MST publishes Letter on the fight for Agrarian Reform in the next period, at a Meeting in Belém
From the MST Page
During the National Coordination Meeting, which happened from January 20 to 24, in Belém (PA), the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) launched an official Letter reaffirming the importance of implementing People’s Agrarian Reform in Brazil, “as a possible path to overcome environmental destruction, concentration of wealth and social inequality.” The Document also denounces the model of destruction of agribusiness and commits to ten fundamental points to advance by 2025:
“1. Defend the land, territory and natural resources, confronting speculation on Agrarian Reform lots and all forms of capital harassment of our territories; 2. produce healthy food for all Brazilian people, promoting agroecology, respecting the diversity of biomes, combating pesticides and strengthening cooperation; and agro-industrialization to organize collective living in production, work and human relations,” signaling the first commitments of the Letter.
The activity brings together 400 leaders and activists of the Movement, representing the 23 states and the Federal District, to evaluate and plan the fight for land and Agrarian Reform in the coming period.
Read the full Letter:
LETTER FROM THE NATIONAL COORDINATION OF THE MST
“Every achievement is only valid if we have the capacity to defend it!”
(Fidel Castro)
We, 400 delegates of the National Coordination of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), representing twenty-three states of Brazil and the Federal District, have gathered in Amazonian territory to chart the course of our organization for the next period in the struggle for People’s Agrarian Reform, with access to land, social and environmental justice.Here, we came to draw from the history and memory of indigenous, Black, peasant and popular resistance. In the region that is the guardian of the legacy of Cabanagem (1), which despite having been crossed by so many massacres, such as Corumbiara (2), Eldorado do Carajás (3) and Balaiada (4), gives us lessons in struggle, resistance and hope for the radical defense of humanity.
We fight and resist in difficult times, marked by the perversity of the capitalist offensive. In Latin America, we are living in a period of deepening capitalist greed, appropriation of natural resources and violence against people who fight and resist the imperialist order.
The current neoliberal policy in force in Brazil has deepened barbarity in the various faces of violence against the working class in the countryside and in the city. The mass of surpluses, those considered disposable by capitalism, is growing, while structural public policies are not implemented.
In the countryside, there are signs of a halt in Agrarian Reform, the denationalization of Brazilian lands, and the privatization of natural resources that feed the project of the death of the agro-hydro-mining business, resulting in an environmental crisis – which is expressed in the territories and on a global level. Added to this is the perverse action of the majority of the National Congress, which legislates in favor of the interests of big capital, defends the agro-project and holds the Executive Branch hostage, removing and preventing the advancement of social public policies and effective achievements for the Brazilian people.
But the crisis is also an opportunity to use capitalist contradictions as “openings” to denounce agribusiness and provoke a debate in society about the importance of the People’s Agrarian Reform as a possible way to overcome environmental destruction, the concentration of wealth and social inequality. In view of this, we commit to:
- Defending land, territory and natural resources, confronting speculation on Agrarian Reform plots and all forms of capitalist harassment of our territories;
- Producing healthy food for all Brazilian people, promoting agroecology, respecting the diversity of biomes, combating pesticides and strengthening cooperation and agro-industrialization to organize collective living in production, work and human relations;
- Fighting for climate justice, working with society as a whole, especially grassroots organizations, to denounce the hegemony of capital and the exclusion of peoples from the environmental agenda and global governance instruments, such as the COPs, and to build a grassroots project to overcome the environmental crisis;
- Strengthen grassroots work and a plan of struggle to accumulate strength in the next period, together with our base and urban popular organizations, building struggles with the working class as a whole, such as the Plebiscite for the taxation of wealth and the end of the 6×1 work schedule (5), solidarity actions, campaigns to combat hunger and illiteracy; spreading study and political and ideological education, as an important instrument to break down the barriers of the latifundium of knowledge;
- Pressure the government to settle the 100,000 landless families camped out, demarcate indigenous territories and recognize quilombola territories, fighting for a budget and a concrete agenda of policies to improve the quality of life and autonomy of the territories;
- Exercise internationalism and solidarity as principles, values and strategies to build the socialist struggle; hand in hand with Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela, Haiti, the peoples of Africa and the working class of the world;
- Build strategies to confront imperialism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, xenophobia against immigrants, LGBTI+phobia and all forms of violence and domination;
- To establish our People’s Agrarian Reform Program in our base and discuss it with society, as a contribution to the Popular Project for Brazil, in the context of the celebration of the 41st anniversary of the MST and the 20th anniversary of the Florestan Fernandes National School;
- To nurture the revolutionary mística and reposition socialism as a strategic horizon and a concrete alternative to overcoming capitalism; and
- We commit to fighting for justice in the face of the murder of our fellow Landless Workers Valdir and Gleison (6) and for all those who have fallen in the fight against injustice and inequality.
Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to the working class in mobilizing collective indignation to confront the latifundium, denounce all and any form of oppression and injustice, confront the offensives of capital, without giving up celebrating the historic achievements that are the fruit of our struggle. Human emancipation is our goal and People’s Agrarian Reform is the path we are building!
We fight or we will lose the world to win!
Belém/PA, January 24, 2025.
National Coordination of the MST.
—
References
1. The Cabanagem (1835–1840) was a popular revolution and pro-separatist movement that occurred in the then province of Grão-Pará, Empire of Brazil. Among the causes for this revolt were the extreme poverty of the Paraense people, oppression by the Empire of Brazil, and the political irrelevance to which the province was relegated after the independence of Brazil. The name “Cabanagem” refers to the type of hut used by the poorest people living along the waterways of northern Brazil, principally caboclos, freed slaves, and indigenous people. Their goal was to be more involved in government decisions, ultimately seeking the economic development of Grão-Pará.
2. The Slaughter of Corumbiara was a violent conflict that occurred on August 9, 1995, in the municipality of Corumbiara, located in the state of Rondônia, Brazil. The conflict erupted when police forces, alongside armed gunmen recruited from local farms, attacked a group of landless workers who were occupying an area of unproductive land. The violence resulted in the deaths of 12 people, including a nine-year-old child and two policemen.
3. The Eldorado do Carajás massacre was the mass killing of 19 landless farmers who were taking part in a peaceful protest. They were shot by military police on April 17, 1996, in the southern region of the Pará state, Brazil.
4. The Balaiada was a social revolt between 1838 and 1841 in the interior of the Province of Maranhão, Brazil. During the imperial period, the Maranhão region, which exported cotton, suffered a severe economic crisis because of competition with the increasingly-productive United States. While the dispute began as a conflict within the elite class, it soon spread to slaves and the indigenous. Cosme Bento, an ex-slave with a force of 3,000 escaped Africans, and Manuel Francisco dos Anjos Ferreira, called the balaio (“basket”) because he was a basketmaker, spread the revolt across the interior of Maranhão, conquering the province’s second city in importance, Caxias, and going on to Piauí.
5. The 6X1 work schedule consists of 6 consecutive days of followed by one day off. Here is a link to an article in Brasil de Fato explaining the six-day work week: Why is everyone talking about the six-day work week in Brazil?
