What is the Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)

A documentary about the history of the fight of the rural workers in Brazil. Go here for the list of videos

What is the MST?

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Portuguese, is a mass social movement, formed by rural workers and by all those who want to fight for land reform and against injustice and social inequality in rural areas.

The MST was born through a process of occupying latifundios (large landed estates) and become a national movement in 1984.  Over more than two decades , the movement has led more than 2,500 land occupations, with about 370,000 families - families that today settled on 7.5 million hectares of land that they won as a result of the occupations. Through their organizing, these families continue to push for schools, credit for agricultural production and cooperatives, and access to health care.

Currently, there are approximately 900 encampment holding 150,000 landless families in Brazil.  Those camped, as well as those already settled, remain mobilized, ready to exercise their full citizenship, by fighting for the realization of their political, social economic, environmental and cultural rights.

Comments and dialog

For those of you who have something to say about what you read here please write.  We have no interest in preaching with our ears shut.  We are interested in discussion and a dynamic formation of new ideas that are a product of collective input not individual expression.  We wish we had answers and solutions for everything  but we don't.  We are learning ourselves, hence the reference to education, learning, sharing, solving, failing, and best of all learning from failure.

We have also accumulated a ton of practical information and resources that deal with the problems of daily routines of autonomous collective living.  We are trying to find a way to separate and classify information (documents, audio-visual, manuals, etc) but it is harder to do than we originally thought.  we welcome contribution to this are as well.

The only ideal we have in mind and a priority is to add towards solutions and not criticize others' proposals.   We are not bound by any other "idealism"!  No flag no symbol!