas
Just the fact that we carried out another campaign—demanding the fulfillment of a list of demands presented to the Lula government in 2005 including the demand that the productivity indexes be brought up to date as the Federal Constitution requires— was enough to generate a reaction. The most conservative sectors of Congress and of society, led by Senator Kátia Abreu (DEM/TO) and the Federal Deputies Ronaldo Caiado (DEM-GO) and Onyx Lorenzoni (DEM-RS), began to orchestrate a new offensive...
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 are still far from achieving Agrarian Reform and the consolidation of a new agricultural model. Moreover, it showed society and people in general, that...
The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) denied the appeal of the police officers convicted of killing 19 landless workers in 1996 in Eldorado dos Carajás (PA). The defense requested a mistrial, in 2002, but the ministers of the Court, unanimously, considered the legal formulation of the questions (questions about the crime) presented to the jury. With this, the court maintained the sentences imposed on Colonel Mario Colares Pantoja, 228 years, and Major José Maria Pereira de Oliveira, 158 years...
MST Occupations and Demonstrations | MST Victories | Worldwide Peasant Struggles | Agrarian Reform | MST Informas
This August, the National Encampment for Agrarian Reform in Brasilia and mobilizations organized by the MST and by the movements of Via Campesina throughout the country secured important victories for the working class and reinstated agrarian reform on the agenda of both the government and society at large. In the federal capital, more than three thousand workers and rural workers, with the representation of the 23 states in which the MST is organized, aside from the Federal District, met...
This month, the Brazilian working class will take to the streets, to protest and to discourse with the country at large about the economic crisis and its consequences for the workers of town and country. The MST will be out to promote our vision of Popular Agrarian Reform as a sustainable approach to social development, and to denounce the total abandonment of Agrarian Reform by the Lula Government.
We will be assembling a National Camp for Agrarian Reform in Brasília, where we will...
From information published by the National Association of Plant Protection (ANDEF) - an employers' organization that brings together companies in the agribusiness like Basf, Bayer, Down Agrosciences, Dupont, Monsanto and Syngenta – we prepared a summary on the use of poisons in Brazilian agriculture. The figures are worrying. While transnationals triumph with their profits, Brazil occupies the position of largest consumer of poisons in the world. The position, first occupied by the United...
By Diego González | June 11, 2009 Along with the United States and Argentina, Brazil is now one of the strongest bastions of agribusiness on a global level. The world’s tenth largest economy, Brazil is now the nation which suffers the greatest inequality, on a subcontinent which, in its turn, experiences the greatest wealth gap. Just 1.6% of Brazilian landholders control 46.78% of the nation’s privately owned land. According to the NGO Council of Information on Biotechnologies, Brazil was...
The struggle for land has more victims in the Brazilian countryside. This time, five workers were killed. The murders happened on the night of last Monday (July 6th), the Garrote settlement, located in the district of Santo Domingo in Brejo da Madre de Deus (PE). The national coordination of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra (MST) did not discard the hypothesis that the crimes were motivated in retaliation to the struggle for agrarian reform. João Pereira da Silva, Juarez...
Brazilian Government | Agrarian Reform | Oppression of MST and Social Movements | MST Urgent Actions
The trial of the colonel of the Military Police of Pará who commanded the massacre of Eldorado de Carajás, Mário Pantoja de Oliveira, has been postponed once again. The postponement was granted by the Minister of STJ Laurita Vaz. In 2002, Pantoja was sentenced to 228 years imprisonment by jury trial in Belem. The crime was committed in 1996 and left 19 workers dead. The colonel's lawyers seek the annulment of the conviction, allowing Pantoja to wait for the trial for annulment in...
Brazilian Government | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | Agrarian Reform | Oppression of MST and Social Movements | MST Informas
“If we silence ourselves, the stones will cry out” (Pedro Tierra) The Fifth Session of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) will rule this week on the appeal presented by Colonel Mario Colares Pantoja, one of the commanders of the Massacre at Eldorado dos Carajas, which asks to overturn the verdict by which he was condemned to 228 years in prison. In the session on Tuesday, Minister Laurita will analyze the request made by the Colonel's defense and the verdict may be overturned. On April...
We are mobilized all over Brazil to defend the education of the countryside, an achievement of the social movements that fight for Land Reform in our country. Our challenge is big. We learn through the struggle that Land Reform goes beyond the simple conquest of the land/earth, and necessarily becomes a serious educational policy. Our country figures among the worst in the world in this sense. Statistics from the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education show that there are 35...
Dear Friends of the MST,
Including the 2009 May/June bimonthly, the Sem Terra Review has published 50 editions. For this reason, we would like to thank each and every reader for their support of the MST. This publication is an achievement, not only in the struggle for agrarian reform and for rural landless workers, but for the working class. For over 12 years we have challenged society to become aware of our struggles and successes. Each of these 50 editions are a confrontation...
The Friends of the MST presents two articles on Augusto Boal. The first is an excerpt from an interview from June, 2007 by Amy Goodman, but only recently aired on Democracy Now. The second is a memoriam from the MST. FROM DEMOCRACY NOW: AMY GOODMAN: Augusto Boal, the legendary Brazilian political playwright and popular educator, died this weekend at the age of seventy-eight. He was the founder of the Theater of the Oppressed, a popular international movement for a participatory form of...
[05/26/2009] Fallen Banker with Ties to Citigroup Involved in Shooting of Brazilian Landless Workers
Isabella Kenfield | May 26, 2009 Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) americas.irc-online.org On April 18, seven members of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST) were shot by private security guards on a farm in the Amazon that belongs to Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara S/A, a company controlled by international banker Daniel Dantas. A billionaire with former ties to Citigroup, Dantas is Brazil's largest producer of cattle, and presently embroiled in a...
