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Landless Workers

Brazil’s Flood Of Austerity And Climate Catastrophe

May 31, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
Meteorological agencies and officials predicted the events with eerie precision. A week into the flood, experts pointed to the extraordinary rainfall as the primary cause. Estael Sias, managing director of the weather forecaster MetSul, wrote that this was not ‘just an episode of extreme rain’, but ‘a meteorological event whose adjectives are all superlative, from extraordinary to exceptional’. The seemingly unending rain, she wrote, ‘is absurdly and bizarrely different from what is normal’. It will take a very long time for this region of Brazil to recover from the flood. Within the floodwaters are several encampments and settlements of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), about which we published a dossier last month to commemorate the movement’s 40th anniversary.

The Principle Of Landless Solidarity And The Recent Rains In Brazil

May 15, 2024 Brasil De Fato, People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) this past week launched the Landless Solidarity Campaign in Rio Grande do Sul to help the more than 1.3 million people affected by the heavy rains and floods in the state. More than 90,000 Brazilian reais have already been raised for the campaign. In addition to cash donations, the Movement has also converted the Galpão Elza Soares and the Casa dos Movimentos Carlito Maia, both in São Paulo’s Campos Elíseos neighborhood, into collection points for clothes, hygiene products, medicines, and non-perishable food. “Our beloved people of Rio Grande suffered from the heavy rain that occurred last weekend, which destroyed our settlement areas, our cooperatives, our crops and, above all, the people’s dream of producing healthy food, which we were just making a reality.

Forty Years: Brazil’s Landless Workers Have Fought To Build Humanity

April 19, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
Brazilian landless workers, who live on settlements and encampments of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), gathered roughly 13 tonnes of food to send to Palestinians in Gaza between October and December 2023. MST cooperatives across the country participated in the solidarity campaign, which included milk from Cooperoeste in Santa Catarina, rice from Terra Livre Cooperative, the Cooperative of Settled Workers of the Porto Alegre Region (Cootap), and Cooperav in Rio Grande do Sul, and corn flour from Terra Conquistada in Ceará.

Parliamentary Investigation Of MST Ends With The Movement Strengthened

October 4, 2023 Brasil de Fato, Orinoco Tribune. , , , ,
On Wednesday September 27, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (also known as CPI) that investigated the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) came to a close and confirmed the total flop of the pro-Bolsonaro far-right in the Chamber of Deputies, particularly the participation of the federal deputy Ricardo Salles (Liberal Party), the commission’s rapporteur. Salles was the minister of the environment in the Bolsonaro government. For many analysts, Salles seems to have used the CPI as an extension of his work in the ministry. Throughout the 130 days of the CPI, the commission presented data from when Salles was a minister and insisted on criminalizing the MST.

Poorer Nations Break The Cycle Of Dependency That Has Inflicted Grief

August 11, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , , ,
In late July, I visited two settlements of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) on the outskirts of São Paulo (Brazil). Both settlements are named for brave women, the Brazilian lawmaker Marielle Franco – who was assassinated in 2018 – and Irmã Alberta – an Italian Catholic nun who died in 2018. The lands where the MST has built the Marielle Vive camp and the Irmã Alberta Land Commune were slated for a gated community with a golf course, and a garbage dump, respectively. Based on the social obligations for land use in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the MST mobilised landless workers to occupy these areas, build their own homes, schoolhouses and community kitchens, and grow organic food.
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