News and Updates: MST Victories
After eight months of the boycott against the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (CPMI) on Agrarian Reform, the parliamentarians of the conservative sectors led by Kátia Abreu (DEM-TO) and Onyx Lorenzoni (DEM / RS) stated the need to continue investigations of the social groups that work in the settlements. During this period, the...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
IN THESE TIMES News » February 4, 2009 This Land Is Their Land The Landless Workers Movement claims a big victory in southern Brazil. By Michael Fox Members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST in Portuguese) marched to occupy the Southall farm in São Gabriel in southern Brazil on April 14, 2008. Share SÃO GABRIEL, BRAZIL—The three-day,...