The concentration of land in Brazil continues to be among the highest in the world. In the past few years, the agro-exporter model, based in agribusiness, not only compounded this concentration, but also aggravated the economic and social problems generated by it. For the sake of the monocultural farming of sugar cane for combustion, eucalyptus for paper, and soy for animal feed in Europe, agribusinesses reduces space for planting food, deforests the Amazon and pushes people into degrading...
by Michelle Amaral da Silva - last modified 2009-04-16 11:50 Mobilizations throughout Brazil in memory of the 19 landless workers killed 13 years ago in the Massacre of Eldorado de Carajás are planned for the coming weeks. The National Day of Struggle, held in memory of 19 landless workers killed 13 years ago in the massacre of Eldorado de Carajás (PA), has mobilized farmers in 8 states and the Federal District since the beginning of the month, to force implementation of agrarian reform...
Agribusiness | Food Sovereignty and Sustainability | MST Occupations and Demonstrations | Monoculture | Agrarian Reform
By Silvia Adoui From São Paulo, Brazil, NP Radioagencia Week of April 14 The Fazenda Puntumujú, in the extreme south of Bahia, was occupied by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST). Around 1.5 thousand families came, the morning of Wednesday, June 8, at the ranch belonging to the transnational company Veracel Cellulose, arguing that the monoculture of eucalyptus practiced by the company was illegal on the State land in the region. According to the MST, such land should be allocated...
Agribusiness | General | Brazilian Politics Society and Economy | Oppression of MST and Social Movements
By Luíse Desiree From São Paulo, the Radioagência NP April 7, 2009 The Justice Court of Pará nullified, on Tuesday (04/07/09), the trial that acquitted the rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura. He is accused by prosecutors of the state of being one of the principals in the murder of missionary Dorothy Stang. The high court judges ordered the immediate arrest of the farmer until the new trial, which will still be marked. The Justices held that the trial should be overturned because the...
By Silvia Adoui
From São Paulo, Brazil, NP Radioagencia
Week of April 14
The Fazenda Puntumujú, in the extreme south of Bahia, was occupied by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST). Around 1.5 thousand families came, the morning of Wednesday, April 8, at the ranch belonging to the transnational company Veracel Cellulose, arguing that the monoculture of eucalyptus practiced by the company was illegal on the State land in the region. According to the MST, such land...
by Luciana Lima Reporter Agency Brazil Brasilia - The lack of debate and new ideas to combat the global financial crisis means the government and the entrepreneurial class cannot solve the current economic issues. This is the view of the leader of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), João Pedro Stedile, who in an interview to Agência Brasil, said the government is afraid of the debate on the crisis. "The government is afraid to lead in the debate on the crisis, fearing the...
The MST is participating in the demonstrations in defense of the working class and against the worldwide economic crisis alongside the most representative groups of the union, student, and people’s movements on Monday (March 30). The protests against the crisis, which were discussed in the Assembly of Social Movements in the World Social Forum will take place in all the capital cities in the country. These demonstrations are planned to take place between March 28 and April 4 throughout the...
Indians celebrated the ruling as a confirmation of land rights they were granted in 1988 [AFP] The Amazon's indigenous groups have won a major victory with Brazil's Supreme Court upholding the integrity of a vast native reserve. Friday's ruling paves the way for the expulsion of white farmers living in the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve the government created in 2005. The court voted 10-1 against a petition by two senators who wanted the 17,000 square kilometre area in the north of the...
by Plinio Arruda Sampaio Published in Folha de S. Paulo, March 16, 2009 Today, the MST is struggling against an intermittent type of attack: an attack sponsored by enemies visible and invisible. The MST (Movement of Landless Rural Workers) is subject to two types of attack: the permanent and intermittent. The first type is directed daily by UDR (Democratic Rural Union) and the "rural bench". The second form of attack happens from time to time. Today, the movement is struggling against...
By Immanuel Wallerstein This article appeared in the March 23, 2009 edition of The Nation. There seem to me to be two occasions, which require two plans for the world left, and in particular for the US left. The first occasion is in the short run. The world is in a deep depression, which will only get worse for at least the next one or two years. The immediate short run is what concerns most people who are facing joblessness, seriously lowered income and in many cases homelessness. If left...
Women from La Via Campesina mobilized last week on March 8th for International Women’s Day. The fight is our historic tool to denounce the agribusiness model which is socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable. We also question the role of the State, which in the wake of a deep structural economic crisis, chooses to aid big private companies which exploit our country, its biodiversity, our natural resources and leave our workers unemployed.
We live in a period where there is a...
The City that Ended Hunger A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger. by Frances Moore Lappé Published on Friday, March 13, 2009 by YES! Magazine "To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer." CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a...
Director-General of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Commends the Struggle of Women of Via Campesina MST Press Release (March 10, 2009) On the second day of mobilization of the International Women's Day by Via Campesina, a committee of farmers has been received in Brasilia by the Director-General of FAO (UN Food and Agriculture), Jacques Diouf. At the meeting, Diouf heard a report of the actions that the peasants held this week to denounce the Brazilian government's...
In recent days, the press has been giving rise to a series of materials about the MST that express an offensive of the right-wing forces. For this reason, we interviewed a member of MST national direction, João Paulo Rodrigues, to explain the position of the Movement regarding the main topics of the offensive. What is the reaction of the minister Gilmar Mendes due to? Minister Gilmar Mendes has become the newest leader of the Brazilian right since taking office as president...