News and Updates: History
Nearly 30 years ago, the Movement of Landless Workers (MST) began to organize nationally with a purpose: to promote agrarian reform in Brazil. The years passed, the movement has consolidated, thousands of activists formed settlements, and the focus of the MST has expanded.
Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the national leaders of the movement,...
1. The History
The month of April has become a symbol of the fight for democratization of land in Brazil, and the world. On the 17th of April of 1996, 19 rural workers who participated in a protest march, were brutally murdered by the Military Police of the Brazilian state of Pará, in the municipality of Eldorado do...
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...
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...
The Landless Workers Movement (MST) announces its sorrow at the death on Thursday February 5 of the Federal Deputy Adão Pretto and extends its solidarity to the family at this time of loss for Brazilian society.
Since the beginning of his social activism in the Ecclesiastical Base Communities and in the rural union movement, Adão Pretto...
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...